As usual, the Arizona Fall League was a hitter’s paradise this year. The league averaged a sweet 6.9 runs per nine innings (per team), resulting in league average slash stats of .293/.365/.473.

The league can make even ordinary hitters look like they belong in the middle of the Gas-House Gorillas’ lineup.

The AFL season is only 38 games long, and as managers shuffle around their lineups to get everyone adequate playing time, most prospects are lucky to get 100 or so plate appearances. That amounts to essentially one month or around 20 percent of the regular minor league season, but with so many scouts and key decision makers in attendance, a player’s AFL showing can sometimes receive a heavier weight in those minds than it might otherwise merit.

But the AFL does give us our first records of 2008 draft picks, like Justin Smoak, using wood bats against professional pitchers, and let’s us see how hitters like Tyler Flowers and Logan Morrison–both of whom spent the entire year at high Class A–fare in a league that has historically played as a Double-A/Triple-A hybrid.

And we do have the means to somewhat neutralize player performance–albeit in a blunt way–to account for the league’s high offensive environment by comparing hitters’ performances to the AFL average. 

Hitters below are sorted by Baseball-Reference.com’s OPS+ formula, without the park adjustment. The formula is: 100* (OBP/LgOBP + SLG/LgSLG – 1), a loose guideline of how a player performed relative to the league average (100). Each player’s listed position is the position at which he played the most games during the AFL season.

As always, an asterisk (*) denotes a lefthanded batter and a pound sign (#) is for a switch hitter. All caveats about analyzing small sample AFL performance records apply.