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SABRMatty axed, re James' rookie-tier system,

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The quality of a season should probably be up-rated the younger a player is when having it...not sure to what level...my guess would be that you'd have to do some back-of-the-envelope math to determine how starting age correlated with average rookie OPS or somesuch and adjust your ratings accordingly.

Re: Game and Heredia and Haniger...

I think Heredia's rookie year was misleading...he got poor ratings because he played the last half of the season with a dislocated shoulder recurring regularly without telling anyone on the team about it, apparently.

But I definitely like Haniger over Gamel. :)

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I've never seen James do such a convoluted method, up to and including his defensive Win Shares ;- ) but from what I got the first 3 things that a "perfect rookie" would have would be the perfect age, the perfect speed score, and a big year inside the batter's box.

It's easy for me too to think of Gamel as an "old" rookie but even in rotiserrie we are scrutinizing "Age 26, Age 27 With Experience" for BREAKOUTS - that is, large leaps in performance after having gotten cruddy performance in the past at ages 25 and 26.

Gamel's minors line went like this:

• Age 20 - level A - .300/.340/.400
• Age 21 - High A - .275/.350/.400  (And then played a little AA)
• Age 22 - AA - .260/310/.340
• Age 23 - AAA - .300/.360/.470 a 
• Age 24 - repeated AAA Scranton, a little New York and Seattle, won Int'l League Player of Year in a lesser season (.310/.365/.420)
• Age 25 - what he just did with the Mariners (98 OPS+ in a positive BABIP, 1.8 WAR

It isn't that he's a Top-25 prospect but that's hardly behind schedule, either.

.....

For some reason the kid looked kludgey in the field the first half, but definitely smoothed out the second half and even brought some 'elan to his wall crashing.  He wound up at -2 plays in right field (-2 plays, not -2 runs) and I'd go to Zduriencik's claim that most rookies get better defensively, 'specially them who wants to ...

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UND TAKE ZIS MIT YOU, Dept.

Just because we like to pack value in and pack it in until the seams on the box creak, even in the dead of a Mariner-less winter...  James just ran a points formula on the top 100 relievers ever.  There was a pack of 6 guys between 1000 points and 1111 on his scale; Mariano had 1801.

Put in perspective, that would be like a career home runs leader coming along and racking up 1,235 homers.  That Mo' was pretty good.

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I heard Fangraphs say, a coupla days ago, that Kenley Jansen was "as good as it gets."  Without a doubt, but guess who ELSE is as good as it gets.  Ever see a team come back that calmly from 3-1 down in the late innings?

BABVA,

Dr D