Twins Nail Outfield Decision

So I'm keeping an eye on the Twins in 2009 and noticing that manager Ron Gardenhire has decided on a regular starting trio of Denard Span, Michael Cuddyer, and Delmon Young in his outfield, with Carlos Gomez being used as an occasional starter and defensive replacement, and I think, "Awesome. This is pretty much exactly how I imagined this would go given my essays on Gomez and Young earlier this spring."

Then I happen to be out on MinnPost.com and notice that Aaron Gleeman is writing there again, and that somehow he's come to exactly the opposite conclusion I have: Twins pick worst option: benching Carlos Gomez in favor of Delmon Young.

It's been a while since I've had the opportunity to pick one of Gleeman's essays apart, and it would make sense that this one, which is so dramatically opposed to my own thinking, would be an obvious place to start up again. Sadly, the experience wasn't nearly as enjoyable as I'd hoped -- by the end of Gleeman's essay, I became convinced that Gleeman, just as any other run-of-the-mill sportswriter, has simply decided to start from his conclusion and grab whatever facts he can muster to fit his existing opinion.

Gleeman makes three big errors in interpreting his data, each of which leads him to his flawed conclusion that somehow Carlos Gomez would help the Twins more by being a starter than Delmon Young is. Let's look at each of them, illustrated with a snippet from Gleeman's own essay.

1. Missing the context of Young's versus Gomez's offensive numbers.

Young is a better hitter than Gomez right now, but the gap isn't anywhere close to as big as their batting averages suggest and pales in comparison to the gap defensively. Last year, Young hit .290/.336/.405 and Gomez hit .258/.296/.360. This season, Young is at .288/.333/.338 and Gomez is at .218/.259/.327. In both cases the difference is about 80 points of OPS, and even that figure is inflated by not accounting for Young's propensity to ground into double plays or Gomez's superior speed on the bases.

Gleeman is correct to note that the differences between Young's and Gomez's numbers, both from last year and this year, add up to about 80 points of OPS (on-base plus slugging). However, Gleeman seems to dismiss two additional observations:

- The difference between Gomez and Young is currently about 80 points of OPS, of which 70 of that is simply on-base percentage, which was not the case last year.

On-base percentage is actually significantly more valuable to an offense than slugging percentage -- slugging percentage merely gives you the expectation of bases per plate appearance, while on-base percentage gives you an indication of how often the player will be on base, which is also an indication of how often the player will not be contributing toward ending the inning. Estimates of the value of on-base percentage as a component of OPS have suggested that each point of on-base percentage is worth anywhere from 1.5 to 3 points of slugging average (more likely closer to 1.5) when it comes to how much that player's offense contributes to team offensive success.

Gleeman's assertion that the difference between Young and Gomez offensively based on 80 points of OPS is about fifteen runs is simply unsupported by the observation that almost all that difference is in on-base percentage. Some studies have shown that a mere 20 point difference in on-base percentage without any other change is worth anywhere from eight to ten runs in a season depending on batting order position, so a difference of 70 points would clearly be significantly larger. This of course assumes something fairly major as well: that both players will continue to hit at about this same level, which leads to the next observation.

- Young is closer to his 2008 numbers than Gomez is to his, and thus from a 'likely to improve' perspective, Young has to be seen as being farther ahead.

The question is, given these players' current production, how likely is is that one or the other will have improved by the end of the season? Well, given that Young is basically hitting at his batting average and OBP from last year, while Gomez is behind in both by about 40 points, there's reason to suspect that Young is ahead of Gomez. Young is much farther behind his previous season's power production than Gomez is, but is that really significant? Only if you assume that Young can't hit anything but a single the rest of the year, simply because he's hit almost nothing but singles thus far.

Think of it this way -- if Young's 'true level of ability' for 2009 were to be above his 2008 numbers, you'd expect him to be hitting somewhere above his 2008 numbers; it's not impossible for him to be hitting less than that, because that's how statistics work sometimes, but seeing him hitting about the same in BA and OBP terms would lead you to believe that he's either about the same player he was last year, or that he's struggling a bit (see drastically low SLG) and might pick things up. It's also possible that his 'true level of ability' is below his 2008 numbers, but then you'd expect his BA and OBP to be farther down than they are right now. Meanwhile, if Gomez's 'true level of ability' were above his 2008 numbers, you'd likewise expect to see him hitting at or about those numbers or a little better -- that he's hitting so far below those numbers means that he's either in a deep slump, or that estimations of his 'true level of ability' as higher than his 2008 numbers are simply false.

