re young catchers mss netcom com mark singer said in article blue cis pitt edu genetic pitt edu david m tate writes mss netcom com mark singer said we know that very very few players at this age make much of an impact in the bigs especially when they haven t even played aaa ball yes but this is irrelevant you re talking about averages when we have lots of information about this player in particular to base our decisions on do you really have that much information on him really i don t personally but clay just posted it yes we do unfortunately it shows that lopez wasn t as good an example as nieves would have been since his last year numbers were out of line with the previous years which i didn t have access to the point remains though knowing a guy s minor league history is as good as knowing his major league history if you know how to read it why isn t lopez likely to hit that well he hit that well last year after adjusting his stats for park and league and such he hit better on an absolute scale than olson or berryhill did by a lot i don t know you tell me what percentage of players reach or exceed their mle s in their rookie season we re talking about you know the mle is not a projection it s an equivalence it s a this is how well he hit last year in major league terms rating so in essence he has already reached it i would guess bob clay that essentially half of all players surpass their previous mles in their rookie seasons maybe more than half since all of these players are young and improving if that were your purpose maybe offerman spent getting acclimated if you will the dodgers as a team paid a big price that season did they offerman may have been the difference between th or th place and last place but no more perhaps they will reap the benefits down the road do you really think they would have done what they did if they were competing for a pennant sure they didn t have anyone better i suppose they might have gutted the farm system to acquire jay bell or spike owen or somebody if they were really in contention the point was not that ab is a significant sample but rather that he hadn t done anything in spring training to cause even a blockhead manager to question whether his minor league numbers were for real or to send him down until he gets warmed up for a stat head i m amazed that you put any credence in spring training if you d read what i wrote you d be less amazed nowhere do i claim to put any credence in spring training quite the contrary i said that lopez hadn t done anything that even the bozos who do put credence in spring training could interpret as failure just because i think spring training numbers are meaningless doesn t mean that bobby cox does it s just a case of ruling out one possible explanation for sending lopez down the kid will improve playing at aaa just like keith mitchell did wait a minute i missed something here keith mitchell did very very well at aa aaa and the majors over a season then did very very poorly for a year in aaa david m tate i do not know what it is about you that closes posing as and opens only something in me understands e e can the pocket of your glove is deeper than pete rose s dy cummings nobody not even tim raines has such soft hands
