Predicting the Pirates' Top Prospects' Offense in the Majors

Pirates' number three overall prospect Josh Bell

Monday was the Pittsburgh Pirates' annual Black-and-Gold scrimmage where many of the team's best prospects saw playing time against one another. Headlining the group of position players were first baseman Josh Bell and second baseman Alen Hanson. MLB.com ranks Bell as the Pirates' third best prospect and Hanson as the number five prospect. Both may finally make their highly-anticipated major league debuts in 2016 with Hanson having a chance to break Spring Training with the big league team and Bell expected to be ready for a call-up by mid season. 

Thinking about this made me wonder just how top-prospects like Hanson and Bell would preform in the majors and so I went about predicting this (I also threw in number 12 overall prospect Willy Garcia and number 14 prospect Elias Diaz as they are both in triple-A and could be called up this season). Using each of these players' minor league numbers and trends of how recent Pirates top-prospects made the jump to the big leagues I came up with a way of predicting what each prospects' batting average and on-base-percentage would be in the majors.I looked at things like how often each player strikes out (SO%), draws a walk (BB%) and batting average of balls put in play (BABIP). These are seen as 'relatively' consistent offensive numbers for players regardless of what level they are playing at. 

Of course for the prospects I only have their minor league numbers and the majors are much more difficult than the minors so I used how recent Pirates top-prospects made the jump. I looked at the differences in SO%, BB%, and BABIP between the minors and majors for Andrew McCutchen, Starling Marte, Gregory Polanco, Neil Walker and Pedro Alvarez. I then found the average difference for all five of these players and applied that to the prospects' numbers to replicate their jumping to the big leagues. 

	SO%		BB%		BABIP		SO% diff.		BB% diff.		BABIP diff.
McCutchen	17.3		12.1		0.373		1.7		2.2		0.026
Minors	15.6		9.9		0.347
Marte	22.9		4.8		0.379		2.9		-0.2		-0.008
Minors	20		5		0.387
Polanco	18.7		8.8		0.314		3.1		-0.7		-0.031
Minors	15.6		9.5		0.346
Walker	17.3		8.1		0.337		1.7		1.7		0.007
Minors	15.6		6.4		0.33
Alvarez	29.1		9.3		0.349		4.4		-3.6		-0.041
Minors	24.6		12.9		0.39

The averages from these numbers were a 2.8% increase in SO%, a .14% decrease in BB% and a .010 decrease in BABIP for the jump from the minors to the majors.

Now for the prospects. 

Bell has a career 14.2 SO%, 9.4 BB% and a .364 BABIP in the minors. Adding in the adjusters I calculated from above that translates to a major league SO% of 17, a BB% of 9.2 and a BABIP of .354. 

Hanson has a 16.8 SO%, 7.7BB% and a .350 BABIP in the minors and I predict a 19.6 SO%, 7.6 BB% and a .340 BABIP in the majors. 

Garcia numbers are 26.6 SO%, 5.4 BB% and a .366 BABIP in the minors and 29.4 SO%, 5.2 BB% and a .357 BABIP for the majors.

Diaz has 15.6 SO%, 8.3BB%, and a .311 BABIP in the minors and an adjusted 18.4 SO%, 8.2 BB% and .302 BABIP for the majors.

I applied these numbers to a baseline of 100 plate appearances and was able to calculate each prospects hits, strike outs and walks per 100 plate appearances. My predictions are as follows;

	Hits/100 PA		SO/100 PA		BB/100 PA		Batting Average		On-base-percentage
Josh Bell	26.3		17		9.2		0.289		0.355
Alen Hanson	24.6		19.6		7.6		0.266		0.322
Willy Garcia	23.3		29.4		5.2		0.245		0.285
Elias Diaz	22		18.4		8.2		0.24		0.302

The numbers I ended with go along with what I expected. Bell has the best batting average and on-base-percentage with Hanson firmly in second place. Garcia is predicted to hit for a better average than Diaz, but Diaz is predicted to get on base more often.

*This was a very simple prediction using rough numbers and a lot of assumption, so these numbers most likely have a large margin of error. However I just did this very quickly and was pleased with the results I got. If you want to look at the Excel document I used with all the number you can follow this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzW1_yH7pmjFczdwcDBQdENGQWs/view?usp=sharing 

All the minor/major league stats I used were from Baseball-Reference.com