Put another way, if Delmon Young hits the way he's been hitting for a month and a half, and simply has a few extra balls find the gap along the way, his power numbers will approach his 2008 power numbers without having to do anything differently or improve at all -- if Young does actually improve, then his numbers will go up even more rapidly. Meanwhile, Carlos Gomez would have to improve his batting average by 40 points (which would also increase his OBP and SLG by 40 points each) just to get back to where he was last year, then try to improve still further. If Gomez keeps hitting the way he has since early April, he'll be the worst offensive player in baseball by the end of the season.

Oh, yeah, and the crack about double plays? That also comes from a lack of understanding context -- Young has hit 28 times with a runner on first base and has hit into 5 double plays. Gomez hasn't hit into any double plays, and his speed is certainly part of that, but just as significant is that he's only hit with 11 runners on first base, giving him far fewer opportunities. (See baseball-reference.com's player game logs, though by the time you look, these numbers will likely be different.)

Oh, yeah, and Young has 13 RBI in 78 PAs with runners on (versus a league-average 10 RBI in those situations with the same number of PAs and just three fewer baserunners), so if Young was really a clutch choker, you'd expect to see it in those numbers, wouldn't you?

2. Taking too small a sample of both Young's and Gomez's defensive numbers.

According to Ultimate Zone Rating as a duo Gomez in center field and Span in left field (or right field) has been 30 to 35 runs above average per 150 games. Meanwhile, as a duo, Span in center field and Young in left field has been 45 to 50 runs below average per 150 games.

The latter total is inflated by Span's unsustainably horrible numbers in limited action as a center fielder, but even if you ignore them to give him credit for being exactly average in center field — which at this point is far from a safe assumption — the Young-Span alignment is 40 to 50 runs worse than the Span-Gomez alignment.

It's not clear precisely what numbers Gleeman is using here, since his link simply goes to the page that says 'Hey, UZR is available on Fangraphs!", but we covered Young's abysmal 2008 defensive numbers in a previous essay, and came to the conclusion that Young wasn't as bad as those numbers given his much better defensive numbers as a younger Devil Ray, and that his numbers should improve both with further exposure to the Dome's unique fielding challenges as well as with the upcoming move to an outdoor home park.

To make things even more confusing, how do you parse these two statements?

Gomez is one of the elite defensive center fielders in baseball, saving the Twins a tremendous number of runs with his glove. His presence in center field also means that Span slides over to left field, where he's also one of the elite defenders in the game.

The latter total is inflated by Span's unsustainably horrible numbers in limited action as a center fielder, but even if you ignore them to give him credit for being exactly average in center field — which at this point is far from a safe assumption

So which is it? Is Denard Span one of the elite defensive left fielders in baseball, or is it far from a safe assumption to say he's even average defensively in center? The truth is almost certainly somewhere in the middle -- Span is a solid defensive centerfielder whose limited numbers look worse than they should due to small sample sizes plus inherent limitations in UZR (which are beyond the scope of this essay), while Young is a below-average defensive left fielder whose numbers also look worse then they are.

Now all of this analysis thus far has seemed to show that playing Gomez over Young would be more useful to the Twins right now, given that Gleeman is presuming that replacing Young with Gomez would be worth somewhere in the vicinity of 25-35 runs (or about 2-4 wins). But Gleeman doesn't stop there.

3. Presuming that Gomez and Young have the same potential upside

In the short term, benching Gomez for Young is costing the Twins a significant number of runs, but the move could have even costlier ramifications long term. Gomez is six months from his 24th birthday and has great athletic ability, world-class speed and little idea what he's doing at the plate. While with the Mets he was rushed through the minor leagues, playing at Double-A as a 20-year-old and debuting in the majors as a 21-year-old after all of 36 games at Triple-A.

Gomez was rushed through the normal development process for a prospect, getting promoted to the majors far sooner than his minor-league performance warranted and then sticking in the big leagues at least in part because he was the centerpiece of a franchise-altering trade. Certainly none of that has helped him mature as a player, but compounding those mistakes by now relegating him to the bench makes even less sense.

