Minor League Splits Blog

I’ve made several small improvements to the site in the last week or so.  Foremost among them is the addition of three new categories of leaders: August, Park Adjusted, and MLEs.  For instance, you can quickly find out who led the International League in HRs in August, who allowed the lowest park-adjusted batting average in the Carolina League, or who had the highest Minor League Equivalency batting average in the full-season Minors.

I also made several corrections to my method for calculating MLEs for pitchers, to bring my numbers into closer agreement with Sean Smith’s.  (I am using his method–I might as well do it right!)  Further, I now alter batted ball numbers for Park and MLE stats.  Since K’s, BB’s, and HR’s often differ from a player’s overall stat line, the number of batted balls changes–I just adjust the batted-ball totals to reflect that.

Other exciting new features are on their way!

Over the past few days, I’ve added two new lines to every player and team splits page. The first shows a park-adjusted line; the second shows a Minor League Equivalency (MLE) line. For park adjustments, I owe thanks to Dan Szymborski, who calculated and posted 2003-05 park factors this past offseason. For MLEs, I’m indebted to Sean Smith, who shared his league factors with me and made including MLEs tremendously easier than it otherwise would’ve been.

I explain in detail my method for park-adjustments here. The short version: my park factors are 50% Dan’s, 50% 2006 (as imprecisely calculated by me), and adjust hits, extra-base hits, home runs, walks, and strikeouts. Because I don’t track pitching or batting runs, earned runs, or RBIs, I don’t do run factors at this time. I came up with 2006 park factors through games of July 29th; I plan on updating them every week or two to gain a bit more accuracy. Because, of course, I have home/road splits, I adjust home and road stats separately.

My MLE method is described here. MLEs shouldn’t be taken too seriously–they are great as an approximation, but are only that.

One note about both of these new stat lines, since a couple of people have already inquired: it’s no accident that at-bats and innings pitched change when lines are park adjusted or league adjusted. In the case of ABs, if a player’s number of walks decreases, his ABs will go up. (Plate appearances are held constant.) For IPs, walks and hits affect the total, as changes in those totals alter the number of outs the pitcher would’ve recorded.

Enjoy the new stats!