Of Birds And Buffalo

The Toronto Blue Jays announced earlier this week that they’ve finally and formally reached a two year agreement with the Buffalo Bisons of the International League to be their minor league Triple-A affiliate. This leaves the New York Mets, the former major league affiliate of Buffalo, to sign with the Jays’ previous Triple-A affiliate, the Las Vegas 51s. Why am I writing about this? Because I can write about whatever the fuck I want and the move is interesting and welcome for a number of reasons.

Primarily, Buffalo represents a much better choice geographically in relation to Toronto, since players promoted to Toronto (or demoted to Buffalo) now have a much more convenient trip up than what was previously available from Las Vegas. Since often these call-ups happen overnight, the 90 minute drive up from represents a much better option than the five hour plus red eye flight up from Nevada…making life much easier on both the players and likely also on the assistant to the traveling secretary.

Furthermore, it makes attending Toronto Blue Jay Triple-A affiliate games much more possible now for Torontonians (although any Las Vegans that are fans of the Toronto Blue Jays are shit out of luck), and obviously the Bisons are hoping for an attendance boost due to the geographical closeness of the major league team that apparently never materialized from New York. Although the Mets have always kind of been the red-headed stepchildren to the Yankees. Considering the amount of cross-border promotions that already happen between Toronto and the Buffalo Bills, it’s a natural fit. I know that I’m already personally psyched to go attend games in Buffalo, for the thrill of watching up and coming Blue Jays prospects and becoming an even bigger indie baseball snob than I am already. “Yeah…I watched Travis d’Arnaud in Buffalo way back in 2013 – his footwork has always been this good, and anyone that watched him in person would have known that his bat speed could always project out to 25-homer power. Pft, I thought you were a real fan.” I cannot be more excited.

(But d’Arnaud – even though he hasn’t even arrived at the majors yet – is already old news, AJ Jimenez is the next guy you should get irrationally excited about as the future catcher of Toronto.)

That also speaks to the benefits that the Bisons will receive as well, becoming a much more competitive team by fielding Toronto’s farm system (that Baseball Prospectus ranks as second overall for 2012) versus the Mets’ (17th). It also benefits Toronto’s ability to properly evaluate it’s prospects, since Las Vegas plays in the notorious hitter’s environment that is the Pacific Coast League. The PCL is mainly located out west, where the drier, more arid climate and high altitude causes the ball to travel through the air easier, and the harsh sun hardens the infield, speeding up ground balls. This serves to artificially inflate performances of Triple-A hitters, making it harder to evaluate their true talent levels. Most notably, two rookies that are currently struggling in their first taste of the majors both hit excellently in the PCL earlier in the year before their call-ups (Anthony Gose’s line of .286/.366/.419 in Vegas this year compared to his current line of .217/.299/.317 in Toronto and Adeiny Hechavarria going from .312/.363/.424 to .250/.286/.370) despite being noted as having questionable hit tools starting the year.

It’s also caused the Blue Jays to hesitate sending top pitching prospects to get ass raped in the PCL, considering that just this year alone they’ve promoted players like Chad Jenkins, Aaron Loup, Sam Dyson, Evan Crawford, Drew Hutchison, and Joel Carreno directly from Double-A New Hampshire instead of letting them go through the PCL first. Moving forward, this should allow the team to promote it’s prospects more conventionally through the minor league levels, since in comparison, the International League that Buffalo belongs to is more normalized in relation to the Pacific Coast League. And considering the (lack of) success most of those guys have had, despite the hype, this can only be a good thing.

Here’s the weighted park effects for 2011, from Baseball Think Factory…

                   R       H	  2B	  HR	  BB	   K
Buffalo		0.95    0.96    0.93    1.04    1.05    1.01
Las Vegas	1.04    1.01    1.09    1.02    1.01    0.97

Notably you can see that Las Vegas inflates most offensive counting stats in comparison to Buffalo which actually skews the other way. Curiously, the park effect for home runs specifically are higher in Buffalo than in Vegas, which perhaps could be attributed to the specific park dimensions of Coca-Cola Field in Buffalo (a pretty conventional 404 foot center field wall, similar to 400 feet in Toronto) and Cashman Field in Las Vegas (an oddly ridiculous 433 feet). Or maybe not, what the fuck do I know?

All that’s left to wonder about is if there’s going to be a new and awesome logo for the Bisons, which have traditionally been pretty crappy. Similarly, in the mascot department…as insane Cosmo was for the 51s, Buffalo’s got its own thing going on. Not only does their regular mascot Buster look manic depressive, they also recently introduced Belle “The Ballpark Diva” and honestly the less said about that the better. Following a marketing campaign that featured a love interest between the two, they were actually married together after a game against the New York Yankees’ Triple-A affiliate out of Scranton.

Things get weird in minor league ball.

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