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I have written previously about the phenomena of players who do not get a chance to be regulars at the ML level until they are 26 or 27 years old, who then perform better than their minor league numbers would have suggested. Fans get all excited because all they are seeing is a high performing rookie with a bright future, but in reality they are seeing a guy putting up good numbers because he arrived in the show in his prime. Most of these players then have a good year or two and then "surprisingly" seem to lose it, which is actually just them declining in their post prime stages.
We have a good example before us this season. Jesus Aguilar, firstbase for the Brewers, began playing pro ball when he was 18. Through nine minor league seasons with nine different teams, Aguilar batted .271/.343/.454. He had 140 home runs in 4020 plate appearances. He got a handful of ML at bats in September call ups but it wasn't until last season when he was 27 that he qualified as a rookie. This year he is playing as a regular for the first time in the big leagues and is whapping the ball at a 309./368/.627 rate. He has 19 home runs in 311 plate appearances, or a home run every 19.4 pa's. (In the minors he homered once every 28.7 plate appearances.)
if Aguilar turns out to fit the pattern I have described, he will probably have another one or two decent seasons before, "shockingly" declining after such "young" promise.
Trivia....Aguilar is the 16th "Jesus" to play MLB (not counting Ivan De Jesus)
What if the chances of a player being able to make the jump from the minors the majors and being immediately successful is simply much higher when they are in their mid-to-late 20s? Teams get immediate production at rookie costs for 2-5 years and then release the player before they can cash in on free agency when they've already started their decline.
What if the chances of a player being able to make the jump from the minors the majors and being immediately successful is simply much higher when they are in their mid-to-late 20s? Teams get immediate production at rookie costs for 2-5 years and then release the player before they can cash in on free agency when they've already started their decline.
That would only work if the GM's were able to know in advance who was going to be an early bloomer and who was going to be late. While the average player is in his prime between the ages of 27 and 30, some peak earlier than that and start declining right about the time they enter their prime....call it the Tom Tresh phenomena, or maybe the Vada Pinson phenomena. Pinson started at age 19 and by age 25 he alreay had 5 top 20 MVP finishes and two All Star appearances. Though he played through age 36, Pinson never had another MVP vote nor any All Star appearances. He had a plus 800 OPS in 7 of his first 8 seasons, but only one as high as 800 after that.
The Nationals lost to Boston 3-0 today, dropping them below .500 and parking them 7.5 games behind the Braves.
This was supposed to be the last hurrah year for Washington, the one where they went all out to win because they would be losing Bryce Harper to what was predicted to be the largest contract ever signed.
That prediction has lost a lot of steam because Harper is not playing very well and seems to be getting worse as the season unfolds. In June Harper batted .188/.333/.341 with just two home runs. This followed a May where he batted .221. He seems to have prematurely morphed into an Adam Dunn, he walks, he strikes out or he homers, but does nothing else at the plate.
Harper will be 26 years old next season and of course some team will take a chance and give him big bucks, but the idea of a mega deal, 350 million for ten years or such, now seems out of the question.
That would only work if the GM's were able to know in advance who was going to be an early bloomer and who was going to be late.
Of course.
I guess what I'm getting at is maybe some players show signs that GMs/scouts can read - signs that say "hey, we should give this 22 year old a shot this year." Whereas maybe anyone that doesn't fit that bill, maybe they err on the cautious side and just assume that maybe they aren't MLB material yet. And since maybe the average player's prime starts at 27, even the career AAA ballplayer has a shot at their peak to play in the big leagues for a few years.
I guess what I'm getting at is maybe some players show signs that GMs/scouts can read - signs that say "hey, we should give this 22 year old a shot this year." Whereas maybe anyone that doesn't fit that bill, maybe they err on the cautious side and just assume that maybe they aren't MLB material yet. And since maybe the average player's prime starts at 27, even the career AAA ballplayer has a shot at their peak to play in the big leagues for a few years.
There are players who start young but never reach stardom. There are stars that for whatever reasons get a late start to their careers. What there has almost never been though is a superstar who wasn't in the big leagues at an early age. If you go through the list of Hall of Famers, nearly all of them were good enough to be in the show at age 20 or 21, and many were there as teenagers. The exceptions tend to be special circumstances, like Warren Spahn's career being delayed by his WW II service, or Jackie Robinson, but were it not for the circumstances, these players would have been out there at 20 or 21.
I can think of no examples of guys who spent eight or nine seasons in the minors before getting their chance, who then became superstars. Some have reasonably long and successful careers...e.g, Matt Stairs, but the more frequent consequence of a late start is to burn brightly briefly, and then fade away.
I have a friend with whom each year we make a series of friendly bets about the upcoming season. Who will pitch a no hitter, who will win what title...that sort of thing. One of the categories is "Who is most likely to suffer a steep decline in performance this year?" We have been doing these pre season bets since the 1980's and I have won the "decline" question nearly every year by zeroing in on whoever had a big season the year before, but was a late bloomer. This season I went with Tommy Pham of the Cardinals. He fit all of the identified criteria: Long minor league career (12 seasons) finally became a regular for the first time last year at the age of 29, and outperformed his minor league numbers on the ML level. (.258/.342/.417 in 3109 minor league plate appearances, .306/.441/.520 for the Cards in 2018.)
I had high confidence in Pham because he fit the profile I had constructed so perfectly, thus I was horrified when he opened 2018 with a bang, batting .358/.469/.543 through the end of April. Could I have been this badly wrong? Me?
Well, bless his heart, Pham took pity on me and stopped hitting the ball, recording a line of .195/.276/.425 in May, and got worse in June - .198/.245/.292.
There is currently an imbalance of star players, or at least of star performances, between the two leagues. Lorenzo Cain of the Brewers is leading the NL in WAR at 3.9. That figure would tie him for 9th best in the AL with Matt Chapman of the A's. Nolan Arenado leads the NL in home runs with 22. That figure would tie him for 6th best in the AL with Nelson Cruz and Mookie Betts.
And though the AL seems to have a monopoly on the best players, oddly there seems to be no star power at all at first base in that league. At this position most closely associated with offense, Justin Smoak of the Blue Jays has the highest OPS, .806, the only AL first sacker as high as .800. Tops in WAR is Matt Olsen of the A's at 2.5. Of the top ten in OPS, two of them have batting averages below the Mendoza line.
We have another example of the gets his first chance when in his prime players. Max Muncy is 27 years old, had spent seven seasons in the minors with only a few September call ups, and batted .276/.382/.438 with 62 home runs in 2357 plate appearances, or a homer every 38 plate appearances.
Now with the Dodgers as a utility infielder, Muncy has become a regular for the first time. He is batting .270/.407/.610 with 20 home runs in 248 plate appearances, or a homer every 12.4 plate appearances.
His big league OBA is not a surprise, he had excellent on base skills throughout his minor league career. It is the slugging which has made the great leap forward. I would look for that to begin to decline this season.
And we have our first managerial firing of the season as the Cardinals have dismissed manager Mike Matheny as well as hitting coach John Mabry and bench coach Bill Mueller. And this couldn't be a weirder time to fire a manager the Saturday evening before the All Star break. To me at least this screams something more than "we weren't playing well and needed a spark" because really what is 17 hours going to change (from the time they actually fired him to when they could have fired him) and than on top of it they have a 3 day break. Something reeks of fish here. This would be like an NFL team firing a coach after a Sunday game that plays on Thursday night and than has a bye week, it would make no sense to dismiss that coach after the Sunday game (unless they had a non-publicized incident or something) when the perfect time to do it, if you do indeed make a change would be after that Thursday night game.
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