First of all, MLBers on rehab stints play their games wherever it’s convenient. I doubt the relative talent level in that league makes any difference. For example, for the Mariners, they have a single-A affiliate in Everett (about 45 north of Seattle) and a AAA affiliate in Tacoma (about an hour south.) When a major leaguer does a rehab stint, they’ll go to whichever city’s team is home at that time, and may then go to the other city when the original team travels. They never rehab in AA, because that team in Tennessee.
For the larger claim, though, that AAA tends to be career minor leaguers, whereas AA has the actual young, up-coming major leaguers, I’d be interested to see a cite.
An “abundance”? Not generally. If you look at the median ages at each tier of the minor leagues, there’s a pretty smooth progression up through AA. AAA is where there’s a break of more than two years, reflecting a pattern of guys “holding,” or being held, there.
In AA, apart from prospects (of varying degrees of wishful-thinking), there are some organizational soldiers, guys who may be held onto a few years as useful parts in the training machine.
Many systems indeed use AAA as a kind of extended bench, where they keep the players who can be called on, in a pinch, to play with the big club for a spell. The majority of AAA rosters are loaded with players with ML experience. But prospects may get stepped through as well. Different organizations use the tiers of their systems a little differently, up and down the ladder.
“Washed up” players, who aren’t seen either as, or helpful to, prospects, generally have to go and get other jobs.
Yes, generally. Look at the average ages of players in the 2015 Eastern, Southern and Texas Leagues (Double A, all).
Eastern League: For batters, 24.4. For pitchers, 24.6.
Southern: For batters, 24.1. For pitchers, 24.3.
Texas: For batters, 24.2. For pitchers, 24.3.
Top prospects and most prospects in general are usually in the majors by age 24-25; after 25 the odds of putting together a long, viable big league career are greatly diminished.
So some group of players is driving the average age up … and it is the guys who cannot cut it at Triple-A.
There are swarms of players who spend much of their career at Double-A, get brief stints at Triple-A but cannot handle it, then get bumped back down to Double A.
Also, to say Triple-A competition is worse than Double-A competition just because Double-A has the “top prospects” is a great leap in logic and flawed thinking. Relatively few top prospects become successful major leaguers (look at Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospect Lists from years past and tell me what percentage became something worthwhile), while Triple-A is populated with actual major leaguers and other top prospects. You don’t see Double A players jumping to the majors with any great frequency because they haven’t gone through the hardest level of minor league baseball, Triple A.
But here you’re really just saying: most minor league players don’t advance and succeed, every year. Which, duh. That’s a mathematical necessity, even before you get to any analysis of how skills develop. There’s a huge bottom of the pyramid constantly pressing upward–a new layer added every spring. This effect is visible at every tier, every year–nothing particular about AA here.
My point on that is, the effect, as measured by player ages, is an approximately smooth graph… until you get to AAA, where you meet a different kind of pressure in the opposite direction (ML roster and salary rules, basically).
“Actual major leaguers” playing in AAA (as I described) is almost the opposite of “top prospects,” not part of the same group.
The ML-experienced players, and the ones who can play with them, indeed probably can beat the AA team much of the time. But there are other ways to be “better,” from an organization’s viewpoint, or from a fan’s.
I disagree with Richey84’s statement that AA is better than AAA, at least in terms of the level of competition. It simply is not, though Rickey84’s statement that many true top prospects skip AAA (or don’t spend much time there) actually is true, and it is unquestionably true that AAA is more of a repository for veterans you keep around in case you need them. There aren’t THAT many of them, but last year the Toledo Mud Hens, Alaniz’s new employer and an AAA team, featured such luminaries as Mike Hessman, who I believe is 37. Nobody would bother to keep Hessman at AA. Toledo’s most used pitched was Thad Weber, who is 31. Their International League opponents all have similar guys. Buffalo had Matt Hague, who is 30 and I think won the IL batting title; Brad Glenn, who is 28 and no serious candidate for the big leagues at all; and Randy Wolf, who I believe is collecting Social Security and won over 100 major league ballgames. Like, why would the Bisons (Blue Jays) bother to employ Randy Wolf? Well, just to help Buffalo win, really, and maybe serve as an unofficial coach to the younger pitchers.
However, those guys are part of what make AAA extremely tough. Even to a very experienced eye, AAA baseball is difficult to distinguish from major league baseball in the quality of play, and guys like Randy Wolf and Mike Hessman are the reasons that’s true; they are not prospects but have played in the big leagues and either carve up inexperienced players with clever pitching (Wolf, despite being terrible in the majors for years, went 9-2 for Buffalo with a low ERA) and I once saw Hessman, in Toledo actually, hit a baseball so far I think it landed in Grand Rapids. Beating up 23-year-olds is one thing, but fooling a guy who’s been around awhile is quite something else. Bear in mind that AAA is where a team parks most of the 15 players that are on the 40-man roster but not in the majors - in other words, a dozen or more guys they trust to be good enough to play major league baseball on short notice if someone in the bigs gets hurt or sucks really badly.
So the idea of bringing up Alaniz to Toledo is to make him face competition that’s very close to MLB quality (in a park that is, conveniently, rather forgiving to pitchers) to see if he’s really got something or not.
Thanks for your post. If I may attempt to restate your opinion, and you can tell me if I’m getting it or not: there’s no point in leaving Alaniz in AA. Success there doesn’t demonstrate anything. However, by putting him in AAA the outcome is actionable. If he is develops into a successful player, however unlikely, you’ll know you actually have something of value. If he doesn’t, great, you can cut him and make room for the next prospect.
Um. Success at any level of organized baseball demonstrates something. You just have to look at it in the right context, part of which is knowing that the predictive value of the numbers is tied into other factors, above all player age.
I asked a similar question about Ryan Lollis early last year. The guy was 28 years old and still at Single A and it seemed like he was going nowhere. I was curious as to why the Giants kept him in their system.
Then out of the blue, something clicked with him, he tore up the minors and rose through the ranks to make the big leagues last season.
He had played at Triple A only one before and hit .237 between Single A and Double A in 2014. The year before that, he hit .267. Then last year, he hit .330 at Triple A, .471 at Double A and .345 at A ball. Crazy.