The value of minor league prospects study

[reillymcshane]

I found this article from earlier this year done regarding minor league prospects. Using Baseball America Top 100 lists from from 1994-2010 and Fangraphs WAR values, the authors broke players into tiers, calculated how much WAR they produced in the first six years of their career (meaning pre-arbitration and arbitration years), and then assigned a Surplus Value (this is the WAR a player produced, minus their salary).

 

They use Fangraphs valuation of 1 WAR as being equal to $8M. So if a player made 10 WAR during his first 6 years, he would produce $80M in value. Let's say his salary was $20M during this time frame. $80M - $20M = $60M Surplus Value (SV).

 

http://www.thepointofpittsburgh.com/mlb-prospect-surplus-values-2016-updated-edition/

 

I think it's a fascinating look at assigning a value to a player not yet in the majors. And even if you don't care for idea that 1 WAR is worth $8M, it still gives a look at how much WAR players in different tiers produced.

 

Top 10 prospects (both pitchers and batters) are, without a doubt the most valuable players.

 

Some interesting items:

 

- Hitters generally have more Surplus Value than pitchers of the same ranking (likely because they more prone to injuries and flame outs)

- The difference between a 51-75 ranked prospect is very little compared to a 76-100 prospect. This is something often noted by people ranking talent. The higher up you get, the more players get placed into a blob. I remember John Sickels saying that a 140th ranked guy isn't much different than the 90th ranked guy.

 

It's all kind of cool to look at. You can see a ranking of a player and say, "Using MLB Pipelines lists, Phil Bickford falls into the #51-75 group. As a whole, they have produced 3.7 WAR and $16.5M of Surplus Value. 69% of these guys have produced less than 3 WAR and 44% have produced zero or lower WAR."

 

It's kind of interesting to see that perspective.

 

Perhaps someone has posted something like this before - but I don't recall - so here it is.

[logan82]

Surplus value seems pretty useless. Straight value or WAR seems more useful. The first 3 years are going to be pretty similar salary wise for almost every single player. Yes better players will get more in arbitration but much of that is already mitigated by 3 surpressed years so the spred in salary over 6 years will be much smaller.

[reillymcshane]

Surplus value seems pretty useless. Straight value or WAR seems more useful. The first 3 years are going to be pretty similar salary wise for almost every single player. Yes better players will get more in arbitration but much of that is already mitigated by 3 surpressed years so the spred in salary over 6 years will be much smaller.

But three arby years can add up to a lot of money, so I see the value in adding it. I mean, $20M is nothing to sneeze at adding - so I don't see the harm. But as you said, even without it, it's still interesting just to see the raw WAR.

[sveumrules]

Definitely a very interesting study and a good reminder that even the highest rated prospects often times don't live up to their billing. Pretty sure I referenced it at some point in the Arcia thread shortly after he was called up when posters were underwhelmed by his offense relative to his prospect status.

[clancyphile]

Definitely a very interesting study and a good reminder that even the highest rated prospects often times don't live up to their billing. Pretty sure I referenced it at some point in the Arcia thread shortly after he was called up when posters were underwhelmed by his offense relative to his prospect status.

 

Honestly, I was underwhelmed by Arcia's performance at Colorado Springs. He had dropped to #14 on my mid-season ballot for 2016 compared to #2 on the preseason ballot.

[CheezWizHed]

Honestly, I was underwhelmed by Arcia's performance at Colorado Springs. He had dropped to #14 on my mid-season ballot for 2016 compared to #2 on the preseason ballot.

 

[sarcasm]But he was 3-4 off of Suter in batting practice![/sarcasm]