2008 Dominance Factors
ByLast summer Brett Sullivan at Project Prospect presented a new metric he developed for minor league pitchers called Dominance Factor, which measured performance based on four key factors: strikeout, walk and groundball rates, as well as age relative to level. He adjusted the formula a few weeks ago to more accurately weigh groundball rate and age, and now what we have a nice easy number that gives us an idea of how well a pitcher performed at their level.
It’s a very straight forward formula that requires nothing more than simple addition, subtraction and a tiny bit of multiplication. I was going to show you an example of how it works, but it’s not worth the effort. If you click the first link above, Sully runs through an example for you. What I did do though is run the numbers for all of the Yanks’ minor league pitchers in 2008. Well, not all of them, just guys with at least 25 IP at any level from Low-A up through Triple-A.
I’m sure there’s a way to combine stats across several levels, but I’m not smart enough to figure out how to do it. Instead you’re getting different number for each player at each level in which they pitched, meaning you’ll get Zach McAllister‘s DF at both Low-A and High-A. As you can imagine the data table is pretty big, so I hid it behind the jump.
(click the chart for a larger view)
The data gives us a nice little bell curve; there’s a small amount of players that scored very well, a small amount that scored very poorly, and a whole lotta guys in-between. You can see how important age is, since the bottom of the list is cluttered with guys who actually performed well, but were old for their league. The 25 IP requirement might be a little low (I wanted to get Hughes’ time with Triple-A in the analysis, and he was at 29 IP), and that’s why four of the top ten are relievers. Perhaps setting a minimum of ten starts, or something like that, would have been more appropriate, but whatever.
I am somewhat surprised to see that there is that much separation between the top two and the rest of the pack. D-Rob’s strikeout rate was absurd and he put up a strong groundball rate while being young for Triple-A, which is why he scored so well. Jairo performed well in all three rate stats but got a big boost because he was so young for his league. Phil Hughes is just the freakin’ man, he’s still going to be young for Triple-A this year.
I got all the data from First Inning, which conveniently lists all the necessary rate stats sorted by level. Their data goes back to 2006, so at some point I’ll run the numbers for ’06 and ’07 as well.
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For multiple level combined factors, wouldn’t it just be:
(Factor for Level 1)*(% of innings at Level 1) + (Factor for Level 2)*(% of innings at Level 2)
Yeah, that’s it. I wrote this post last night, didn’t feel like thinking to much.
Well, I guess Brackman is in a -30 hole before the season even starts.
Actually, Brackman could strike every single batter out this year, not walk anyone and have a dominance factor of 70.0.
Sorry, didn’t read everything. I guess now he only starts in a -21 hole.
You have let Melvin down.
Nice, not much drop-off for Z-Mac from A to A+, probably helped by some age factor when he moved up
He has Zach McCallister a lot higher than you do. Why is that?
He has McAllister at 58.1 in Low-A, I have him at 61.62. He has him at 53.6 in High-A, I have him at 57.10, so I’m the one on the high side.
It has to do with the ages he used. I just used nice whole number, he used age in year and months. So instead of age 20 for McAllister, he has age 20.5. If I plug 20.5 into my spreadsheet, I get the following for Z-Mac:
Low-A: 58.12
High-A: 53.60
So we’re dead on then, it’s just a small differences in the ages we used.
Overall he has him at 74.7 DF though. What’s that all about?
For reference sake, where would you say the rough cutoff lines are between good Dominance Factor scores, average ones, and bad ones?
Like, 100 is amazing, 99-80 is great, 79-60 is good, 59-40 is questionable (where this kid probably isn’t major league caliber), 39-20 is poor, and 19-0 is Varitekian?
You know, I’m not really sure. It seems like once you go above 40 or 45, then you get into players who were very “dominant.” 30-40 seems to be about average.
There’s an interesting gap-line in the chart between Ian Kennedy’s age 23 AAA season of 56.12 and Jon Ortiz’s age 22 A+ season of 48.62. That’s a pretty large marginal increment.
Can we use that gulf as a natural breaking point? Say that somewhere between 56 and 48 is the line between dominant minor league seasons and pedestrian minor league seasons?
If that’s the case, that means the only truly “dominant” minor league campaigns from our pitching prospects were turned in by Robertson, Heredia, Hughes, McAllister, Melancon, and Kennedy, and that all the others (including Betances and Kontos and Zink ) were just “average” or “solid” at best. Does that square with your educated analysis, Mike, or do we still need to re-define which adjective goes with which group?
And, how do we square these numbers with those put up by other teams? Phil Hughes putting up a 62.38 seems good, until you see that Jamie Garcia put up a 90.2 for the Cardinals at the same level. Is Jaime Garcia really THAT MUCH BETTER than Phil Hughes?
I wonder if the age weight factor is large enough…
Is Jaime Garcia really THAT MUCH BETTER than Phil Hughes? I wonder if the age weight factor is large enough…
Never mind, scratch that, Hughes and Garcia are the same age. My bad.
ya, looking at everyone on the list… it really makes u appreciate how young hughes still is
ppl forget pettitte was already like 24 when he debuted
had hughes gone to college, he would just now be graduating, yet hes still very dominant in AAA
You’re looking at the older version of DF. If you look at the second link (which Mike has under “adjusted the formula”), you’ll see that Garcia’s DF is now 64.9. So still better than Hughes’, but not much.
BUT VARITEK WAS AN ALL-STAR!?!?!
from what im gathering, anything over 50 is pretty damn good
So despite Cox coming off surgery, running out of gas at the end of the year & having surgery he was still better, in terms of dominance factor, than Steven Jackson who supposedly put it together last year.
*”having surgery” should have been “having an injury”
jackson is 2 years older… that probably had a lot to do with it
Yep. Similar walk rates, Cox had a better GB rate. Whatever he loses in K rate he makes up for in age.
mike is there any thought into having everyone over 25 in the same group… i mean your physical development is essentially over by the age of 25… so should a guy thats say, 28, be penalized more than a 25 year old?
Well a 28 year old would theoretically have more experience.
Thus one would assume he should perform better.
Okay, you have GOT to explain your name. Inquiring minds want to know.
Lebron’s famous crab dribble.
And the “ointment”?
I believe he is equating the crab dribble to a std. Hence an ointment for your crab dribble.
No where on Urban dictionary is Crab Dribble equated to an STD, therefore it cannot be true
how long did this take?
LOIS: What do you do?
GEORGE: I’m an architect.
LOIS: Have you designed any buildings in New York?
GEORGE: Have you seen the new addition to the Guggenheim?
LOIS: You did that?
GEORGE: Yep. Really didn’t take that long, either.
hahahahahahaha
Did Venditte not make it to 25IP?
‘Cause he had a dominance factor of infinity in my mind.
He played short-season ball, which is ranked below A.
[...] I took a look at how the Yanks’ minor league pitchers performed in 2008 using a new metric call Dominance Factor. DF was developed by Brett Sullivan of Project Prospect, [...]
[...] have performed over the last two years using Brett Sullivan’s Dominance Factor (here’s 2008 and 2007), and today I’m going to take it back to 2006. I’m sure you remember that DF [...]