Young was born just a few months before Gomez in 1985 and also would benefit from regular playing time, which certainly makes juggling outfielders difficult for Gardenhire.

Pretty much everything you need to know about Gleeman's opinion can be summed up in this passage -- two paragraphs about Gomez's youth and minor-league experience, followed up by one sentence that casually mentions that Young is "just a few months" older than Gomez. We've covered this distinction in detail before, so I'll just repeat the key points rather than cut-and-paste the entire essay:

- The point of Bill James's observation about youth is not just to be in the big leagues at a young age, but to be in the big leagues and to demonstrate you belong offensively at a young age. The younger you do this, the higher your ceiling.

- Delmon Young's ceiling is still legitimately the Hall of Fame, given his comp list.

- Carlos Gomez's ceiling is not just far short of the Hall of Fame, but probably that of a regular starter for just a handful of years, again given his comp list.

Here are two minor-league seasons, both players age 20:

A - .281/773; .350 OBP; 24 2B, 8 3B, 7 HR; 53 R in 486 PA
B - .316/814; .341 OBP; 22 2B, 4 3B, 8 HR; 50 R in 370 PA

You'd say player B, despite the fewer PAs, was probably the better prospect, right? You'd be further justified in that opinion when learning that player A racked up his numbers in AA, while player B's season was at AAA, wouldn't you?

Now consider -- player A is Carlos Gomez's best season as a minor leaguer with at least 250 PAs, while player B is Delmon Young's worst season as a minor leaguer with at least 250 PAs.

Tell me again why Gomez is supposed to be the better prospect?

The one observation that Gleeman makes with respect to Gomez that I'd be inclined to agree with is this one:

However, even if you're convinced that Young is the superior player right now and benching Gomez doesn't hurt the team in the short term, why in the world would you want your incredibly raw 23-year-old center fielder getting one or two starts per week?

If the Twins aren't going to play Gomez, they ought to at least let him continue to develop at Triple-A.

Of course, the answer to Gleeman's question is simple: if the Twins' brain trust has decided that, in fact, Gomez's ceiling is limited, and the best that can be hoped for is a solid defensive sub, then keeping Gomez on the major league roster makes perfect sense. After all, championship teams have had defensive specialists since the earliest days of the game, and Gomez has a better chance of helping the team win games as a glove off the bench in the late innings than proving his 'AAAA player' status in Rochester for a second straight year. You may not care for that answer if you're convinced, now that Phil Humber is gone and Deolis Guerra is still some years away from contributing, that Gomez has to be the justification talent-wise for the Twins' trade of Johan Santana to the Mets.

If you truly believe that, then I will finish with the same observation I made in the Shadow Twins segment regarding Young: there is no sane universe in which Carlos Gomez has more upside than does Delmon Young. Period. What that means for the Santana trade, I leave to others to lament.

Blackburn Stops the Indians Offense in Twins 5-1 Win

Twins pitcher Nick Blackburn is one of those pitchers that always seems to give the Indians trouble. In six career starts, he's 3-0 against them with a 1.71 ERA. Friday night in the series opener vs the Tribe at Progressive Field, the Indians again had their issues vs Blackburn, pushing across just one run in 7 innings as the Twins beat the Indians 5-1.

He allowed six hits, and the biggest thing was he didn't walk a batter, this after giving up six walks in his first three starts and having command issues. He struck out four, and the Indians lineup provided little pop in their bats against him.

Fausto Carmona in the mind of Eric Wedge pitched an okay game, but he still didn't seem to be overly commanding against the Twins. He gave up five runs, four earned in 6 innings. He also gave up 8 hits, and while he struck out 8 and walked only one, he still took the loss to fall to 1-3 on the season.

It's amazing the Indians have even six wins on the season considering their number one and two starters - Cliff Lee and Carmona, are a combined 2-6 through the first three weeks of the 2009 season.

The only Indians real scoring chance came when they pushed their only run of the game across in the third to tie it at one apiece. Asdrubal Cabrera doubled, then Grady Sizemore slammed a sharp single to right that scored Cabrera to make it 1-1.

