Keeping Score: In the Majors, Young Players Are Still Teething at the Plate – NYTimes.com
Posted by Neil Paine on May 6, 2011
Keeping Score: In the Majors, Young Players Are Still Teething at the Plate - NYTimes.com
Sean writes about how poorly this year's debuts are hitting, plus a note on how well 2 Cardinals are doing at the plate (neither of whom is Albert Pujols).
May 6th, 2011 at 1:05 pm
Neil, FYI, the "link" to the NYTimes article is showing up as HTML code, not a working link.
May 6th, 2011 at 1:41 pm
Thanks, I fixed it.
May 6th, 2011 at 2:23 pm
It will be interesting to see how they do as the season progresses.
http://pinetarandbrickbats.blogspot.com/
May 6th, 2011 at 2:48 pm
Sean/Neil,
It is difficult to account for the early-season offensive woes of this year's debutees. Are rosters so thin that prospects are being rushed to the majors? Key injuries to core players necessitating rookies getting more at bats than expected? Small sample size? I suspect the latter and their performance will pick up over time.
The article makes reference to the 1975 season as a basis for comparison. That group of players would have to have been somwhat less than this year's 42 that the article mentions. (26 teams vs. 30). In other the 1975 offensive inepititude was concentrated in fewer hitters and less PA.
Blue Jays fans are counting the days until the much-touted, whiz-kid, Brett Lawrie gets called up from Las Vegas. Even allowing for the extreme park effects of the PCL, he could move the collective debutee numbers upward.
May 6th, 2011 at 3:06 pm
Yea except he's wrong or at least I have no idea where he's getting his numbers. The database shows that "For single seasons, For 2011, During first season , Active Players, sorted by greatest Home Runs" and no other search limits the number is 27. Between then they do have only 1 homer (Brandon Belt - great name for a home run hitter BTW) but they have 54 hits in 309 at bats a .175 average. I didn't do the rest of his numbers but I would guess they are off as well.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/play-index/season_finder.cgi?as=result_batter&offset=0&sum=1&min_year_season=2010&max_year_season=2011&min_season=1&max_season=2&min_age=0&max_age=99&lg_ID=lgAny&lgAL_team=tmAny&lgNL_team=tmAny&lgFL_team=tmAny&lgAA_team=tmAny&lgPL_team=tmAny&lgUA_team=tmAny&lgNA_team=tmAny&isActive=active&isHOF=either&isAllstar=either&bats=any&throws=any&games_min_max=min&games_prop=&games_tot=50&exactness=anymarked&pos_2=1&pos_3=1&pos_4=1&pos_5=1&pos_6=1&pos_7=1&pos_8=1&pos_9=1&qualifiersSeason=nomin&minpasValS=502&mingamesValS=100&qualifiersCareer=nomin&minpasValC=3000&mingamesValC=1000&orderby=HR&submitter=1&c1criteria=AB&c1gtlt=lt&c1val=150&c2gtlt=eq&c2val=0&c3gtlt=eq&c3val=0&c4gtlt=eq&c4val=0&c5gtlt=gt&c5val=1.0&location=pob&locationMatch=is&pob=&pod=&pcanada=&pusa=
Now if he's talking about rookies he's WAY off. Freddie Freeman for example played only 20 games (24AB) last year and is still a Rookie - first year player by any stretch of imagination. He has 3 homers and 23 hits albeit hitting only 225.
I wasn't going to sign up to his paper just to tell him but if someone knows him please introduce him to the database 🙂
May 6th, 2011 at 3:19 pm
lol fred. If you are talking about the author of the NYT article...Sean Forman is the owner of this site!
May 6th, 2011 at 3:23 pm
the 42 players who made their debut in March or April (emphasis mine)
May 6th, 2011 at 3:25 pm
@5
Fred, I think if you read Sean's article carefully he is referring to players who have debuted this year, not who still qualify as rookies this year. So J.P. Arencibia's numbers would not count this year becase he debuted last year.
May 6th, 2011 at 3:25 pm
@7
Thanks, Blam. Beat me on the submit button!
May 6th, 2011 at 3:41 pm
I never would've guessed Michael Tucker and Jeff Blausr.
May 6th, 2011 at 6:15 pm
As noted, debuts not rookies. My 1st thought was "Wait, didn't Fred Lynn win ROY and MVP in 1975? And weren't Jim Rice & Gary Carter also rookies?"
All true but all debuted in 1974 as did Robin Yount BTW
May 6th, 2011 at 7:02 pm
Ok I'm an idiot, why don't the other 15 players show up in my search. Is they are making their debut makes them first year players. Teach me 🙂
May 7th, 2011 at 2:23 am
Actually, my search agrees exactly with Fred's @5. The most important difference between our results and those Sean mentioned in the article is the number of players; we find 27 players (including pitchers), while Sean cited 42.
Now, Sean's article says specifically those "who made their debut in March or April," whereas I simply searched on this season and did nothing to exclude those who may have debuted in May (and I assume Fred did the same). But if that did cause our results to differ from Sean's, it would give us more players, not fewer.
Can one of the P-I experts explain the difference between Sean's search results and those that Fred and I got?
May 7th, 2011 at 2:28 am
Speculation on the cause of the difference in Sean's results and mine:
(1) The offensive numbers are slightly different because the article was posted last night, before yesterday's games posted to B-R, hence 35 fewer AB and 7 fewer hits.
(2) The number of debut players could be a typo -- perhaps "24" got transposed to "42."
May 8th, 2011 at 12:41 pm
@ John Autin
Thanksfor the support, I didn't think I'd screwed that up (other than not knowing the author). I went back and entered debit dates and found that there were 25 first year players (12 non-pitchers) who debuted in March and April.