The Problem of Puig

My dad and I had a conversation a few days ago where I asked him “So where do you think Puig ends the season?”  My dad is not a major stats person like myself but he does pay attention and his answer was “Bout a .330 AVG with maybe 25 plus HR’s.”  My reply was simply “Ok, I think he’ll end the season closer to .287 AVG and the max HR’s is around 20-23.”  He looked at me quizzically and simply said “Really?!?”  After this conversation it makes me think on how many players like Puig have come up this season, not players with similar talent pools but players that don’t have a real track record so far in the minors and from a statistical point of view have no real info on.  When I look at stats I look for players with a good enough track record to get an idea on how he will play in the majors but players like Puig, Kevin Gausman, Mike Trout and Bryce Harper all had very little time in the minors but were brought up very quickly to the majors to see how they do.  The four players I just mentioned were in the majors 1 year or less after begin drafted.

            When I look at young prospects I tend to look for the stats they produced in the lower level.  This doesn’t tell me everything but it does give me an idea about what I can expect moving forward and depending on his play through the ranks I get a better idea how he will do in the higher divisions.  Puig had half a season in the minors and the Dominican Republic doesn’t really make the stats well known so what do we get to go off of?  Pretty much what we see is what we get, its kind of why I feel both statistical analysis and traditional scouting are both needed to get a hold of a player since with no info numbers wise we go off what we see.  I call this a “problem” only because I see it leading to many problems in the future with players.  Gausman so far looks over-matched in the majors and he’s a product of this same idea.

            The end goal is to get lucky with your best prospects, we’ve seen this with Evan Longoria, Anthony Rizzo and others that do well or well enough to justify a massive contract (years wise not money) to lock them up and keep them cheap.  I fear that at some point this is going to blow up in a teams face sadly.  But for now us stat guys will just have to work with that data we have till there’s enough of a sample size to make guesses and see how these young players end up.