Today, the Buffalo Bisons officially announced that the Mets named Wally Backman to be the team’s manager in 2012 and that the Mets had resigned 2011 Bisons MVP Valentino Pascucci to a minor league contract for 2012 with an invitation to Major League Spring Training.

Who would you rather have, the 52-year old Backman whose B-Mets went 65-76 in 2011 or the 33 year old Pascuci who hit .264/.375/.476 in 130 games for the Bisons a year ago?

Also, the Mets signed 31-year old OF/C Vinny Rottino to a minor league deal.  In six seasons, Rottino is a career .293/.360/.433 hitter in AA.  He’s spent the last two seasons with Florida.

According to Adam Rubin, the Bisons will introduce Wally Backman as the team’s next manager Thursday.

The Mets have moved Backman through the system fairly aggressively.  After managing in short-season Brooklyn in 2010, they promoted him to double-A Binghamton in 2011 and now apparently, to triple-A Buffalo in 2012.

The good people of Buffalo will be guaranteed and entertaining, and quotable summer.

I’ve thought for years, or at least as long as I’ve been thinking about minor league baseball, that it would stand to reason that the teams with the best winning percentage at the Major League level would be most likely to have AAA affiliates with strong winning percentages in the same season. It’s time to test that assumption

It seems obvious, right? If a Major League team can keep their best players healthy, and productive, that team will win more games and won’t rely on AAA caliber players, who can then help the AAA team win. Sandy Alderson alluded to this effect, the coupling of MLB and AAA winning, when asked explicitly how to make a winner in Buffalo, at the beginning of September, saying, “First of all, things haven’t been that competitive in New York City either. Part of the problem, in both cases, in New York City and in Buffalo, has been the lack of productivity in the player development system….”

There was also this Mike Harrington article demanding that the Mets put a winner in Buffalo next season or the Bisons sever their relationship with the Mets.

Does the data support the connection between winning the big leagues and AAA? Weakly, I’d say.

I plotted each MLB team’s winning percentage through the 2008 season on the x-axis and each team’s AAA affiliate’s winning percentage on the y-axis. It’s quick and dirty. I found a positive, but very weak relationship between the records of MLB teams and their top minor league affiliate.  For example, of our 120 pairs of records, 33 times, both the MLB team and minor league team both had records above .500 and 35 times they both had records below .500, accounting for 68 of our 120 cases.  So 56% of the time, in the last four seasons, when a AAA team has matched its  MLB team above or below .500.

Surprised?  I don’t think so.

Look no further than this year’s AAA Championship game.  The Indians’ affiliate in Columbus from the International League between the Royals’ Omaha affiliate from the Pacific Coast League.  As I write this, Cleveland sits at exactly .500, while the Royals, despite a heralded farm system, and young talent in the big leagues, are 17 games under .500.

Obviously, if a player is thriving in AAA, he will eventually get the call to the big leagues, sucking wins away from his AAA team and transferring them to the big leagues.

We might expect that the distribution of talent in the big leagues is less equal than that in AAA.  There is some evidence for this.  The standard deviation of MLB winning percentages is .070, while for AAA it is .059.

The basic point is that for the vast majority of Major League teams, lets say 25 out of 30, the goal all off-season long is to build a winner at the Major League level, and build a AAA team that can support that mission.  Winning at AAA is at best a tertiary mission, but sometimes a happy by-product of winning in the big leagues.

AAA: @ Lehigh Valley 2, Buffalo Bisons 1

SS Jordany Valdespin’s throwing error with two outs in the bottom of the ninth allowed Lehigh Valley to score the game-winning run. Valdespin (.295/.320/.442 – 23 G at AAA), who was 1-4, did extend his hitting streak to 11 games.

AA: Reading Phillies 4, @ Binghamton Mets 2

Oh damn. He’s doing it again. After two hitless games that ended his hitting streak at 19 games, RF Juan Lagares got going again, going 2-5 with two doubles.

For the second straight game 2B Reese Havens (.287/.373/.455) doubled and walked.

Tobi Stoner (4-6, 5.76): 4.2 IP, 7 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 3 BB, 3 K. A fitting conclusion to a lost season for a guy who made big league appearances in both 2009 and 2010.

Syracuse Chiefs 6, @ Buffalo Bisons 2

We’ll start with something nice:

SS Jordany Valdespin was 2-for-3 with a walk and a strikeout to extend his hitting streak to 10 straight games.  He’s hitting .400/.419/.600 with five doubles and a homer, two walks and eight strikeouts.  The 23-year old is up to .297/.323/.451 in 22 games in AAA after .297/.341/.483 in 107 games in AA.

And something painful:

Dylan Owen left the game after one batter in the first inning with a what is being called a contusion after being struck by a line drive.

Syracuse Chiefs 3, @ Buffalo Bisons 1

3B Josh Satin on his final night in 2011 as a Bison: 2-4, 2B.

He was told after the game that had earned a look in the big leagues when the Mets purchased his contract and added him to the Major League roster.  In 38 games with Buffalo, the 26-year old Satin hit .317/.381/.393 with 14 walks and 33 strikeouts after bopping .325/.423/.538 in 94 games in AA.  Satin played 10 games at first for the Bisons, seven at second base, and 22 at third.

After the game, regarding his call to the big leagues, Satin told Bisons’ play-by-play man Ben Wagner, “It’s incredible.  All the years I’ve played baseball, the goal was always to get to the big leagues.  It’s been 20 years since I started playing baseball.  You always dream, but you never know if it’s going to happen.  I honestly don’t know what to think.  I’m just happy, proud and ready to go.”

Satin, who’s one month younger, is sort of Justin Turner-lite. Turner, don’t forget, hit .307/.368/.440 in parts of three seasons in AAA.  Turner is the better defender who can play short in a pinch, while Satin is limited to first, second and third. But hey, 1.75 Turners is better than one, right?

Mark Cohoon (4-10, 6.01): 6.1 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 1 ER, 3 BB, 3 K.  In 88.1 innings in AAA, he gave up 110 hits, walked 38 and fanned 49.

@ Buffalo Bisons 3, Rochester Red Wings 1

1B Valentino Pascucci (.261/.335/.518) was 1-3 with a homer and a walk.  The 32-year old Pascucci is tied for the IL lead with 91 RBI.  I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence. I really believe RBI are a nearly worthless gauge of a player’s value.

Pat Misch (8-9, 4.14) pitched: 7 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 4 BB, 5 K. It’s a crude metric, but this was the second quality start (6 IP or more, yielding three runs or fewer) for Misch in five tries in August.

The Potential Callups:
SS Jordany Valdespin: 1-4, SB (3). The 23-year old Valdespin (.291/.313/.418) has hit safely in seven straight games going 12-for-28 (.429) with four doubles, a walk and six strikeouts.
DH Zach Lutz: 1-4
3B Josh Satin: 0-2, BB, E (7). Satin (.319/.382/.391 – 36 games) has played more third than anything else at Buffalo. The error was his fourth in his last nine games at the position.