Baserunning in a Minor Key

This week on Baseball Prospectus my focus on baserunning turns to the minor leagues as I present the leaders and trailers at the four top levels of the minors (AAA, AA, high and low A) and then an aggregate total to account for players who moved between leagues.

Braves fans may be interested to learn that Gorkys Hernandez fared particularly well and finished second in the minors by contributing +10.2 runs overall on the bases. He was excellent at going from first to third and second to home on hits (easily tops at the level in EqHAR), and stole bases at an 83% rate, good for +2.5 runs. On the other hand former Moneyball pinup Jeremy Brown was the clear winner of the "Triple-A Plodder Award", giving up 8.8 runs, 7.6 of those while attempting, or not attempting, to advance on hits (EqHAR). His total in that category was almost 2.5runs worse than anyone else at his level as he managed to get thrown out four of the six times he tried to advance on hits in 30 opportunities.

I thought it might also be interesting to take a look at how a few of the other top prospects going into 2007 fared. So below we have a table of those players who made it into the top 20 of Baseball America's Top Prospects list published at the end of February.

Name              Team   Lg     Opps  EqGAR  Opps  EqSBR  Opps  EqAAR  Opps  EqHAR  Opps  EqOAR EqRuns
Andrew McCutchen  ALT    EAS      33    1.0    18    1.8    19   -0.1    38    1.3   260   -0.4    3.6
Andrew McCutchen  IND    INT       3    0.2     9    0.5     3   -0.1     2    0.4    40    0.1    1.0
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Andy LaRoche      LAN    MJ        4    0.0     3    0.1     0    0.0     9    0.7    59   -0.1    0.8
Andy LaRoche      LVG    PCL      11    0.5     7   -1.1    16    0.8    22    0.9   153   -0.5    0.8
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Brandon Wood      ANA    MJ        2    0.1     0    0.0     1    0.0     0    0.0    10    0.0    0.0
Brandon Wood      SLC    PCL      16    0.2    13    1.1    19    0.5    35    1.9   236    0.1    3.7
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Cameron Maybin    ESW    EAS       1    0.0     0    0.0     3    0.0     2    0.1    18   -0.1    0.0
Cameron Maybin    LAK    FSL      18    1.2    32    0.0    18    0.6    27    0.4   192    0.1    2.4
Cameron Maybin    TGR    GCL       0    0.0     0    0.0     0    0.0     0    0.0     6   -0.1   -0.1
Cameron Maybin    DET    MJ        2   -0.2     5    0.8     0    0.0     3    0.4    26   -0.1    1.0
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Evan Longoria     DUB    INT       3   -0.2     0    0.0     5   -0.7    11    1.2    61   -0.3    0.0
Evan Longoria     MON    SOU      21   -0.2     4    0.6    23    1.2    44    0.8   257   -1.2    1.2
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Jay Bruce         SAR    FSL       7    0.4    10    0.3    15   -0.3    25   -0.1   145   -0.4    0.0
Jay Bruce         LOU    INT      10   -0.2     4   -0.6    10    0.4    14   -1.2   114    0.1   -1.5
Jay Bruce         CNG    SOU       2   -0.1     4   -0.2     5    0.2     6    0.4    43   -0.3   -0.1
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Reid Brignac      MON    SOU      16   -1.1    21    0.2    20    1.3    51    1.8   277   -0.4    1.9

While on the subject of baserunning I wanted to point out that I posted a comparison of the baserunning numbers published in the latest Bill James Handbook to my system both at the individual and team level on BP Unfiltered.