Mullins earning a 2nd chance

[wildcard]

Mullins is hitting for a  348/500/435/935.

What I like to see a player do when sent down to AAA is play well and earn a return to the majors.  Mullins looks like he is doing that.   He is eligible to return on Friday.

[LA2]

SSS! But I notice that he's walked a lot (7 in 30 PAs!) and isn't K'ing (just 3). 3 SBs too.

[maybenxtyr]

I would like to see him get some more time at AAA, but it's encouraging. 

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, LA2 said:

SSS! But I notice that he's walked a lot (7 in 30 PAs!) and isn't K'ing (just 3). 3 SBs too.

He's 8-for-23... what else do you need?  He sooooooooo hot that his average went up 70 points last night.  For Jonathan Villar to do that he'd have to go 10-for-6 tonight.  That's unpossible!

It's good that he turned it all around yesterday, because on Sunday it went down 55 points, and I have to think he was on the verge of being released.

[Frobby]

Six games.    For me the fundamental question is why did he hit so poorly at the major league level last September and this April.    Was it just a prolonged slump where perhaps he started pressing and his demotion has allowed him to relax and break out of it?     Or does he have some fundamental weaknesses that major league pitchers are able to exploit but AAA pitchers cannot?

[LA2]

21 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

He's 8-for-23... what else do you need?  He sooooooooo hot that his average went up 70 points last night.  For Jonathan Villar to do that he'd have to go 10-for-6 tonight.  That's unpossible!

It's good that he turned it all around yesterday, because on Sunday it went down 55 points, and I have to think he was on the verge of being released.

Well, that certainly proves it has nothing to do with the Federal funds rate.

[DrungoHazewood]

30 minutes ago, Frobby said:

 Or does he have some fundamental weaknesses that major league pitchers are able to exploit but AAA pitchers cannot?

That basically isn't a thing.  The bottom 30% of MLBers are mostly indistinguishable from the top 30% of AAA pitchers.  Or close enough that it doesn't matter.  And MLBers make mistakes, they don't hit their spots all the time, they go into slumps.  They're pitchers just like AAA guys, just somewhat better on average.  There's no characteristic of a AAA pitcher or a MLB pitcher that would cause any batter to hit .330 in AAA and .180 in the majors over the long haul.  

[Frobby]

5 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

That basically isn't a thing.  The bottom 30% of MLBers are mostly indistinguishable from the top 30% of AAA pitchers.  Or close enough that it doesn't matter.  And MLBers make mistakes, they don't hit their spots all the time, they go into slumps.  They're pitchers just like AAA guys, just somewhat better on average.  There's no characteristic of a AAA pitcher or a MLB pitcher that would cause any batter to hit .330 in AAA and .180 in the majors over the long haul.  

And yet it seems like some players don’t experience much of a hiccup going from the minors to the majors, while some do.    That’s always been a mystery to me.     But put it this way, I might agree that the bottom 30% of major league pitchers are indistinguishable from AAA pitchers, but that still leaves the other 70%, and they get more than 70% of the work.    

[Ohfan67]

37 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

That basically isn't a thing.  The bottom 30% of MLBers are mostly indistinguishable from the top 30% of AAA pitchers.  Or close enough that it doesn't matter.  And MLBers make mistakes, they don't hit their spots all the time, they go into slumps.  They're pitchers just like AAA guys, just somewhat better on average.  There's no characteristic of a AAA pitcher or a MLB pitcher that would cause any batter to hit .330 in AAA and .180 in the majors over the long haul.  

Most of us don't want to admit it, but a not insignificant amount of baseball performance is like a lucky knockout in MMA. Thirty or more percent of performance is pretty random. That might be an underestimate. There must be a Monte Carlo type simulation that takes random AAA players (and their variation in performance) and plugs then into the majors to estimate performance. If you did that 10,000 times, then the same player might have a couple of thousand career trajectories. 

[DrungoHazewood]

33 minutes ago, Frobby said:

And yet it seems like some players don’t experience much of a hiccup going from the minors to the majors, while some do.    That’s always been a mystery to me.     But put it this way, I might agree that the bottom 30% of major league pitchers are indistinguishable from AAA pitchers, but that still leaves the other 70%, and they get more than 70% of the work.    

It's a matter of degree.  Not some massive step change.  If a guy can't (for example) hit a letter-high fastball, AAA pitchers can throw a letter-high fastball.  Not as hard and not as often, but they can do it.  

[Moose Milligan]

I wonder when people will understand small sample sizes.  

[Tony-OH]

52 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

That basically isn't a thing.  The bottom 30% of MLBers are mostly indistinguishable from the top 30% of AAA pitchers.  Or close enough that it doesn't matter.  And MLBers make mistakes, they don't hit their spots all the time, they go into slumps.  They're pitchers just like AAA guys, just somewhat better on average.  There's no characteristic of a AAA pitcher or a MLB pitcher that would cause any batter to hit .330 in AAA and .180 in the majors over the long haul.  

Let's be clear here, this is your opinion. Can you show us the fact to back up this 30% number? I think you are seriously degrading the difference between the major leagues and any minor league. 

As for Mullins, can you break down what pitchers were doing to him at the major league level vs minor league level to prove your theory or is it just that, a theory? I'll be happy to have this conversation, but one, we don't have the data from the minor leagues to see how they are pitching him vs the major league level and I'm willing to guess that neither us have watched video of all his games down in Norfolk to know one way or the other.

Now I would tend to agree with you that there is not a pitching characteristic for someone to bat .197 in the MLB vs .348 in AAA, but who here thinks Mullins is a .348 hitter in AAA? He's a .348 hitter over 6 games after going 3-for-5 last night.

I'm glad to see Mullins hitting. I'll have to go watch video to see if he's going to the opposite field or if pitchers are busting him in like they were at the MLB level. I don't know whether these were screaming line drives or ground balls "with eyes?" We don't know if pitchers were grooving more pitches to him like they weren't in the big leagues.

One day hopefully we will have the same statcast data available to us in the minor leagues as the major leagues and then we'll have more definitive data to base our analysis on that forms our opinions. Until then, we'll can be happy that Mullins is hitting and getting on base in AAA, but realizing it really means nothing without all of the data on how it's being done and against what kinds of pitches and pitch locations.

 

 

 

[Can_of_corn]

14 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

I wonder when people will understand small sample sizes.  

I think once one person does everyone else will shortly after.

[Moose Milligan]

2 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I think once one person does everyone else will shortly after.

Well clearly you do so...everyone else needs to fall in.

[Aglets]

Buck used to say all the time:

"The biggest jump in all of professional sports is from the pitching you see in the Minors and the pitching you see in the big leagues."

Not saying that Buck always spoke the Gospel truth but I tend to think he knew what he was talking about with this.    

Another big data point missing from your assertion Drungo is innings.  What % of MLB innings are your 'bottom 30% of MLB pitchers' throwing?  I'm guessing far less than that number?