If you've ever tried looking up minor league stats, I'm sure you're familiar with the difficulty of finding anything outside of basic numbers. Fangraphs supplies some of advanced numbers (wRC, wRAA, wRC+), but most of those are fairly straight forward, without any adjustment for environment.
Since I was curious about what some of the adjusted numbers would look like, as well as some of the numbers that aren't provided, I decided to run through the numbers on my own to see what I could come up with. (Of course, this also stems from the fact that it's the offseason, and I'm bored.)
The ultimate goal for this exercise was to come up with some reasonable facsimile for minor league WAR. But, since a single, multi-thousand-word post seemed too cumbersome, I figured I'd break down each of the pieces into multiple posts.
As I mentioned before, FanGraphs provides basic advanced stats for minor league players, but they're at the player level only, and aren't adjusted. So, naturally, the first step was to adjust the numbers for park environment.
CALCULATION
I started with the FanGraphs Park Factor formula. A full explanation can be found here, but the basic formula is this:
Raw PF = H*T/((T-1)*R+H), where H is runs scored at home, R is runs scored on the road, and T is the number of teams in the league.
Then, to make the number applicable to composite stats, you take the raw PF, add 1, and divide by 2 to get what FanGraphs' Brandon Heipp terms an Intermediate Park Factor.
Most statistical sites use a multi-year park factor, but I decided against that for one simple reason: The Minor League website is a complete mess. It's fine that the standings page is simple, but trying to pull numbers from the game-by-game results is a nightmare. There are games inexplicably listed multiple times, and you have to go through each team's results just to figure out what's been duplicated. So eventually I may go back and recalculate park factors for multiple seasons, but for now, one season will work.
I ran through the International League (AAA) and the Eastern League (AA). Below are the park factors for each league.
INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE
| TEAM | PF |
| Charlotte Knights |
111.8 |
| Lehigh Valley IronPigs |
107.7 |
| Gwinnett Stripers |
107.5 |
| Columbus Clippers |
101.9 |
| Buffalo Bisons |
101.8 |
| Rochester Red Wings |
100.2 |
| Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders |
100.0 |
| Pawtucket Red Sox |
99.8 |
| Syracuse Chiefs |
98.9 |
| Durham Bulls |
96.3 |
| Toledo Mud Hens |
94.9 |
| Louisville Bats |
92.8 |
| Indianapolis Indians |
91.4 |
| Norfolk Tides |
91.1 |
EASTERN LEAGUE
|
Tune in sometime this week, when I'll post team advanced stats, which FanGraphs also doesn't provide.
