Thank you for the MLEs. Great work.

Unfortunately, this appears to be missing the pitchers for the Connecticut Defenders. Do you have this data by any chance?

Ack, I didn't see that - I'll fix it.

Seem to be missing Corpus Christi as well - I'll post a note when this is updated.

This is tremendous. Thank's a lot.

Wow, check out Jack Cust's numbers. A .428 adjusted OBP. You know, rumor has it that the Mets were on the verge of acquiring him a couple weeks ago, if not for the timely intervention of a Portland waiter. See, Omar Minaya was eating lunch in a Portland restaurant, when a waiter recognized him and asked him what he was doing there. Minaya responded that he was in town to scout some of the Padres' minor leaguers, particularly Jack Cust, as the Mets were looking for another left-handed bat. Now, the waiter was a die-hard Padres fan, and he knew that Cust could help the team down the stretch, so he lied to Minaya, telling him that Cust didn't actually bat left-handed. "Are you sure?" said Minaya. "I could have sworn he was left-handed. Is he a switch-hitter, at least?" The waiter responded with a maxim that had served him well throughout his career:

"The Cust, Omar, is always right."

That is either the best or worst joke I've heard in a long time. I can't decide.

I don't see Trenton pitchers either. I guess Philip Hughes's season never really happened.

That joke would have gotten a brown bag at Comedy Worx.

-- MWE

It's probably Cust's career year, unfortunately. Despite the love a lot of statheads, myself included, had for him, his MLEs have generally been underwhelming:

1999: 243/328/411
2000: 247/359/422
2001: 211/322/462
2002: 252/364/491 (pre-humidor Coors)
2003: 265/405/393
2004: 214/328/381
2005: 219/338/372

Now that I'm back from watching early football games and reviewed, at some point, I seem to have pared off all the AA pitchers. Will fix really soon.

OK, spreadsheet is updated with AA pitchers.

"The Cust, Omar, is always right."

May God have mercy on your soul.

That joke would have gotten a brown bag at Comedy Worx.
You, me, and maybe two other people know what you're referring to.

Dan's league factors are: AAA - 76%, AA - 69%, Fast A - 60%, Slow A - 54%, Short A - 50%
Rallymonkey (and anybody else who creates their own MLEs), what factors do you use?

Mine are a little harsher. IL is .73, PCL .68, Sou/EL around .65, TL somewhere between .55 and .60, FSL .59, CAR .55, CAL .47, Sal/MW .44. I only did the full season leagues. I won't have any MLE's out for a while as my home internet service is down and may not be back till Saturday.

Dan's league factors are: AAA - 76%, AA - 69%, Fast A - 60%, Slow A - 54%, Short A - 50%
Rallymonkey (and anybody else who creates their own MLEs), what factors do you use?

Don't forget - my spreadsheet automatically does a calculation (with regression) for league offense. My league factors were closer to Sean's last year, but the offensive levels have drastically changed.

Let me rephrase that - the base MLE that you see (and, in fact, you can change on the spreadsheet easily) is before any levels of league offense are accounted for. Last year, once league levels of offense were accounted for, the IL was .75, PCL was .69 and so on. That's different this year - the changes in scoring in the minors vis-a-vis the majors is huge.

Take the Southern League for example. Runs per game (not earned runs!) went from 4.53 in 2005 to 3.97 in 2006 while in MLB, we went from 4.62 to 4.80. That's a huge relative change and makes hitter adjustments less harsh overall than last year (and pitchers more harsh).

Thanks Dan!

That joke stunk or rocked.

I ask because:
1) it's obviously of critical importance.
2) I plan on using Dan's sheet to compute MLEs between different minor league levels (say from Kinston to Akron, that sort of thing). (Yet another reason this spreadsheet is a great thing to make public, even if my use is a trivial one.)

Don't forget - my spreadsheet automatically does a calculation (with regression) for league offense.
Presuming I'm intrepreting you correctly - yeah, I figured that.
If league scoring levels were the same across all levels of baseball - a guy worth 100 runs in AAA would be worth 76 in the majors (roughly, I'm simplifying a bit). However, the IL is a lower run environment than MLB, so you adjust accordingly - a hitter worth 100 runs in the IL would be worth 89 runs in the bigs ('m Calculator'column P). The regression halves the difference to 83 runs. The reverse is done for pitchers (a pitcher who gives up 100 runs in the IL would give up 142 in the bigs). Way back when when I used to compute my own (largely by ripping off the work of others), I did it the same way.

Should the AL and NL be handled differently? I guess there are good reasons not to (principally interleague play + the high minors also have a schedule split between DH v. non-DH games) - I'm just used to seeing them handled separately (with AL >> NL this year, it stands out more than normal).

I'd love to see a discussion between Dan and Sean over how you came up with your league adjustments - I'd like reasons to choose one versus the other besides than intuition.

To that end, Sean, why do you rate the Texas League so poorly?

My league adjustments come similarly to Sean's (I believe - Jeff S. had explained them) in that I looked at league-to-league player moves within a single season, but over a number of years.

Essentially, from 1990-1999, AAA was still at that .82, but looking at 1995-2004, that had dropped to .79 and I'm getting a .76 since 2000.

My hypothesis is that AAA has gotten a bit weaker relative to the majors for two reasons - teams are doing a better job at giving chances to so-called Phelpshers and that top AAAers that aren't getting chances are going to Japan in greater frequency.

Note that this just a hypothesis - my plans to write up something a bit better were thrown off-track by the meltdown of my laptop last winter. Luckily, Dell has settled the class action lawsuit that I'm a part of and I'll get that damn motherboard replaced and be able to use that computer again!