That tie lasted exactly one pitch into the fourth inning, as Justin Morneau crushed a Carmona pitch for a homerun to right that made it a 2-1 game. A few batters later, Jose Morales singled to score another run to give the Twins a 3-1 lead. With the Indians offense stale, it might as well been 100-1 at that point.

Minnesota added two more in the 7th off of Carmona and Rafael Betancourt to make it 5-1. Other than that, the fireworks postgame were for sure not for the Indians offense on this night.

The loss drops the team to 6-11. Carl Pavano (0-2, 9.69) goes for the Indians vs Kevin Slowey for the now 8-9 Twins.

Tribe Survives Wild 8-7 Win at Home Over Royals

Do you get a sense that nothing will be coming easy for the Indians in 2009? Me too.

With a bullpen that couldn't get some good high school teams out (at least it seems that way), no lead is safe, and once again that was on display Tuesday night at Progressive Field in the teams 8-7 wild win over the Kansas City Royals.

It wasn't the win that got all the attention, it was the fact that the team was up 6-1 entering the 8th, only to have to hang on and have a late Victor Martinez homerun in the bottom of the 8th end up as the margin of victory. Kansas City scored four runs in the 8th off of relievers Joe Smith and Masa Kobayashi, only to have Jensen Lewis save the day and get them out of the inning.

In the 9th with the team up 8-5, Kerry Wood, who's been good to this point, allowed a two-run long ball to David DeJesus to close the gap to 8-7. The reliever came back to strike out Billy Butler to end the game and give Eric Wedge and the team a big sigh of relief.

The offense had a good effort against Royals pitcher Sidney Ponson. Martinez was the star, going 4-for-5 two RBI and a homer. Grady Sizemore was 1-for-4 with a three-run homer. The team collected 9 hits on the night, and drew a solid 9 walks as well.

Aaron Laffey went 7 pretty solid innings, allowing just one run on seven hits, with three walks and three strikeouts. He's making the most of his opportunity with Scott Lewis on the shelf to come in and make an impact on the Indians starting rotation.

On a night that saw temps hover around 40 degrees with overcast skies, fans didn't exactly clamor into Progressive Field, as the reported attendance was just 11,408. That crowd according to reports is the smallest in history of that ballpark, easily beating the 14,841 that saw the Indians beat Chicago on April 10th, 2003.

The team is now 5-9 on the season, and they are playing much better ball over the last several days than when they were floundering off to a 1-7 start. (Maybe now they'll start selling some Indians tickets) Wednesday they will throw Cliff Lee on the mound, as he comes off his win last Thursday in New York.

Your 2009 Shadow Twins - Center Field

Baseball demands a different makeup than football; it demands a Steve Garvey rather than a John Matuszak. It demands a percentage player.

And yet, and this is the central point of this essay, many fans do not realize this or will not accept it. The fans don't go to the game every day. They don't feel the pain if something gets torn. To them the only thing for an athlete to do is to go out and give it everything he has on every play; if he doesn't play that way, he's not doing what he should be doing. He's not earning his pay. If the ball is in the seats, he's supposed to dive in after it. If it requires him to go to the wall, he is supposed to hit that wall. A player who plays all out will always be a fan favorite; a percentage player will never be accepted by the audience unless he is able to overcome that impression some other way.

- Bill James, originally published in the 1982 Bill James Baseball Abstract

There are numerous disadvantages to procrastination.

First off, things can change on you -- between the time I wrote the left field entry and today, baseball-reference.com has undergone a complete site redesign, and one of the things that's happened is that the minimum number of PAs/games/what-have-you to qualify for a comp list has increased. So, while Carlos Gomez had a comp under the old bbr regime, he doesn't anymore.

Another disadvantage is that you lose the chance to appear prescient, and instead just get to talk about what seems obvious to everyone. My own feeling about the two men being considered for the Twins' center field position was that you couldn't find two guys with such different sets of expectations, and because of that, one of the guys should easily get the nod over the other. That seems obvious now, after a week, but it wasn't through spring training.

The last disadvantage is that things can happen that make your analysis look silly. Had I posted this essay after the second game of the season, where Gomez had gotten an electrifying triple and triggered a ninth-inning, two-out rally with a base-on-balls, it would have looked a lot tougher saying, as I will below, that Gomez's undisciplined approach to the plate and the field are hurting both his own development and his team's chances of winning. Today, however, that triple is just one of three Gomez hits through the first week of the 2009 season, and the walk is the only walk he's drawn, while Span has six singles and six walks en route to an over-.400 on-base percentage, showing that he's extremely well-suited to serve as the Twins current leadoff man.

