from Amazon
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Best Age 22-26 WAR (Rookies)
With these conditions:
- born 1895 or later
- WAR at Age 21 of under 0.5
There are 586 players in Rally’s database that meets this criteria. Here’s the top 13, with their 5 year PA and 5 year WAR:
PA WAR born retroID
3200 39 1903 gehrl101
3069 37 1958 hendr001
3493 35 1960 ripkc001
3124 33 1942 alled101
3037 31 1898 frisf101
2994 29 1946 jackr001
3468 27 1974 jeted001
2581 27 1949 gricb001
3026 26 1975 roles001
2998 26 1954 randw001
3008 26 1961 mattd001
2815 25 1906 cronj101
3168 25 1959 raint001
I didn’t update the 2009 data, otherwise Joe Mauer would be in 5th place with 32. Anyway, the average of the top 2% of qualifying players averaged 30 WAR. This basically becomes the best-estimate for anyone that you KNOW will be great and you KNOW will get 3000 PA over the next 5 years. No one knows this.
You CANNOT forecast anyone, not a single rookie, with a 30 WAR for age 22-26. If you take the ten best position player prospects (aged 22 and younger) in the 1990s, I would bet that they would have averaged less than 20 WAR, if not 15 WAR, at ages 22-26.
(Age = year minus birth year)
I’m not sure which is better/worse, PECOTA’s 6-year projection of 4.8, 3.8, 2.9, 2.3, 2.0, 1.4 WARP for Montero or Oliver’s projection of 3.4, 4.3, 5.3, 6.1, 6.5, 7.5 WAR. Both just look absurdly wrong to my uneducated eyes.
I can’t believe that a 20-year-old rookie who is expected to perform well above average this year would be expected to be merely average within a few years and out of baseball by age 26 or 27.
I also can’t believe that a catcher who only has 44 games of experience beyond A-ball could reasonably be expected to perform as one of the very best young players in baseball history over the next six years, as Tom points out.