I do handle AL and NL somewhat differently (pitchers, for instance, have their MLE walks and stuff adjusted to the league of the parent club as well as to the park). The big difference in level between AL and NL has me considering what else I can do - the gap just didn't seem all that significant until this season.

As for Sean and the Texas League, I'm assuming that his m factors he posted already include offensive adjustments between leagues. PCL is going to almost always have a lower m than IL after offensive levels are looked at and Texas and California Leagues will also be in that same boat.

UPDATE!

As our friend Black Hawk Waterloo has brought to my attention, on the "Barebones" version of the spreadsheet, I did not put in the 2006 park factors for minor league stadium (they still have the 2003-2005 weighted ones as 2006!).

The revised spreadsheet has been uploaded.

My hypothesis is that AAA has gotten a bit weaker relative to the majors for two reasons - teams are doing a better job at giving chances to so-called Phelpshers and that top AAAers that aren't getting chances are going to Japan in greater frequency.
I'd agree with this on both counts.

The big difference in level between AL and NL has me considering what else I can do - the gap just didn't seem all that significant until this season.
I normally wouldn't have asked... :)

As for Sean and the Texas League, I'm assuming that his m factors he posted already include offensive adjustments between leagues.
I was going to guess that it didn't - until I looked at it again just now - particularly with regard to the A+ leagues. Assuming that these are his factors for hitters, his scores are a lot harsher.

To recap, for hitters:
Dan S (base): AAA - 76%, AA - 69%, Fast A - 60%, Slow A - 54%, Short A - 50%
Dan S (adj+reg): AAA - 79%, AA - 74%, Fast A - 62%, Slow A - 57%, Short A - 54% (higher values due to high level of offense in MLB)
ARoM (adj for hit?): AAA - 70%, AA - 63%, Fast A - 54%, Slow A - 44%

Picking a guy at random... hey, here's a favorite of mine (go GT):
Jeremy Slayden (OF, Lakewood, Sally) has MLE_dan of .274/.329/.446, compared to an MLE_jeff of .216/.260/.352 (actual: .310/.385/.510).
Obviously, differences in park factors, blah blah blah, are causes for discrepancy as well, but the "m" is the thing...

Oh, those values in post 21 are just weighted averages of the league factors (splitting the difference on the ARom TL guess and using the regressed hitter m's on the spreadsheet).

Luckily, Dell has settled the class action lawsuit that I'm a part of

Now you just have to get your settlement from your part in Angry Pointing Mustache Man's Class Action Lawsuit and you can replace the hard drive, too.

Ah, you're using Sean's MLEs that Jeff S. has on his site? I asked Jeff about that very issue and he said that he was using the old factors that Sean had given him - I'm not sure if Sean has been updating his league factors in season (but since he's reading this, he can let us know!)

For post 21, yeah. I figured the league factors were probably old (unless they're not), but they don't change *that* much from year to year.

Normally, they don't change that much from year to year. This time around, they did!

I should also note that a lot of the work I did was also done by Clay Davenport (we used to talk a bit about levels of translation back in the rsbb days), so I'm fairly certainly that I'm not guilty of computational bloopers here - my MLEs are generally in the neighborhood of Davenport Translations, though I tend to be slightly harsher (5-10 points of OPS) than the DTs.

Although the DTs have (at least had) an age (or proxied damn well by age) element - so, say, Roberto Petagine last year really doesn't look all that great in the Davenport #s.

Lest I give the wrong impression (which I don't think I am, but I'd rather nip this in the bud), I don't have a horse in this race (well, apart from a reasonable approximation of the truth). I just can envision myself as a kid who finds out about MLEs through a site like this, or minorleaguesplits, or BPro - and isn't sure about how to reconcile differences.

To that end, Sean, why do you rate the Texas League so poorly?

This year the Texas League had a lot more offense than the other AA leagues, in previous years it was just a little more.

League adjustments are based on comparing players who played at multiple levels in the same season. My m's are about 3 years old, so its about time I do some recalculating. I might make some changes and do things more like Dan in the future. Its easier to come up with one m for a level and readjust for the offense in the leagues than try and calculate m for every league.

I've been out of commission for a few days as my comcast internet is down. I just checked and found a neighbor has an unsecure wireless network going, so I can steal some access for a little while.

Its easier to come up with one m for a level and readjust for the offense in the leagues than try and calculate m for every league.

Trust me, easy is the way to go! We're not designing rockets, after all, so the less we have to pull out our hair, the better. (Of course, I completely shaved my head, so I have no hair to pull out now).

I've been out of commission for a few days as my comcast internet is down. I just checked and found a neighbor has an unsecure wireless network going, so I can steal some access for a little while.

It's amazing how awful people are at securing their wireless networks. Any time I have a laptop and I'm in an apartment, I can usually choose between half a dozen networks to log onto freely.

It's amazing how awful people are at securing their wireless networks.
Half my block has told me they're using mine. What's the security risk?

Its easier to come up with one m for a level and readjust for the offense in the leagues than try and calculate m for every league.
I'd think that would help from a sample size perspective as well.

Half my block has told me they're using mine. What's the security risk?

Well, for one, some doofus makes a lot of MP3s available for upload and you get sued by the RIAA. Or they can eat a lot of your bandwidth. Or worse, capture private information that you transmit to somewhere if they're skilled enough.

I find it easiest to just instruct my router to only allow computers with my MAC addresses (and that of my friends) to connect.