Nats Recall Bryce Harper

[AZBrewCrew]

this has been a good game to watch tonight. Bonus baseball now.

[pitchleague]

yeah, Dodger Stadium was pretty loud in the bottom of the 9th. I've got a friend at the game and he says it's total raucous.

[AZBrewCrew]

Kemp just walked off on the first pitch. They are all chanting MVP MVP MVP in LA.

[AZBrewCrew]

Oops, it was a 1-2 count not first pitch.

[Funketown]

Amazing that we praise Kemp on a night where he struggled so much. His OPS dropped tonight!

[brettac1]

What was amazing was how Stras just blew him away.

[3and2Fastball]

Strasburg was indeed pretty incredible in that game. He made Kemp look silly in 3 at-bats. Strasburg now has a 1.13 ERA and 0.875 WHIP and a 326 ERA+ (!) in 5 starts on this season.

 

Harper is a legit 5 tool talent. Huge mega-potential

[brettac1]

What a wonderful AB he just had against Jansen to draw a walk.

[TooLiveBrew]

I'd be shocked if he was league average or better this year and I would take the over on 1 trips back to the minors. Very strange timing on this since he didn't do very well in AA last year and has struggled in AAA this year. Still an exciting time for Nats fans and they sure could use it.

This is almost exactly what was said about Lawrie not being ready for MLB. Harper's promotion is all about his talent, not his MiLB stats.

[ninja33]

I don't think anyone was saying that about Lawrie last year. He was destroying AAA (.353/.415/.661) and was very good in AA the year before in the Milwaukee system. Harper was struggling in his brief time in AAA this year (.250/.333/.375) and put up a similar line to that in AA last year.

[Ennder]

I'd be shocked if he was league average or better this year and I would take the over on 1 trips back to the minors. Very strange timing on this since he didn't do very well in AA last year and has struggled in AAA this year. Still an exciting time for Nats fans and they sure could use it.

This is almost exactly what was said about Lawrie not being ready for MLB. Harper's promotion is all about his talent, not his MiLB stats.

 

I didn't see a single person say Lawrie wasn't ready last year, I didn't read one single person make that comment on this forum or the fantasy forums. People were worried about his BB rate to start the year at AAA but by the time he was called up that had passed. I think Trout is ready too, he had some major league experience last year and was killing AAA this year. Harper should be in the minors for another half season and the only reason he was brought up was because they are off to a hot start and want to get fans in the seats, I doubt it is because they think he will actually produce right away.

[TooLiveBrew]

I didn't see a single person say Lawrie wasn't ready last year, I didn't read one single person make that comment on this forum or the fantasy forums.

 

Iirc the Jays were set to call Lawrie up, but he injured something (wrist?) so that plan was scrapped, then he got called up later in the season. Iirc there was plenty of discussion about how, because his MiLB stats weren't nice at that point, he couldn't possibly be ready. MiLB stats are useful, but only to a point.

 

 

I'll agree to disagree on Harper. The Nats appear to be an organization that recognizes the value in pushing its elite young talent. I think he's going to hit, and very much justify the callup.

[chuckiehacks]

I'll agree to disagree on Harper. The Nats appear to be an organization that recognizes the value in pushing its elite young talent. I think he's going to hit, and very much justify the callup.

 

 

I agree. I think he'll strike out a ton, but I think he'll hit for enough power and contribute on defense to lend value to the Nats.

[longball04]

I hope the Nats keep winning. Will be nice to see someone else dominate, and dominate through the draft and development aspect of baseball. Of course, with that many early first picks over the years, the chances were some of these guys would pan out someday.

 

Just think if they would have signed Fielder in the offseason......

[3and2Fastball]

Just think if they would have signed Fielder in the offseason......

 

And have Fielder choke in the playoffs? (I apologize, couldn't resist)

[ninja33]

I didn't see a single person say Lawrie wasn't ready last year, I didn't read one single person make that comment on this forum or the fantasy forums.

 

Iirc the Jays were set to call Lawrie up, but he injured something (wrist?) so that plan was scrapped, then he got called up later in the season. Iirc there was plenty of discussion about how, because his MiLB stats weren't nice at that point, he couldn't possibly be ready. MiLB stats are useful, but only to a point.

 

 

I'll agree to disagree on Harper. The Nats appear to be an organization that recognizes the value in pushing its elite young talent. I think he's going to hit, and very much justify the callup.

