Preview: Minor League Breakdowns 2012

Based on last year's series of Minor League Breakdowns I'm going to do a similar series this year again. The intention is to monitor the development of our minor league players throughout the year. Each post will firstly take a look at the stats before pointing out some risers as well as fallers. A deeper look at one specific prospect will round out each post.

1) Based on your requests, I'm this year looking at all minor league players (who have had at least one PA/IP).

2) In one post (approximately every two weeks) I alternative focus on either MiL-pitchers or -hitters.

3) I'm looking at the following stats from FanGraphs. There will be a summary and an explanation of the stats used at the end of every post. In order to know what they mean, please follow the links for every stat. Thank our very own Steve Slowinsky for those explanations.

Hitting Stats:

• Batting Average (AVG)
• On-Base Percentage (OBP)
• On-Base plus Slugging (OPS)
  
• Isolated Power (ISO)
• BB% and K%
  
• Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA)
  
• Weighted Runs Above Average (wRAA)
  
• Batted-Balls in Play (BABIP)
  
• a Speed/Baserunning indicator (Spd)
• Out of the underlying data I also calculate the wRAA per PA.

Pitching Stats:

• BB% and K%
• K/BB-ratio (K/BB)
  
• HR/9
• Batting Average Against (AVG)
  
• Walks plus Hits per IP (WHIP)
• Earned Run Average (ERA)
• Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP)
• Batted-Balls in Play (BABIP)
• Left-on-Base-Percentage (LOB%)
  

Example table (Hitters, Durham Bulls 2011)

(click on the image for a better view)