When people bark that players like Walters should do great in the majors based off of his minor league numbers, here’s one place where we can point them.  When you look at the associated major league graph or this composite one, you can see that velocity in the majors correlates with success* than in the minors.  The short version is that velocity is more important in the majors than the minors.  Here’s the take away line from the Cameron’s minor league analysis:

There are a good number of pitchers who miss bats without a big fastball. When looking at minor league pitching numbers, you have to keep this in mind – gaudy statistics do not mean that you can automatically infer major league quality stuff.

Note: In this instance, I mean success in the sense of striking people out.

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