Baseball Notes

I have trouble remembering a year when there was SO much hype about rookies coming up to the majors. Just some common names from this year: Philip Hughes, Hunter Pence, Tim Lincecum, Ryan Braun, Homer Bailey, Elijah Dukes, BJ Upton, Yovani Gallardo, Chris Young, Delmon Young, Alex Gordon, Billy Butler, and Andy LaRoche are just a few names that have dominated club rosters and fantasy teams from the beginning of the year - and some of these weren’t even guaranteed a spot with the big club!

In thinking about rookies, it is always difficult to predict major league success no matter what school you’re from; whether it’s makeup and body type or stats and rates, the guessing game is far from accurate. Keith Law, a former Special Assistant to the GM for the Blue Jays and Baseball Prospectus writer currently working for Scouts Inc. and ESPN, is famous for saying that the player he was the most wrong about was Carlos Pena. Pena had all the tools and all the stats - scouts and managers and GMs drooled over him. Well, ever since he made his major league debut in 2001, he has been traded twice, released twice, made two trips to the minors, and has a career .247 average - and is now 29 and moving past his prime.

This is just one example of how hard it is to predict, even on the sure things. So who knows if great years by Pence, Lincecum, Upton, et al will turn into something more? But I thought it might be fun to look at some of the best rookies from the past and see if very strong rookie seasons translates into very strong major league careers.

My hypothesis is that a even the strongest rookie season does not correlate to major league stardom.

First, we have to determine a sample size. I have chosen to look at more of a modern era for comparative reasons, and therefore look at rookies from 1975 to 2001 (rookies in 2001 have at least 5 full major league seasons and thus a good sample to work with). I want to look at only the best of the best rookie seasons - so I will start with all Rookies of the Year from these 26 seasons. But even that does not help too much because you get your Mark McGwires who batted .283/.370/.618 with 49 HR and you get your Eric Karros’ with .257/.304/.426 - 20 lines - and they were only five years apart. Those two rookie seasons don’t even compare to each other.

So I need a way to establish the best rookie seasons without using stats, because we need a way to look at both hitters and pitchers who were ROY, and compare across a span of 26 years. What I decided to use as my filter is any ROY who finished in the top 25 in MVP voting or top 10 in Cy Young voting during their respective rookie year. This will give us only the best rookie years compared to their peers that season.

For example, Alvin Davis’ ROY campaign in 1984 saw him accumulate a .284 average, 27 homeruns, and an .888 OPS. This would be above average for an offensive player in 2006, but he probably would not have received any MVP votes for that line last year. But in 1984, that line is outstanding. This way, we can compare rookies to their peers and not other rookies that played 20 years later or earlier.

Doing this, we are left with a sample of 17 rookies from 1975-2001:

This list includes 11 who finished in the top 25 for MVP and 6 who finished in the top 10 for Cy Young. Ichiro and Fred Lynn are the only ROY/MVP winners, while Fernando Valenzuela is the only ROY/CY winner.

To look at these players’ careers, we need to think about what stats to use. We could just look at Hall of Fame voting, but half of these players are not eligible, so that does not work. I am going to rely on a heavy dose of rate stats since we are dealing with four players who are still playing today, and we will have to use statistics that range across hitters and pitchers. But I will also look at a few other sorted items that help tell the story such as MVPs, All Star games, etc.

I have included an explanation of all stats in the comments section. All numbers are as of May 28, 2007:

The results I found here surprise me somewhat. All of these players except Pujols and Ichiro have finished their careers or are in their last couple of years. We can save the Ichiro debate for another time, you decide for yourself if you think he should have been labeled a”rookie” in 2001.

The stats here show that the strongest rookie seasons seem to correlate a lot more towards future success for hitters rather than pitchers.

Point in case: Each hitter on this list, assuming no tragic injuries to Pujols and Ichiro, will play at least nine seasons in the big leagues (except for Listach; more on him later). Here are some other examples…

1. Except for Davis and Listach, all other hitters on this list appeared in at least two all-star games that were NOT in their rookie season. So if you take away their great first year, you still see continued success later in their careers
2. All hitters on this list have a career OPS+ of at least 120 (average is 100), except for Listach and Coleman. Coleman is low only because he never slugged over .400, and had 28 career homeruns.
3. Except for Listach, all hitters created at least 200 more runs over their careers than a replacement player would have created (BRAR stat).

“Except for Listach,” is mentioned here three times. You must be thinking, “what about Listach? He proves your theory wrong!”

I agree, he is an outlier in this exercise and skews things a little bit. But one interesting thing about that year’s ROY voting may get us back on track. In Listach’s rookie year of 1992, he beat out Kenny Lofton in a close race. Looking back…..Lofton really should have won. He bested Listach in HR, SB, BB, OBP, SLG, OPS+, Total Bases, and RC. But Milwakuee finished with 92 wins while Lofton’s Indians finished with 76.

Lofton meets all of the qualifications above that Listach does not - 6 All-Star games, 107 OPS+, and 436 BRAR for his career - and he has played 17 seasons so far.

Pitchers on this list are a different story.

The All-Star games by these six pitchers adds up to 15 in 76 total seasons. And 10 of those are from two players (Gooden and Valenzuela).

On this list, you have at least six hitters you can make a legitimate Hall of Fame case for, while there is not a pitcher on the list who comes close to qualifying.

The pitching runs above average range from -7 to 148 - nowhere near the BRAA of 613 for McGwire or 494 for Piazza.

I guess I should not be surprised that the hitters consistently perform better than the pitchers overall on this list. Studies have shown that the peak for hitters and pitchers is from ages 26-28 (use this article as some reference for pitchers’ primes, this one for hitters). Prime years for pitchers tend to last longer than hitters, which is why you routinely see pitchers at age 35 and above still performing at high levels. For the hitters on this list, the mean age is 22.7 during their rookies years, while it is only 21.5 for the pitchers in their rookie years. The hitters compared here came to The Show more seasoned and experienced than their pitching counterparts.

So my hypothesis is only half right. I predicted that an unusually strong rookie season would in no way correlate to becoming a star later in a career. While two of the pitchers on this list (Gooden and Valenzuela) arguably had at least five years of dominant performances, the others essentially amounted to nothing. On the other hand, the hitters on this list average 5.6 all-star games each - and yes, that includes Listach and his zero appearances.

From this small sample, we can make the assumption that a strong showing by a hitter in their rookie year will more likely lead to future success than a strong first season by a pitcher.