Super Nomario said:
Does that extend to say, Middlebrooks (obviously never as good a prospect as Bogaerts, but roughly as good a prospect as JBJ at the respective times they were promoted to MLB)?
Middlebrooks is a tough case. I'd say vaguely yes, to a lesser extent. I take issue with the equivalence between JBJ and WMB. I'll concede rough agreement with the "at the times they were promoted" caveat, because WMB came on strong, but you're comparing a 5th round pick in '07 (3+ mL seasons) with poor contact skills to a 1st round pick in 2007 (1 1/2 mL seasons) with plus discipline. If I can throw out 600 PA as the 'patience baseline' for any young player you expect to become a full-time regular, I'd argue WMB should get around that level rather than the extended patience I argued for JBJ. Really, we're talking about drawing lines that are a lot more squishy than the numbers I'm putting on them. But really, all prospects deserve some patience. It's somewhere more than 400 and somewhere less than 1000. YMMV.
WMB actually reminds me of Lowrie more than anything. Because of how the CBA and rookie deals work, sometimes circumstances and luck conspire to prevent a guy from getting maximum value out of those PAs. At some point, you can still like a guy, but the clock's running out on his (potential) breakout happening with the team that drafted him. WMB is at 740 PA in the bigs, but it's been so chunked up and disrupted it makes you feel like his clock is still back at about 300, but once you get into arb, teams need to shit or get off the pot. Lowrie was at about 900 PA when they traded him and, his playing time was also poorly distributed for cultivating improvement.
We talk a lot about the massive ROI teams get from cost-controlled players, and post-FA aging curves. Lowrie, and possiblyWMB, may be the opposite of that, where the venn diagram of original team control and his value peak just don't overlap. It stinks and it sucks, but it's shaping up to happen.
If we say JBJ gets 800 or 1000 PA to establish himself, what does his baseline production need to be at that point for you to feel confident in him going forward? Are you looking at his overall MLB line (likely still pretty bad given his struggles to date) or are you throwing his to-date numbers out if it looks like he's established a new baseline?
Yes, or, a little of both? A lot of it depends what they're getting from LF/RF/1B/DH over the next couple years. With JBJ it's less about 'will his bat be good' and more 'will his bat be not-shitty enough to support his glove', if we're projecting a pessimistic outlook. Assuming the overall lineup can support it, I'd live with JBJ and Vazquez putting up .310 OBPs in the 8-9 holes. To be comfortable making him a starter lock? I dunno, would be nice to see that OPB around .330. On-base and discipline are his calling cards, I'm putting about zero point zero weight or concern onto SLG for a year or two; I'd sort of be stunned if he moved his OPS up via that lever until he hits 26-27.
I'm much more likely to trust the recent numbers over the early numbers, but you can't just throw out the latter if you're trying to do a hard numbers projection