Doc,

You can't argue that Mike Wilson has a good eye over his minor league career.  He doesn't.  He does walk well - his career OBP his 98 points higher than his average.  That's good. But his Ks are outrageously bad, so bad that they make his eye .4 for his career. 

Now, Branyan is worse than that.  But Branyan is a lefty, which made him valuable as a platoon player and let him prove his worth.  And it still took years.

You're pulling 2010's data and declaring Wilson an easy sell.  By his 2010 numbers alone, I would probably agree with you.  They're improved across the board, to a level that looks useful.

Except there are 2300 other at-bats to look at, including those from just last year, that say he's a harder sell than you're making him out to be.

He had the same sample size last year as this year and managed a .664 OPS with a .35 eye and a K every 3.3 ABs - what makes this year more "predictive" than last? Injuries?  Well Mike gets injured.  Repeating the level?  Well Mike sucks at every level when he first gets there - he's a slow learner.

FWIW, I do think Mike may be turning a corner into being a useful major-league bat.  But if the Mariners thought so he wouldn't be batting 8th and 9th in the order in AAA.

He has 8 years of reports piled up on him within the org that say, "lazy and/or slow learner, injury-prone, can't recognize a breaking pitch if you draw him a diagram, but gets on base and can hit it far."

Maybe these 300 ABs are getting them to switch that to, "Hits it far, gets on base, injury prone, improved pitch recognition, has started to put in the work."

But trying to pluck Jack Custs and Russell Branyans out of the minors is not easy, and they usually tell you early that they're special. Cust was running even batting eyes as an 18 year old, and clubbing for huge power in AAA at 22.  It wasn't his fault nobody believed in him.  Branyan hit 40 HRs in A ball at 20.  Reynolds is the same age as Wilson and has been in the bigs for 4 years.  

Wilson has been back and forth to AA since 2006, with various results.  He blew by the 1500 AB mark, and then the 2000 one, with no indication he would be more than he's always been: a powerful, sloppy hitter without the ability to consistently make contact.  What he's doing now has been done by dozens and dozens of career-minor-leaguers - you play enough baseball, you get the hang of it, at least against your peers when no one's grading you.  The bigs are different.

Pure Ks-per-AB doesn't tell you everything about a player, but the number of players with strikeouts that large in the minors who become every-day major leaguers is very small.  If you strike out every 3 ABs against RHP in the minors where there are no scouting reports and pitchers can't hit their spots, and you've been doing it every year for EIGHT years with no improvement until this one, which number looks like an outlier?  The constant, gaping holes or the new apparent improvement?

I would like to see Wilson get a chance.  But I'm telling you he has an uphill slog in this organization.  Saunders is 3 years younger with better results even with his own limitations.  Halman is 4 years younger and at the same level, with similar limitations (though with a worse eye).  Peguero is on his tail, as is Raben.

Has Mike Wilson had a breakthrough?  He might have indeed.  But he has to overcome his own history and its perception, as well as several similar players and a dearth of roster spots.

I wish him the best in doing it - we could use another Jack Cust/Russell Branyan.  But I wouldn't be too quick to wave off the large red flags on his resume, of which K:AB is one.  The Mariners aren't.

~G

First, I wholeheartedly agree that my vague recollection of a study I read five years ago is not convincing.  The context of said study is important, which was trying to find out why some players didn't convert to MLB well even though they had the MiLB OPS to indicate they could hit.  I have no memory of walk rate being a part of the discussion. 

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Regarding the why contact rate could be an important marker independent of eye; I believe that it is a proxy for ability to square up the ball.  So if someone has a high strikeout rate, but also walks a lot and has a high line drive rate (or batting average as a potential proxy), then I want to go watch a week of his at-bats to see if he is just a hitter that patiently awaits his pitch and then nails it.  If someone has a high strikeout rate, but doesn't walk a lot and doesn't hit a lot of line drives (or has a low batting average), I'm concerned that I have a free swinger that can mash a centered Doug Fister fastball or a slider that doesn't break, but does have the pitch recognition ability to wait out his pitch and is in deep trouble squaring up pitcher's pitches.  

I also think that the pitch stalker archetype is going to struggle to transition to the MLB.  What qualifies as a good pitch to hit in the texas league doesn't come your way so often in the big leagues, whereas a see the ball hit the ball player may be putting good wood on tough pitches in the Texas league because he doesn't have the good sense to lay off it.  This helps the scout, because it can give them confidence that the hitter can do something valuable with a pitcher's pitch.  The problem, of course, is this hitter hasn't demonstrated the ability to distinguish a pitcher's pitch from a hitter's pitch (not many hitters can consistently punish pitcher's pitches in the majors. Just ask Jose Lopez.).

There are a lot of days when an MLB hitter doesn't get a single meatball pitch in a hitters count. Acquitting yourself with the bat on such a day is extremely hard, so it is important to have other things to offer. This also helps explain why TTO players get so little opportunity to make it.  They generally have the grace of a drunk rhino in the field and generally will wait out a mistake at the plate even if one is not in the offering.  

As an aside, I think Jack Cust passed these tests since he was Baseball America's 31st and 38th best prospect in pre-season 2000 and 2001, walked frequently, and generally ran fair to high BAs despite the K rate (~0.374 BABIP in the minors).