It wasn't that long about that it was Denard Span, not Carlos Gomez, who was the young minor-league player that Twins bloggers would get all ga-ga over. Span was the Twins' first-round pick in 2002, and considered the fastest player in the draft, and projections (and overestimations) of his potential were rampant. Unfortunately, Span's rise through the minors wasn't quite as meteoric as some would have anticipated for a 'can't miss' prospect, and much of the luster was off of Span's star by early 2006. Then, the 2007 trade of Johan Santana to the Mets brought in Gomez, who immediately took over as the guy 'picked to click' by Twins bloggers.

Maybe it was the lack of pressure Span faced after Gomez became the center of the spotlight that let him polish his game. Nobody really knows. But the second half of 2008 was a very solid period for Denard Span, and thus far in 2009, he hasn't shown any signs of slowing down. The only thing really hurting Span, at this point, is that the Twins management still seems to want to push Gomez as the centerfielder of the future, meaning Span is an outstanding player without a real position.

It helped Twins management in 2008 that Michael Cuddyer was hurt for much of the season, allowing the club to play both Gomez and Span regularly in the field, Gomez in center and Span in right. But as Span settled in and adjusted, Gomez just kept on doing the same things he'd done in the early season, which were the same things he'd done as a regular-by-necessity in New York: swing as hard as he could at any pitch he thought he could hit, run as hard as he could after every ball, throw as hard as he could to whatever base he thought to throw to. Many fans fond Gomez's exertion inspiring and worthy of praise and cheer; however, other, more polished observers could see that, unless Gomez started learning how to play baseball rather than just trying to use his athletic gifts on the field, he'd never get full value for his talent.

I'm not the first person ever to notice this, either:

I will never understand why baseball fans admire a player who runs into walls. Running into walls is a stupid waste of talent. Playing hard in baseball is so much admired that people make up lists of players who play hard, with the implication that this is a good to be sought after in its own right.

The problem is that eighty percent of the people on those lists are dyed-in-the-doubleknit losers, and the ones who aren't losers are players like Brett and Molitor who spend a third of the season on the disabled list.

James was talking about Butch Hobson, a beloved Boston Red Sox player who nevertheless was never really a good player in his career, because he was so busy giving 110% on every play that he never bothered to figure out why he was doing what he was doing, and if perhaps there was a better way to do it.

When Denard Span hit a wall in the minor leagues, he adjusted, and now he's on a roll. If Span hits another wall, there's every reason to think that, since he's made the necessary adjustments once, he can do so again. People gave up on him, simply because many players who hit that wall don't figure out how to make the necessary adjustment -- but Span seems to have figured it out by taking a step back, then moving forward again.

Until Carlos Gomez shows he can make similar adjustments, rather than just go balls-out every play of every game, he won't even be the player that Span is, much less good enough to eclipse the upsides of players like Mauer and Young.

As Bad as it Was - It's Just One Game

Okay, Cliff Lee looked like crap, the offense did nothing off a former Indian, and as usual, the sky is falling after one loss. Settle down folks. Indians fans should be use to losing the first game of the season, it's happened 7 of the last 11 seasons. Deal with it.

The bigger question has to be Lee, who is being counted along to anchor a pitching staff that right now is questionable at best. He wasn't very good in the spring, and carried that over to Opening Day vs a Rangers team that can hit, but at the same time can be beat.

Maybe hindsight being what it is, Eric Wedge should have pulled Lee after he got hit on the forearm, or maybe after he got hit for four runs in the second inning. To his credit, Lee got into a groove in innings three and four until Hank Blalock hit a three-run no doubter in the fifth to put the game away.

But again, it's just one game, so relax. After all, you could be the Yankees, who just gave C.C. Sabathia a 7-year, $161 million dollar deal to go out and allow six runs, eight hits and five walks over 4 1/3 innings. In other words, it could be worse.

