AL vs NL vs NPB vs AAA

AL vs NL vs NPB vs AAA

Submitted by jemanji on 10/02/10 2:39pm

=== Dr D axed, Dept. ===

SABRMatt opined that the NL was "the game's elite minor league" and we tossed in a 9-foot-arc pitch: 

Real quick Matty, with AL being 100 on the index, where would you personally ballpark the NL, NPB, and AAA at the moment?

To which Matt replied,

Per the last decade of interleague play results, the NL is Pythagenmatting it at a .387 clip.  A .387!! clip.  For a whole league in ten years worth of interleague games.  That's a LOT of games to be THAT bad.

If you called up the five best PCL teams and had 'em run shotgun with the AL for 162 games each...would they play .387 ball?  It would be close.

I liken the gap between a major and minor league to the gap between a grandmaster and a master in the ELO ratings.  A Grandmaster's 2400 will beat a master's 2200 about 2/3 of the time.  If the NL is Pythagenmatting barely better than I'd expect the PCL to do...then yes...I call the NL a minor league and don't look back.

To answer Doc's question above...I would rate the leagues thusly:

AL: 100

NL: 92

NPB: 90

PCL: 90

IL: 90

Although a lot of stars have come out of the NPB, it's not significantly better than today's AAA if only because there does not exist a very deep player pool who can play with team Japan.  Japan's best players can play with anyone...so could the best players in the Negro Leagues...unfortunately, the Negro Leagues were also minor leagues based on the kinds of statistics the stars routinely posted as compared to what they did in the big leagues when allowed to play.

Extreme, of course, and I'm not sure how much Sandy is going to appreciate the logic :- ) but we did know that Matt would swing away with some PythagenMatt facts.

Taro had my reaction:  that even if the gap between the NL and NPB was as big as that, you'd think that AAA would index 80 or 85 or something.  No?  Taro sez:

You have to consider that a group of AAA stars would typically be a replacement level team at the MLB level. A group of NPB stars would lead the AL in Ws and a group of NL stars would break the MLB record for Ws in the AL.

The NL is significantly better than AAA and clearly better than NPB. NPB is also clearly far superior to AAA. Heck, I think the gap between the AL and AAA should be larger as well.

Matt produces five solid points, arguing that a PCL All-Star team would go .500 in the NL, and that Japanese baseball consists of a few stars and a bunch of weaker players:

A) I don't think a team of the best PCL players would be replacement level, no.  I think you'd have a mix of up and coming studs and AAAA talents...I think that team might easily play .,500 ball in the NL...hence why I don't think the NL is that far above AAA.

B) And I know with pretty high certainty that the NL is enough weaker than the AL that the NL plays replacement level baseball against the AL.  Internalize that for a moment.

C) And I also know that the conversion factor from NPB is typically worse than it is for the NL...so I know that the NPB, as a league would be worse than replacement level against the AL and probably about as good as the NL is against the AL...against the NL.

D) The difference between the NPB (and the Negro Leagues) and AAA...is that the NPB stars are significantly better than most of the rest of the players in that league.  There isn't talent parity there...it's 30-40 really good players and then a whole bunch of really bad ones.  The same is true of the Venezuelan Winter League, the Negro Leagues, Cuban Baseball etc.  There's a reason that fringe MLB players can go to Japan and OPS 1.000 without breaking a sweat.  The NL is probably better than the NPB since there is more talent parity there...but no, I don't think a team of NPB stars would break the MLB wins record...I think they would be competitive with the Phillies.

E) And I'm also fairly certain that so far, the NPB has produced ONE hall of fame level talent that stuck in the big leagues.  Ichiro.  No one else has come close.  Not Godzilla, not Nomo, not Sasaki, Look what happened to Kosuke Fukudome...look what happened to Daisuke Matsuzaka...how about Kazuo Matsui...these were all players on the Japanese all star team, taro.  EASILY!!  And they all became run of the mill big leagues...average at best.

Taro points out that MLB vacuums up AAA players who could compete with them, and notes that the NL All-Star team would win 120 games in the AL, or something...

A AAA star team would consist of guys barely above replacement level. AAA is a farm system for the MLB and anybody good enough to be in the MLB usually is.

An NL star team would dismantle the AL. Theres no way its closer to AAA than MLB. If you were to theoretically NUKE NL Central and spread that talent over the rest of the NL, the AL-NL disparity would essentially vanish.

And in this comment, as well as this one, Taro noted that NPB stars didn't, as a rule, lose that much in coming over to MLB.  Not after you "adjust" for the fact that they were 30-something players (who needed a year or so to learn new pitchers -- and then were sliding downhill physically).

Matt has a sophisticated reply to Taro's "MLB vacuums AAA" logic:

First of all, you say that 3 WAR players don't stay in AAA, and of course this is true, but AT ANY GIVEN TIME there are probably DOZENS of those kinds of players down there.  ...I think an all-star team from AAA at amy given time could play .500 ball in the NL.

Second of all, your 3 WAR estimate for NPB stars is IMHO optimistic. The best of Japan's best might be 3 WAR players, but second level stars are likely to be RLPs. Using that logic, I would estimate that a Japanese AS team would be wortj 48+(10*3)+10...or about 88 wins. Competitive with the Phillies as I suggested earlier.

.

=== Dr. D's Take on AAA ===

Just quickly:  hitters from AAA, as a rule, need adjustment time in learning new pitchers.  I wouldn't be real confident about the 9 best PCL* hitters having a good first weekend in the Bronx.

But that isn't true of AAA pitching.  Give me any 10 or 12 AAA pitchers I wanted in, say, May of a given year, and I'm not sure we couldn't get a top-3 staff ERA out of them.

When you're saying that 9 AAA hitters would have, as a group, a tough first month in adapting to NL pitching ... are you commenting on the quality of AAA?  Or are you just commenting on pitcher-hitter adjustments?  I don't know.

I'm sure Matt, Taro, and the entire civilized world would agree that you could pick 25 AAA players from May of any year, and in 1-2 years have a tremendous MLB team. 

But how do you separate out the learning, vs. the skill differential?  I don't know how you'd do that.

.

=== On NPB ===

Thunderous as all of Matty's logic is, the one weak link in the chain I can see is ... the notion that after you edit out NPB stars, then everybody else is "replacement level" in NPB.

That's possible, if you're talking about the hitters, but I (and Bobby Valentine) would be pretty skeptical...

Personally I would more-or-less rule out the idea that any good pitcher in Japan would be a 5.50-ERA cakewalk for MLB hitters.  Could be wrong.

Not sure where NPB ranks.  Would put it quite a ways above AAA, though...  the MLB players who get wiped out by Japan every WBC would agree.

Would AAA All-Stars nuke the WBC as Japan does?

..............

The semantics are amusing.  Matty calls the NL and NPB "the game's elite minor leagues" whereas Dr. D considers them both major leagues -- and considers the AL, at the moment, a super-league.  But, to each your own.

Good stuff,

Dr D


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