Minor League SPs – Making The Jump

This is the time of the year I start getting excited about young pitchers. There’s nothing that makes your favorite baseball team look brighter than a lower level SP with a low ERA and a microscopic WHIP.

We go through this every year. We write how there is tons of talent being backed up from A+ down to the rookie levels.

Remember two years ago when we were pumped with names like Gee, Owen, Holt and Niesen?

What about last year with Allen, Beaulac, Schwinden, Familia, and Carson?

And this year, we’re already writing about names like Cohoons, Moore, Fuller, and Gorski.

But, here’s the rub.

Dominating one level of minor league ball doesn’t mean you’re going to do as well at the next.

A Mets pitcher that pitched a few years ago in Savannah told me two years later: “I was lights out at the A level, except when Jason Heyward (Braves) and Jesus Montero (Yankees prospect) came up… then I bumped up to St. Lucie and everybody was a Heyward and Montero.”

Yes, that was an exaggeration, but it was pretty close to the truth. Not everyone gets a promotion during a season. Most minor league players just elevate season to season, when their original competitors drone their way through a career that will eventually come to an end before going to the Bigs.

Look at it another way... you root for a 1-A high school that has a killer Friday night starter. The only problem is he keeps pitching against the same five division schools, year after year, with the same marginal talent. Now, the coach books two games against against 4-A schools and your phenom gets knocked out in the third inning of both games. Same pitcher, same stuff, but different levels of competition.

The true test of a so-called prospect is: can his game keep up or improve against a level of competition with more experience and talent?

Jon Niese: - rookie: 3.65, A: 3.93, A+: 4.22, AA: 3.04, AAA: 3.69

John Maine: - A-: 1.74, A: 1.49, A+: 0.69, AA: 2.25, AAA: 4.08

Notice how Niese’s game got stronger at the AA level and stayed below a 4.00 ERA at AAA? And yes, Maine’s ERA did go up at the AAA level, but not through the roof.

Starting pitchers make their way to their respective team’s pro rotation, by being successful at all levels of their minor league career. Oh, there are exceptions, the biggest being Johan Santana’s miserable A stats (4.85), but he quickly rebounded the following year at the AAA level (3.14) and made it to the pros by the all-star break.

You can get a pretty accurate peek at the future rotational pitchers in the system by tracking their success, level to level. You can do this with WHIP, but I choose to use ERA here as an example:

Mike Antonini – Rookie: 3.71, A-: 0.46, A: 2.71, A+:, 1.84, AA: 5.00, AAA: 12.27

Dillon Gee: - A-: 2.47, A+: 3.25, AA: 1.33, AAA: 4.10

Tobi Stoner: - A-: 2.15, A: 3.61, A+ 4.15, AAA: 3.96

Eric Niesen: - A-: 3.30, A+: 4.11, AA: 4.66

Dylan Owen: - A-: 1.49, A+: 3.11, AA: 5.87

Brad Holt: - A-: 1.87, A+: 3.12, AA: 6.21

Frankly, the only pitcher that’s showing he can compete at all levels is Stoner. Niesen and Gee are going the wrong way and Antonini, Owen, and Holt have regressed.

Most Mets critics are now writing that only Santana and Niese have a future in the 2011 Mets rotation. I hope they’re wrong, because, as of the end of last year, there really is no one down the pipe that’s knocking on the door.

And what about the next kid everyone was talking about this spring, Jeurys Familia? Well, so far his ERA is 17.18 after one start.