Buster Posey to AAA Fresno?

Here’s an interesting article from Henry Schulman of the SF Chronicle suggesting that the Giants might promote Buster Posey from A+ San Jose directly to AAA Fresno, skipping over AA Connecticut entirely.  According to the article, Posey still needs to work on his defense, and the Giants’ catcher at AA Jackson Williams, is already ready for the majors defensively but lacks the offense to be promoted to AAA Fresno, if Posey is promoted to AA.

Actually, the Giants and Williams would be better served if Williams were sent to A+ San Jose regardless of where the Giants send Posey.  Williams can’t hit AA pitching at this point.  He’s hitting .211 with a .599 OPS.  That’s poor even at Connecticut, which is an extremely difficult place to hit.

Last year, Williams hit only .205 with a .583 OPS in 312 AB’s roughly split between Class A Augusta and Class A+ San Jose.  He actually hit much better at the higher level San Jose (,231) than at Augusta (.179) .  More on this later.

Williams would be better served going back to San Jose and proving that he can hit California League pitching.  It would do a lot for his confidence, and he would probably play better at AA later on.

The real reason, I suspect, that the Giants are thinking about having Posey skip AA Connecticut is the schizophrenic nature of the Giants’ farm system.  Class A Augusta in the South Atlantic League and AA Connecticut in the Eastern League are extraordinarily difficult places to hit, while Class A+ San Jose in the California League and AAA Fresno in the Pacific Coast League are great places to hit.  Actually, San Jose and Fresno are not particularly good places to hit by California League and PCL standards.  However, both leagues are extreme hitters’ leagues.  If you want to see what I’m talking about, go to minorleaguebaseball.com and compare the top ten leaders in OPS in the International League and the PCL each year going back to 2000.

Another good example is young outfielder Thomas Neal.  Last year at Augusta, he hit .276 with an .803 OPS.  This year so far at San Jose, he’s hitting .342 with a 1.038 OPS.  He’s definitely improving as a hitter, but no where near as much as the numbers suggest.  His .803 OPS in 2008 led all Green Jackets’ hitters who had at least 100 AB’s.

The upshot is that the Giants sometimes skip position players right over AA Connecticut, sending them directly from San Jose to Fresno.  The Giants did this with Matt Downs last year, and Downs in now playing for the Giants (at least for the time being).

I suspect the thinking is that hitters will have more success at Fresno and won’t have their confidence broken playing at AA Connecticut.  Needless to say, pitchers almost all go through Connecticut, because the favorable conditions there counteract the big jump in talent between A+ and AA ball.  For example, in seven games apiece, Tim Alderson and Madison Bumgarner have ERA’s at Connecticut of 1.82 and 2.13, respectively.

The upshot is that it makes sense to promote a position player who has a big year at AA Connecticut directly to the majors, more or less the way the Giants did with John Bowker last year.  Bowker wasn’t quite ready for prime time, but he didn’t embarrass himself either, and he’s currently killing the ball at AAA Fresno with a 1.033 OPS.

It would be damn foolish, however, for the Giants to promote either Alderson or Bumgarner to the major league club directly from AA Connecticut, without a minimum of three or four starts at AAA Fresno to prove they really are ready to get major league hitters out.