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At Baseball Prospectus, Dan Maikel constructed a model to analyze whether teams should play promising rookies (he used Cameron Maybin and Matt Wieters) over established and mediocre veterans. Not surprisingly, the model, an expected value framework, favored playing the youngsters, who have the chance to be special, over the proven pedestrian.
In part 2, Maikel asked how long teams should stay with struggling rookies. In this case, the answer depends obviously on 1. the initial projection for the young player, 2. how well or poorly he’s played, and the level of player he’s replacing. Given that Mets fans were disappointed in Fernando Martinez’s .176/.242/.275 line in 91 AB this summer, it’s worth revisited Maikel’s conclusion:
These limitations notwithstanding, the results suggest that teams not hastily give up on a promising rookie who gets off to a slow start, especially if the organization and its scouts are confident in his eventual success. …. a knee-jerk reaction to a small sample hurts a team by reducing its expectation over the course of the season. Generally speaking, teams faced with an under-performing rookie should be patient unless they have very good reason to believe that he will continue to struggle.
Oh, the Mets would never overreact to a small sample size, right?
Oh, check that. At Fangraphs, Carson Cistulli revisits the Mets “misunderestimating” Heath Bell in small sample sizes in 2004-06 and misreading his high BABIP numbers.
Next post will be positive. I hope.
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Toby,
I know you’re friends with Adam Rubin, but having read a lot of his coverage of the minors, it does seem as he should “know better.” For instance, today he talks about how the Mets haven’t had any impact Latin American talent at the major league level. That sounds damning, but considering the oldest of these kids are 21, shouldn’t he, well, know better than to intimate that Omar has done a shitty job there because none of them have made the majors? There are a lot of 20 year old impact players in the majors?
There was another article where he quoted a scout saying that there weren’t any prospect pitchers at St. Lucie. This was a week or so after Holt and Mejia were promoted to Binghamton. Also, pitchers like Moviel and Carr were on the DL. Anyway, he just let that quote stand on its own as damning evidence of our lack of pitching prospects, rather than providing any context by bringing up Mejia and Holt. And this was prior to Omar calling him out.
All in all, it seems like he paints an unnecessarily negative picture, and he can’t claim ignorance/stupidity like the other beat writers.
big baby
Spot on with everything you said.
I was thinking the same thing after reading Rubin’s story today.
It makes no sense considering how much more he knows about the minors compared to other Met beat writers.
Side note on Heath Bell.
Bell was traded because Willie and Rick simply did not like the guy.
This was very apparent in just watching the way Bell was used in 2006.
Bell admitted this when he was in NY earlier this year.
The manager does have some influence in roster decisions.
What should have Omar done when Willie was not going to use a player on
the roster properly.
clearly you give him to the Padres for a bag of balls… makes sense to me!
Negativity sells? It does seem like Rubin has abandoned nuance in his reporting on the quality of the Mets organization as 2009 has gone on. I think covering the disaster of the 2009 Mets would make anyone more cynical.
I think there is one big piece missing. And that is, status of th eteam.
If the team is in the playoff chase, there is less incentive to ride out the learning curve at that time, as opposed to using a more average but no upside guy.
If you are like the current Mets and out of it, then sure, take the lumps for future gain.
unless you are Jerry Manual. No idea what he is thinking )evans, Thole, etc.).
also, I think there should be a distinction between guys that have really proven they were ready in the minors (like DW when he came up), vs. a very young guy that most people felt still mneeded more development time, but was rushed up in an emergency (F Mart of course)