Red Sox Pitching Prospects Major League Equivalency

Like some of the best baseball stats websites, I can visit MinorLeagueSplits.com and play around with their tools for an hour and not even realize it.

Tonight, while check out Clay Buchholz’s numbers I looked at his MLE’s, or Major League Equivalencies. Basically it takes his stats, adjusts for luck and the park and level he is pitching at in the minors, and spits out what his numbers could/should resemble if he was pitching for an average Major League Baseball team.

3.75 Fielding Independent Pitching ERA, 0.86 WHIP… not bad MLE’s for a guy currently being blocked by Brad Penny, and soon John Smoltz.

Interested, I decided to look at the rest of the Sox top starting pitching prospects that have been starting all season at one level or another. Below is the table, sorted by MLE FIP.

	IP		FIP	WHIP		K/9	BB/9	K/BB		HR/9		GB%	LD%	FB%
Buchholz	62.7		3.75	0.86		6.8	2.3	2.9		0.7		55%	13%	31%
Kelly	60.7		3.83	0.97		4.5	2.8	1.6		0.3		53%	12%	33%
Pimentel	49.3		4.38	1.66		4.2	4.0	1.0		0.4		46%	16%	35%
Bowden	58.7		4.49	1.30		4.8	4.3	1.1		0.5		37%	16%	45%
Tazawa	68.3		4.91	1.21		6.5	3.6	1.8		1.2		44%	13%	41%
Price	55.0		5.00	1.58		5.4	5.4	1.0		0.7		41%	13%	42%
Portice	47.0		5.02	1.45		7.1	3.6	1.9		1.3		44%	28%	24%
Doubront	51.7		5.37	1.59		6.8	5.8	1.2		1.1		49%	12%	38%
Weiland	50.0		5.63	1.82		5.2	6.1	0.9		0.9		52%	21%	27%
Huntzinger	44.7		6.14	1.57		4.2	5.6	0.8		1.2		47%	14%	38%

You have to be flat out ridiculous to pitch in the low levels of the minors and have a very good translation, and ridiculous is probably the best way to describe Casey Kelly’s 48.1 IP in Class-A and first 11.2 IP in Class-A Advanced.

Michael Bowden’s name has been brought up a lot this year around the Red Sox related interweb, mostly while talking about our amazing pitching depth and his 2.47 ERA for Triple-A Pawtucket. However, his pedestrian strikeout rate, coupled with his almost shocking walk rate and extreme fly ball tendency heeds caution. Hopefully he is “working on specific things” that have led to these developments and his numbers will correct over the course of the season.