You know who I’m talking about. He’s in your system somewhere.
He was drafted in the 12th round out of college, and performed acceptably in A Ball. At age 23, he completely bombed at Double-A, but he had potential, so got to repeat, performing better at age 24, among the league leaders in most important categories, but a year older than the competition. At age 25, having fallen from #5 to #29 in Baseball America’s Top 30 Team Rankings, he was promoted, and was about league average for AAA, but not good enough to earn a September call-up.
Now, he’s 26, off the BA Top 30, and is completely blowing away AAA competition his second time through. Maybe he’s 7-0 with a 1.29 ERA, or is hitting .369 with 7 homers.
What I want to know is, are MLE projections for this guy as reliable as for the “regular” prospect who spends one year at each level? Do we discount “second time through” stats? Do we promote this guy over the 24 year old with slightly worse stats, or do we just look at “the numbers” and figure our guy will outperform.
It seems like every year, there’s a debate about whether to call up the “hot guy” or the “young guy”. What do the numbers say?
