Scoggins lowers the boom on Twins/Hicks situation

[TheLeviathan]

So lets get the facts here:

 

1) Toxic relationship with management

2) Relearning something he hasnt done since puberty struck

3) Already overwhelmed by current competition

4) Has been subbed for with a career shortstop and backup catcher

 

How does anyone still endorse the status quo? The alternatives suck but this is putrid. We are tossing a former top prospect into a shark filled, enclosed wading pool and people are justifying it as a good way to learn to swim. Baffling.

[Brock Beauchamp]

Yep. But why not this guy, instead? Costs you only $$$ (and it might force them to bring Tony Oliva to the major league full-time):

 

I'm not entirely against that idea but it all comes down to money. I'm a bit wary of putting a bunch of money into a guy who will probably be shifted to a corner outfield spot as soon as next season.

 

Then again, the Twins don't have many holes right now that don't have quality prospects rising through the minors at the position. Maybe spending money on an outfielder isn't a bad idea.

[jokin]

I'm not entirely against that idea but it all comes down to money. I'm a bit wary of putting a bunch of money into a guy who will probably be shifted to a corner outfield spot as soon as next season.

 

Then again, the Twins don't have many holes right now that don't have quality prospects rising through the minors at the position. Maybe spending money on an outfielder isn't a bad idea.

 

If Carbonell would be the first option in CF, only until Buxton arrives some time in 2015, and then joins a corner OF core group with Arcia and Rosario, I could live with that. (3 guys who could legitimately play CF, all on the team at the same time, that might solve this problem once and for all, and then you have Hicks back in reserve doing more remedial work in Rochester, with an outside shot to revive his career).

 

Whichever bat doesn't play in a corner spot, you consider the infield in Rosario's case, or a trade....as the Twins demonstrated with Span and Revere, you should always be able to get a decent return when trading a CFer.

[The Wise One]

It's an interesting point you bring up, and I do admit to mostly assuming that age matters. It's a simplistic explanation, and one that may not fit every player the same way. However, simplistic explanations should only be avoided when they are so simple as to be misleading. I admit to not having hard data to back this up, but I would challenge anyone to look at a list of top performers and find more of them who were "late bloomers" than were consistently young for their level of professional ball. (Without cherry-picking!) Take the average age of a rookie ballplayer, and I'll bet you dollars to donuts there are vastly more top performers who debuted before that average age than on or after. I would bet that this would hold even if you limited the sample to ballplayers with, say, at least a five year career, to knock out the 28 year old rookies who are just injury fill-ins.

 

And I think common sense (not to say your skepticism isn't sensible) backs this up. If a high school senior gets a perfect SAT score, that's impressive. If a 13 year old does the same, isn't that more impressive? And wouldn't you expect more out of that 13 year old, and sooner? I could analogize to many other walks of life, but wouldn't the same apply to baseball?

 

The point I was also trying to make that you are sort of hitting on. There are 5 types of players in AA. Three of the types are on their way up through the system. Those that you are fairly sure they are going to be in AAA, those that might get there, and those that you go damn, I thought they were better players. The 4th group can be in one of the first 3 but called lost significant time to injury. The 5 th group is organizational filler. The latter three groups would drive the average age up. When you look at your prospect does it really matter to compare him to anything but the first group in age and stastics? The issues is development for the major leaugue, so the relative factors people like to use to me are worthless.

If you compare what your prospect has done and compare it to the work that players who made it to the majors as a success might be more useful. Comparing the player on what his stats are against the players you think will make the majors could be useful. Can't see where it does any good to compare the player to filler and failures. If you say small sample sizes for what I would want to look at are a problem then tell me a number that one would need. I have never seen where an author looked at reliabity and margain of error on their statistics.