The best we can do is to take the information available to us and trust that our methods will give us an outline of the future. We can then be excited by what fits within that frame, and ask questions about the outliers. The rest simply must play out on the field.

There’s a lot of variability between levels, and though some prospects may seem more obvious than others, who’s really to say how they might turn out?.

So what does this really tell us?. Aside from the reinforcement of those more obvious intuitions, predicting and projecting player performance is inherently difficult.

The average guys tend to continue to be average, whereas the exceptional base stealers are increasingly less predictable across levels, though we know they’re very likely to steal less.

As you’ll notice via the expanding confidence interval, there is greater variability at the extremes due to fewer data points (players who steal ~30+ bases per 162 games). Because of this, it’s even more difficult to predict the translation of elite base stealers.

While that kind of translation may not seem significant, we should also acknowledge that this simple linear model doesn’t tell a complete story. The real translation is likely much more complex, and our simple model can still give us some insight into that complexity.

To use a simple comparison, that would mean a player who steals 50 bases per 162 games in AAA should only be expected to steal about 39 bags in MLB. For reference, that's the difference between being the ~3rd best base stealer in MLB and the ~8th best in 2024.

Using a simple linear model, we can see that there is some relationship between MiLB stolen base rates and MLB stolen base rates (as should be the case). But we also come to find that for each base stolen in AAA, only about 78% of that yielded rate carries over to MLB.

My first thought was to compare MiLB stolen bases to MLB stolen bases for players with at least 100 PAs at each level, so I did just that (stolen bases were normalized on a 162-game basis).

What I really wanted to know beyond those intuitions, however, was just how much harder it really was to steal bases across levels. Are elite MiLB base stealers also elite in MLB, or are they just especially benefiting from certain conditions of their competition?.

While it’s difficult to say for certain what the cause is, it feels like a safe bet to assume that it’s probably just easier to steal bases at lower levels of professional baseball.

This is for a variety of intuitive reasons:. 1. MiLB pitchers don’t control the run game as well as MLB pitchers. 2. MiLB catchers aren’t as defensively polished as MLB catchers. 3. MiLB players are younger and less risk averse than MLB players.

That being said, MiLB players definitely steal more bases than MLB players. Not only that, but as players progress through the ranks of professional baseball, they steal less and less bases on a 162 game basis.

First and foremost, and much to the delight of older baseball fans, the run game is becoming an increasingly more common strategy to winning baseball games – though the explosion we saw in years prior has been reeled back a bit more recently.

In my observations, it seems that MiLB players steal way more bases than MLB players. Even with the run game becoming a prominent piece of modern Major League Baseball, what’s really going on between levels?

Spent some time w/ @deanturpin37 compiling data to revamp and improve some of @kzoobaseball's pitch-grading models. Stuff+, Command+, and Pitching+ are all cleaned up - now we just need a bigger (and better) sample to keep building this fall. It's not perfect, but it's progress.

I often say that every job I've gotten has been because of Twitter threads and blogs. Speaking of which, I have a new blog out -- check it out and see what some of my worst ideas and Twitter threads have since turned into.

Quick update: I’ve accepted a role with the @Twins as an Analyst in Pro Personnel. Thank you to everyone @DrivelineBB for letting me spend the most formative years of my life at the very place that inspired me to pursue this career in the first place. Can’t wait to get to work!

RT @zachsimm0ns: Blessed to announce that I have accepted a position as a Hitting Intern @DrivelineBB — Tampa! Thank you to @coachott7 for….

RT @GetSiggyWithIt_: In our latest @DrivelineBB blog, @BentleY__ThomaS and I explore research looking to find some answers about pitcher he….