Minor league baseball: Analyzing the pitchers
The results are similar for pitchers:
Year T-2:
132 pitchers
Average: 74 IP, 0.4 fWAR, 0.3 rWAR
Year T-1:
140 pitchers
Average: 63 IP, 0.1 fWAR, -0.1 rWAR
Year T:
148 pitchers
Average: 47 IP, 0.2 fWAR, 0.2 rWAR
Year T+1:
80 pitchers
Average: 60 IP, 0.4 fWAR, 0.3 rWAR
More from Call to the Pen
- Philadelphia Phillies, ready for a stretch run, bomb St. Louis Cardinals
- Philadelphia Phillies: The 4 players on the franchise’s Mount Rushmore
- Boston Red Sox fans should be upset over Mookie Betts’ comment
- Analyzing the Boston Red Sox trade for Dave Henderson and Spike Owen
- 2023 MLB postseason likely to have a strange look without Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals
Like the position player group, the worst season for these pitchers is the year before they sign minor league contracts (T-1). That’s the biased year. Coming off bad seasons, these players don’t get big contract offers and have to settle for a minor league contract and invitation to spring training. They bounce back and provide slightly above replacement-level value.
Based on these real-life players over a 10-year period, it appears that MLB teams who sign free agents to minor league contracts get slightly more production than the WAR baseline would expect out of what are, essentially, replacement-level players (based on how easy they were to acquire). It’s possible that the WAR baseline is slightly low. Perhaps instead of .294, it should be .300 or .310.
The difference is small, though, and there are other factors to consider. The sample of players could be biased. My player pool came from the ESPN link that shows minor league free agent signings. I don’t know if their list is complete. Most years had 20 or more such signings, but the link for 2012 only had a few, which seems odd to me.
Next: ACES agency accused of providing MLB players with PEDs
Another group of Minor league baseball players who could be added to the pool are offseason waiver claims. Perhaps if these players had been added, the outcome would be different. Overall, though, based on 10 years of data, these minor league free agent signings who get major league playing time perform slightly better than replacement level.