The leagues that take place after the MLB regular season are referred to as the Winter Leagues even if they don't play in the winter. The Arizona Fall League (AFL) will be over before winter rolls around, but it's included in the winter leagues because it's just easier.
The Cubs have 7 players who have played so far in the AFL, 8 in the Dominican Winter League (DWL), 4 in the Mexican League (LMP) and 9 in the Venezuelan Winter League (VWL). There are likely more on some of the Caribbean leagues, which includes the DWL, VWL and LMP. At the bottom of this post are the stats so far for all the players, including OPS+ for batters and ERA+ for pitchers. This wasn't particularly easy to calculate.
There aren't any available park factors for these leagues. At least not any trustworthy ones so it isn't adjusted for ballpark. Because the team batting pages didn't include SH, which is necessary to calculating OBP, I took a weighted average of the team's AVG/OBP/SLG. I checked this by calculating the average and SLG and it's quite close to the numbers are good enough, but not exact.
Keep in mind the sample sizes. I'll update these each week (stats are through Sunday).
aside: http://www.obstructedview.net/aside/javier-baez-injures-thumb-probably-done-in-the-afl.html
The Angels may not exercise their option on Haren. That would be a very nice pickup for the Cubs.
@ mb21:
Brett from BN ran with the news that the Angels may try to trade Haren and Ervin Santana before they are forced to exercise/decline the option. I thought it was a well-reasoned analysis but I think I would prefer they just wait out the Angels and then pay Haren less than the option (I think he might be worth less than his option anyway).
Sucks about Baez.
@ Rice Cube:
Yeah, if it seems like they’re going to not exercise the option, I’m not sure any team would trade for them.
I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, but Hoyer spoke with mlb.com and apparently said (obviously) that pitching was a priority this offseason. It’s embedded on the home page: http://www.obstructedview.net/
The Cubs were near the bottom of the league in both hitting and pitching (thank god for the Astros), so it’s hard to prioritize one or the other. That said, they’ve lost some of their starting pitchers since last year, so I guess they have to start there.
@ mb21:
He’s calling for patience and suggested that they’re going to wait for the right time to spend money.
@ Rizzo the Rat:
There are at least some hitting prospects in the minors. Can’t say the same about pitching though
@ WaLi:
Yeah, but at least they have Hayden Simpson.
@ Rizzo the Rat:
He’ll take on all challenges mono-a-mono.
@ Rice Cube:
@ mb21:
That looks like an old clip, from back when they signed Castro to the extension.
History of replacement level, looks like a good read
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=18790
@ Berselius:
Mentioned in that article, and something that should be stressed MUCH more when talking about WAR
I think that when most people think about average, they think of things similar to a normal distribution, but baseball doesn’t do that.
Can one of you registered users try posting an image? We updated WordPress and I know sometimes that has erased the hack, but it doesn’t appear to have done that this time.
@ Berselius:
Yeah, I think most people think median when the average is quite different in this case.
Funny you highlight that because I’m actually going to be putting something together in the next few days that has to do with it, though not about replacement level.
mb21 wrote:
(dying laughing), you did a much better job stating that than I did
mb21 wrote:
Finally watching some highlights. That strike 3 to Cabrera at the end was right down the middle. Miguel got caught totally off guard.
Did that work?
mb21 wrote:
I probably won’t be putting anything together. I was thinking that by using the mean of the top 125 players to calculate the qualifying offer, it was going to be a very lopsided number because several players make $20 million or more.
I took the top 125 salaries from here: http://baseballplayersalaries.com/salaries
The average salary that I get from those players is just over $12.8 million so my guess is that page is using actual figures while for the purposes of the qualifying offer, they’re using average annual value. Maybe that site missed a guy or two also. I don’t know.
Anyway, the median is exactly $12.0 million, or $800K less than the mean. I was actually expecting the media to be around $10 million. It still would have prevented teams from collecting draft picks, but would have given them more opportunities to add a pick. It seems to me the owners and players were aware of this and the public can swallow average better than they can median.
So put this idea with all the medical studies that aren’t published because the results don’t confirm what they thought it would. (dying laughing)
It’s not too late for you Halloween stragglers.
@ Rice Cube:
Since I hate copying, mine says Error 503: Costume Unavailable.
@ mb21:
nerd
New shit
http://www.obstructedview.net/chicago-cubs/cubs-putting-out-some-feelers-about-leaving-wgn.html