Interlude: Another Openin'

Another openin', another show,
In Philly, Boston, or Baltimo'
A change for stage folks to say 'hello'
Another openin' of another show

- Cole Porter, "Another Openin', Another Show" from Kiss Me Kate

In the theater world, opening night is a big deal, but it's sometimes hard to understand why.

After all, it's not as though you're still riding the wave of simply being in the show at all -- the exhilaration you feel when you find your name on the callback sheet and then the cast list is in many cases much more intense than the opening night jitters. It's not your first time in front of an audience, either -- you've had your fellow performers as an audience, for the most part, and even the most amateur of theaters tends to put on dress rehearsals (or 'preview' shows) for an audience prior to opening. Heck, though I've never performed in a place that did so, some higher-class theaters actually charge admission for their preview performances, so it's not as though you can even say it's the first performance for paying customers in every case. (Not to mention that I've had plenty of performances in shows that didn't charge admission at all, and thus the concept of a 'paid house' bringing extra anxiety simply wasn't sensible.)

So what's the magic of opening night?

As an actor, I can say a big part of the excitement was that opening night was the time at which you really got to say you owned the show -- the director would still watch and give notes, the designer would be around to tweak minor problems, but for the most part, opening night was the night that the show really belonged to you as a performer. Suddenly it was your baby, not the playwright's pet project or the producer's potential windfall.

So what does that have to do with baseball?

Another job that you hope, at last,
Will make your future forget your past,
Another pain where the ulcers grow,
Another openin' of another show

Baseball players are like actors in one sense: they've prepared in the off-season, polishing their craft, they've spent a month in dress rehearsals, they've competed to see their name on the final cast list, and now, opening night arrives. It's disingenuous, though, to say that a baseball player 'owns' the season the way an actor 'owns' a play -- the manager is still around and calling the shots in the dugout; the GM upstairs can trade you or cut you; the season is long and many things can happen, most of them out of your control.

Four weeks, you rehearse and rehearse,
Three weeks and it couldn't be worse,
One week, will it ever be right?
Then out o' the hat, it's that big first night!

Most players and fans, though, are looking for something like redemption, and they all find it on opening night. It's a cliché to say that every team is tied for first on Opening Day, but there's truth in it, too. A Yankee fan is excited to see how the expensive new arrivals perform; a Royals fan is hoping for fireworks, surprises, and a reason to keep hoping. A player who slumped looks for a rebound; a player who did well looks to do better. It's a tiny taste of innocence, that lasts through the umpire shouting 'Play Ball!' until the wear and grind of the season brings grim reality back to the forefront.

But for one night, anyway, everybody thinks he's got a shot, and that his team can go all the way.

Of course, as I write this, the Twins trail the Seattle Mariners 2-0 in the fifth. Some fans and teams get a longer honeymoon than others.

Your 2009 Shadow Twins - Left Field

With Opening Day approaching like a freight train, it's time to put this series into high gear. This week, the outfield, and then just in time for opening day, the DH.

Left Field - Carl Yastrzemski (961)

Alert to skeptics -- this is not a fluke. Yaz is Delmon Young's #1 age 22 comp, while Young is Yaz's #3 of-age comp at 22, tied with Clint Hurdle and Greg Luzinski. Of course, this doesn't mean that Young is destined to be a Hall of Famer -- others among Yaz's of-age comps didn't make the Hall, though pretty much all of them turned out to be solid players.

Some of you are probably not convinced, so let's go through the objections point-by-point:

Yaz was a Hall-of-Famer in part for the length and quality of his career. Just because Young is comparable to him at 22 doesn't mean he'll still be comparable at 42, or even still in the league.

This is true; any number of lurking disasters could await Young in his future, any of which would either end his career outright or lower his effectiveness as a ballplayer to the point where his career will be shortened. Nobody is promised a Hall-of-Fame career (though I sincerely hope those of you making this point were similarly skeptical of Johan Santana's chances at a Hall of Fame career back in 2006).

At the same time, barring some reason that disaster would be more likely to strike Young than some other Twin, say Mauer or Morneau, there's no reason that the knowledge that nobody is assured a Hall-of-Fame career means that we should discount that Young's start is similar to some very solid players, including some Hall-of-Famers. When measuring his upside, the Hall is a very real possibility. After all, nobody is discounting Mauer's potential based on the thought that he could shatter his hip sliding into second in any given game and be out of baseball forever.

