cardinalsrule00 wrote:steve, i have a question, and i'm not relating it to duncan in any way, it just came to my mind since this topic is up.
What were your projections for Pujols his rookie year? Did you see him becoming a washout, a consistent player, or a top-tier major leaguer (let alone
thebest player)
be honest
and p.s. how do duncan's minor league stats compare to albert's?? I'm not saying we have a second coming of Albert... that would be waay too much to ask for. We already won one crapshoot. I'm just saying that h.s/college/minor league stats dont mean much. Some hitters are just made for the Major Leagues
Here's to hoping baby dunc is for real
Albert played in the minor leagues for a grand total of ONE season. He was 20 years old, and in around 500 AB, he had around 70 extra basehits. He sprayed line drives all over the diamond. He was an uncommonly strong contact hitter. He was remarkably patient and selective and demonstrated the kind of command of the strike zone that almost always predicts future major league success. I saw him as being as close to a "can't-miss prospect" as there is.
Duncan, meanwhile, played in the low minors for five full years, only ONE of which was even remotely worthy of prospect status. After those five years he had two solid years -- one each in AA and AAA -- at an age where it would still be reasonable to thin of him as a prospect, but NOT at a catchng-lighning-in-a-bottle age like with Albert. Overall, Duncan's minor league career was very pedestrian (about a 750 OPS in seven years), with a decent enough trend up recently and at the higher levels.
As a mostly unrelated aside, I suppose a lot of folks just seeing my posts for the first time this year probably think I come down on the negative side of just about everything. Not so.
Those who were around in 2003-04 might recall a long string of wildly "optimistic" views and projections -- unpopularly so, since at the time the broad consensus was that we were a third place team and I was generally thought of as being polyanish, just liking everything and never seeing a downside (which of course was just as inaccurate as those who might now think I never see any upside).
I nailed Carpenter's 2004 season, I projected the 2004 team's runs scored within 5 runs and the runs allowed within around 15. I advised against getting down on Haren just because of the disasterous emergency start, was opposed to sending him back down, and felt that he would be a strong contributor. I expected Tavarez and Suppan to be successful for us. I saw Lankford as a useful addition.
Of course, Bo Hart had an OPS close to 900 after a full month and some 115 AB, and I won a LOT of bets on that, so all the hallmark Steverino ingredients were there back then too. And of course just to round out the picture I was wrong sometimes too (I didn't think Womack belonged on a major league roster, let alone in a starting lineup, and DEFINITELY not batting leadoff).
I use all the same methods, take all the same approaches, and see the same balance now as then; it's not me who is different, it is the team (we've gotten notably worse, so my projections are less optimistic) and the mainstream fans (the team has gone from underestimated to overestimated, so I'm STILL outside the mainstream, but in the opposite direction).
