Why the Giants Need to Fix Up Their Minor League Parks

I ran across an interesting article from the LiveScience website on how we learn more from success than failure. Some scientists studied monkeys and monitored neurons in the monkey's prefrontal cortex and the basal ganglia - two areas of the brain thought to be involved in learning. "What surprised the researchers was that these neurons actually became more 'finely tuned' after a correct response than after an incorrect response, meaning that the neurons were able to better distinguish between the two different associations that the monkey was learning."

The researcher noted, "The neurons in these areas improve their tuning, they learn better when the animal had a recent success, versus when the animal had a failure. When the animal had a failure, there was virtually no change in neural processing, the neurons didn't improve at all." In other words, "after a success the monkeys were more likely to get an answer correct on the next trial, indicating a link between the improved neuron activity and the animal's behavior."

This seems to contradict the results of previous studies that suggest that we do learn from mistakes. But the researcher notes that "there's lots of different type of learning, and when you say learning from mistakes, the question is what is the nature of the mistake. In our study, the situation was a reward versus no reward, success versus the absense of success ... but there's some cases where mistakes can actually lead to very bad consequences, like a loss of money, or loss of scholoarship. When the failure actually leads to a negative consequence rather than just the absence of a positive, that might engage learning mechanisms that rely on feedback from that negative consequence, so maybe it's a different situation."

Giants Thoughts

I think both types of failures is at play with minor leaguers. On an AB by AB basis, the players are mostly in a reward versus no reward situation. There is subtle career pressures, but over a whole season, each AB is mostly a reward versus no reward situation.

But over a whole season, then that's when the failures lead to very bad negative consequences: no promotion to the next level, drop in prospect status. The Giants, having pitcher's parks up and down the system, is making it easier for their pitchers to learn but harder for their position prospects.

Here are the park factors for the Giants minor league affiliate parks (from 2009 Baseball Prospectus; 1000 is neutral):

Team - 2006 - 2007 - 2008
Fresno - 970 - 971 - 984
Conn. - 884 - 878 - 888
San Jose - 879 - 873 - 874
Augusta - 958 - 970 - 968
Salem-K - 1000 - 1021 - 1047

Clearly, the Giants have two particularly pitching-oriented parks in AA Connecticut and Advanced A San Jose, and that is a double punch into the gut for our hitting prospects, while boosting our pitching prospects.

This ties in with what I've been saying about Dodd Stadium, in which our AA team plays in, that playing there hurts our hitting prospects who play there. What this research suggests is that our hitting prospects are not learning as much as they can when they are playing in our farm system because of all the pitcher's parks, and particularly in San Jose and then Connecticut.

As I've noted in previous posts, Jonathan Mayo did a study of minor league parks and found that the strikeout rate was the highest in the minors at San Jose, and it was noted by John Bowker in the article that the background makes it hard for hitters to see the ball. That affects our young hitting prospects as well.

With one park or the other, perhaps it wouldn't have as strong an effect on our young hitters, but combining the two together, since most prospects have to go through San Jose and Connecticut, creates a learning deficit for our hitters that makes it that much harder for them to advance higher in the system. And those are critical levels for development and advancement.

Fortunately, Connecticut is moving to Richmond for 2010, which has been a neutral park for prior teams playing there, so that should improve things for the Giants farm system going forward. But the rumor is that the new owners of Richmond want to affiliate with a local MLB team, such as the Washington Nationals, and that would force the Giants to find a new team/park again for AA.

In any case, the Giants have a system full of pitcher's parks, and in two cases, extreme pitcher's parks where the hitters clearly have a mountain to climb over, rather than a pitcher's mound. Learning, as this study sugggests, can only be attained when one experiences successful, but if it's a pitcher's park, the hitters are learning less than prospects playing in a park that is better suited for hitters because they are struggling upstream with less probability of success when hitting in a pitcher's park. Which is basically what I've been saying for a number of years about Dodd Stadium, and now I should probably beat the drum regarding San Jose Municipal Stadium too, now that Dodd is soon to be seen in our rear view mirror.