But Young's been so slow to pick up the skills he needs to be a superstar; at this point, shouldn't the assumption be that he'll never pick up those skills?

This complaint comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of something Bill James wrote over 20 years ago. In the 1987 Bill James Baseball Abstract, James published a number of studies dealing with rookie players which came to a number of conclusions. One of those conclusions came from a study that compared rookies at varying ages and came to the conclusion that younger rookies tend to have longer, more productive careers than older rookies. James remarked (and here I'm paraphrasing) that the younger a player was when he established himself as a major-league player, the longer and more successful his career was likely to be. While this obviously isn't true in all cases (compare any 22-year old rookie phenom who eventually went bust to Edgar Martinez, for instance), it's true significantly more often than not.

The misunderstanding comes from what James meant by 'major-league player'. Some seem to have interpreted this to mean 'major-league star', which is pretty clearly not the case. In James's own studies, he showed that only about one in three Rookies of the Year went on to have Hall of Fame careers; about the same rate as RoYs went bust or had disappointing careers. The point that James was making is more that, if a 22-year old shows he can be a contributing member of a ballclub, his future is brighter than a 25-year old in the same circumstance. James himself suggested that this was because there were certain things about big-league baseball that one could only learn by playing in the big-leagues, but that hypothesis couldn't be proved given James's data set.

If you want to see a list of solid-to-great players who started their careers, not as stars, but as contributing players, you could do a lot worse than look at Yaz and his career comp list.

- Yaz himself hit .296/832 as a 22-year old for a Boston club that finished just below .500. (The club would continue to struggle, despite Yaz, until a critical mass of talent was assembled and manager Dick Williams was brought in to manage it in 1967.)

- Yaz's #1 career comp, Dave Winfield, hit .265/756 as a 22-year old for a San Diego club that lost 100 games. Though Winfield's OPS doesn't look great, keep in mind that the NL average OPS in '74 was 698, which meant that Winfield's adjusted OPS+ rated at 115.

- Yaz's #2 career comp, Eddie Murray, hit .283/803 with an OPS+ of 123, winning the Rookie of the Year award for the Orioles as a 21-year old in 1977, in the midst of arguably the Orioles' best period as a franchise in their AL history.

Yaz's comp list also includes players like Rafael Palmiero (.307/785 as a 23-year old Cub in 1988; he wouldn't hit more than 20 HR in a season until he was 26), Harold Baines (.271/790 as a 23-year old member of the White Sox in 1982, tying his second-highest season homer total of 25), and George Brett (.308/809 as a 22-year old with the Royals in 1975; he hit 11 HRs and only made it to 30 once in his career). Of course, Yaz's career comp list also contains players who were stars at an early age (Stan Musial, who won his first MVP at age 22; Al Kaline, who never won an MVP, but was second in the vote in 1955 as a 20-year old then finished third the next season at age 21; Frank Robinson, who hit 38 HRs as a rookie, winning the RoY and finishing seventh in the MVP voting that year). But the presence of young stars on Yaz's comp list doesn't invalidate the idea that you can still have an outstanding, even Hall-worthy career without being a young star, again as Yaz's own career shows.

Well, Yaz was also a great defensive player, while Young is basically crap.

Are you certain of that?

Yaz was considered a good defender and won his first (of many) Gold Gloves at age 23, but he was also patrolling probably the easiest left field in all of baseball. Young, meanwhile, was playing what arguably is the most difficult left field in all of baseball in the Metrodome.

Begin with the observable characteristics: a roof which is notorious for losing fly balls in (though the MSFC has installed colored lights to shine on the roof to make the background contrast a bit better, going to the Dome for a day game will demonstrate that the lights only do so much in those circumstances). Also, if you've ever sat in the lower-deck left field bleachers, you may have noticed a particular bank of lights hanging almost directly over the plate from the dead-left field perspective, making yet another way in which a player can lose the ball off the bat. Folks who made reports of Young's defense live lamented his seemingly slow first step off the crack of the bat, and his tentativeness when approaching balls in the outfield. Both of these seem explainable as park factors, not player problems.

