That has always been true. But it is also relative. We have seen guys like Weston Wilson dominate down there. It definitely means more when a younger player rather than a 28-year-old dominates because they have room to improve.
There does seem to be a big gap in pitch velocity now and some of these older veterans may have learned to hit 94 mph fastballs but just can't step up to a 96 mph average. The leagues are not getting younger, but this is more the weeding out process of career minor leaguers. AAA is also full of players with options and not necessarily prospects.
Nobody is saying AAA is meaningless. Otto Kemp is giving us decent at bats and seems like he can be a major league hitter. Of course his OPS is more than 300 points below AAA. Is Crawford's OPS inflated because the majors will have better infielders? Possibly. None of this is a straight line relationship between performance relative to level.
It just makes complete sense that when you eliminate 30-40 minor leaguers and you still have rules about promoting players within 4-5 years (rule 5) then the top is just going to be less good because the lower minors prioritizes the younger players.
