Plate Discipline in the Red Sox Minor League System

Without access to statistics such as the number of pitches seen per at bat, I will attempt to identify the Red Sox most disciplined hitter in the minors. The key measures I will use are BB%, BB/K ratio, Contact %. Players must have a minimum of 80 plate appearances to qualify.

BB%

The highest bb% in the organization belong to Dusty Brown of Pawtucket (14.77%), Jon Van Every of Pawtucket (19.51%), Ryan Khoury of Portland (16.07%), Mark Wagner of Portland (15.03%) and Jared Stanley of Salem (15.04%).

BB-K Ratio

The highest walk to strikeout ratios of any Sox Hitters belong to Freddy Guzman (1.00), Zach Borowiak (1.20), Mark Wagner (1.10), Zach Gentile (1.07), and Jonathan Hee (.94).

Contact %

There are quite a few prospects with percentages of over 80%, but the notables are Freddy Guzman (90%), Zach Borowiak (89%), Mark Wagner (83%) Jonathan Hee (89%) and Zach Gentile (87%)

Results

The only prospect to rate highly in each of the categories was Portland Sea Dog's catcher Mark Wagner. In 34 games this season Wagner has 23 walks to 21 strikeouts. He is also posing an outstanding . 438 OBP and .962 OPS. His secondary average is .389 thus far.

Wagner, a 9th round pick in 2005 out of Cal-Irvine, is repeating this year in Portland after a dismal season last year in which he walked just 38 times compared to 78 strikeouts and reached base at a .304 clip. However, he had a 1.19 bb-k ratio in '07 with Lancaster and a .81 ratio in '06 in Greenville so this year is not a complete fluke.