Can I back this up? Not conclusively, but there is some evidence based on the last few players to play left regularly for the Twins:

- When Shannon Stewart was acquired by the Twins in 2003, he didn't have a bad defensive reputation (it wasn't great, but it wasn't bad, either); though Fangraphs only tracks Stewart's UZR and UZR/150 from 2002, his range stats and FP were as good or better in his earlier seasons than they were in 2002, when he scored a UZR/150 of 9.9 in left at Rogers Centre. The year he moved to Minnesota, he scored a combined UZR/150 for both Toronto and Minnesota of just 2.9, and in his next two full seasons in left in the Metrodome in 2004-2005 (he got nearly 200 starts), he managed a UZR/150 of -7.8 in 2004 and -10.7 in 2005. Though he performed nearly equally poorly in the cavernous left field at the Oakland Colliseum in 2007 (UZR/150 of -6.4), a return to the familiar and comfortable confines of Rogers Centre in 2008 bounced his UZR/150 back up to 16.1, albeit in limited play.

- Jacque Jones began his Twins career as the regular left fielder, avoiding the logjam in right between Michael Cuddyer, Michael Restovich, Bobby Kielty, and Dustan Mohr. The first year in which there's a UZR/150 for him was his last full season in left, 2002, prior to the acquisition of Stewart; though he assembled a 12.1 rating, it should be noted that his range factor was significantly higher in 2002 (2.4) than it was in 2001 (2.1) or 2000 (2.0). Moved to right after the Stewart acquisition, Jones had a solid defensive rep in right despite having less-than-stellar UZR/150 ratings there (-4.4 in 2004, -5.5 in 2005, and -0.2 in 2006). Leaving in 2007 to become a free agent with the Cubs and returning to his natural position of center, Jones was outstanding on D (UZR/150 of 16.1 in 645 defensive innings) but disappointing at the plate.

And let's not forget Young himself; as a regular right-fielder for the Rays in 2007, Young amassed a decent UZR/150 of 5.2 in over 1100 defensive innings. (Both his excellent RF rating in 2006 -- 16.7 -- and his execrable CF rating in 2007 -- -41.2 -- are probably small sample-size artifacts, given that both were achieved in about 250 defensive innings.)

My guess is that Young's defensive woes in 2008 were largely due to lack of familiarity with the Metrodome, and that not only should he be better in 2009 with more exposure to the environment, but should also gain a lot in his defensive rep with the move outdoors in 2010.

OK, but what about his attitude?

Attitude is an intangible, extremely difficult to quantify. Having an attitude isn't even necessarily a bad thing, as Yaz's comp list can also make plain -- while nobody ever had a bad thing to say about Stan Musial in his career, guys like George Brett, Dave Winfield, and even Cal Ripken were tagged with the 'attitude' label during their careers, accused of being more interested in their personal numbers than their team's success. These days, when the difference between a star and an average player is as small as its ever been (and where even average players, like Josh Hamilton, can become stars in the right circumstances), having a bit of attitude to help you get over the hump is probably on balance more of a benefit than a hindrance.

When most people ask about Young's 'attitude', though, they're asking a coded question -- will Delmon Young ever do the things he needs to do to become a great player? Young himself has been asked this question probably more times than he can count, and is rightly sick of it. Not to be fazed, reporters have moved on to ask his managers, his teammates, even his older brother (despite the fact that most of his managers, teammates, and definitely his older brother have never themselves been considered 'great' ballplayers). The question spins so thick around Young that it obscures how good a player he is already. Consider the following:

Young - .290/741, 102, 14/12
Gomez - .258/656, 79, 13/12

The number compare Minnesota's regular left-fielder with their most regular center-fielder last season, listing BA/OPS, OPS+, and WS/WSBench. (WSBench is the number of Win Shares a 'typical' player with the playing time of the actual player 'should' get.) Gomez was lauded as being a potentially tremendous all-around player, while Young was a profound disappointment, despite the fact that the two men overall were nearly identical, with Young actually being a step ahead.

Though admittedly, Young is older than Gomez -- about three months older (Gomez's birthdate is listed as December 4, 1985, while Young's is September 14, 1985).

We'll cover this more in our essay on the Shadow Twins' center-fielder, but just to complete the point here regarding Young: there is no sane universe in which Carlos Gomez has more upside than does Delmon Young. Period.

Six-word scouting report: Better than Gomez, now and forever.