 

Lawrie had an OPS of 1.076 when he was called up last year. I'm still not sure what discussion you're talking about (not that I disagree on Harper, I like the call up. Couple weeks to get his feet wet...if he hits, he stays and if he doesn't then he goes back down when Zimmerman or morse are back)

[TheCrew07]

Lawrie had an OPS of 1.076 when he was called up last year. I'm still not sure what discussion you're talking about (not that I disagree on Harper, I like the call up. Couple weeks to get his feet wet...if he hits, he stays and if he doesn't then he goes back down when Zimmerman or morse are back)

 

He's referring to the various threads where this has been discussed not limited to but including the trade thread from the winter of '10 and the wrist thread from the summer of '11. The search function here isn't very powerful and my search of "Lawrie" returned to way too many results for me to go through and find the specific posts. However to sum it up it pretty much went like:

 

"he's a douche, good riddance"

"didn't perform to his talent"

"one hot streak doesn't make him ready"

and various justifications for the trade because Marcum is a solid pitcher

 

In my opinion MLEs are pretty much worthless, very few players actually have an "average" career trend when they are called up. I'm not looking to get into another debate about the topic, we've been debating it with the same arguments on both sides forever. There can be any number of factors that make a promotion of a young player necessary, but the only thing that I care about is that the talent is given enough room to make mistakes and then blossom. It's going to be a bumpy ride with most prospects but Harper is a once a generation type of talent from a physical standpoint, if his head doesn't get in the way there's no reason to believe his play will not ascend over the course of the season. Even if he ends up back in AAA his MLB experience will serve him well.

 

I still have a very hard time believing that Estrada will be a better a pitcher than Peralta over any kind of significant sample and in relative talent terms I'll feel the same way about Harper vs the other options to replace Zimmerman in the line-up. Harper is more comparable to a Strasburg then a Peralta or even a Gallardo talent wise, but I hope I made my point well enough that people understand what I'm trying to say. There is no such thing as a perfect prospect, there's no such thing as "ready", if a player isn't making constant adjustments he isn't going to last, especially from a hitting standpoint. It doesn't make sense to hold a player back until he reaches some arbitrary milestone in AAA, AAA is way more valuable for pitchers than it is hitters because the best arms don't spend much time in AAA, but almost all of them spend a full season in AA. However there are enough professional hitters in AAA to make the experience for pitchers worthwhile, though it's not any kind of prerequisite for MLB success.

 

It really comes down to a bunch of intangible factors that are very difficult to evaluate statistically and that's why for every Gallardo there seems to be a Parra.

[ninja33]

i know there were plenty of "lawrie is a douche" comments. But the conversation here was something like thist:

 

-the initial point made was that it was surprising Harper was called up because he was struggling in AAA, and was mediocre in AA last year.

-Someone said "that's the same thing they said about Lawrie" and that people were saying "Lawrie wasn't ready because his MiLB stats aren't any good"

-I said that's ridiculous, Lawrie was destroying AAA before he was called up.

[Ennder]

I'll agree to disagree on Harper. The Nats appear to be an organization that recognizes the value in pushing its elite young talent. I think he's going to hit, and very much justify the callup.

 

The Rays are an organization that recognizes the value of giving its elite talent time to mature in the minors, I'll gladly compare resumes between the two. Pushing your elite young talent is just dumb, no nicer way to put it. It is minimizing the value of your players and hamstringing your own organization.

[TooLiveBrew]

i know there were plenty of "lawrie is a douche" comments. But the conversation here was something like thist:

 

-the initial point made was that it was surprising Harper was called up because he was struggling in AAA, and was mediocre in AA last year.

-Someone said "that's the same thing they said about Lawrie" and that people were saying "Lawrie wasn't ready because his MiLB stats aren't any good"

-I said that's ridiculous, Lawrie was destroying AAA before he was called up.

Was he destroying AAA before he was *going* to be called up, when the wrist injury derailed the initial callup (obv. he was then later called up)? I'm asking honestly.

[Ennder]

i know there were plenty of "lawrie is a douche" comments. But the conversation here was something like thist:

 

-the initial point made was that it was surprising Harper was called up because he was struggling in AAA, and was mediocre in AA last year.

-Someone said "that's the same thing they said about Lawrie" and that people were saying "Lawrie wasn't ready because his MiLB stats aren't any good"

-I said that's ridiculous, Lawrie was destroying AAA before he was called up.

Was he destroying AAA before he was *going* to be called up, when the wrist injury derailed the initial callup (obv. he was then later called up)? I'm asking honestly.

 

From an OPS standpoint he was destroying AAA from the start of the season. The one big wart was that he just wasn't walking at all early in the season but that picked up as the season went on.

[TooLiveBrew]

The Rays are an organization that recognizes the value of giving its elite talent time to mature in the minors, I'll gladly compare resumes between the two. Pushing your elite young talent is just dumb, no nicer way to put it. It is minimizing the value of your players and hamstringing your own organization.

How nice of you to try so hard.

 

It's different philosophies, it's not that one way is stupid or not. The Rays, coincidentally, aren't afraid at all to push a prospect when they have faith in his talent being ready -- see David Price.

[TooLiveBrew]

From an OPS standpoint [Lawrie] was destroying AAA from the start of the season. The one big wart was that he just wasn't walking at all early in the season but that picked up as the season went on.

Hmm, I guess I lumped some of the discussion of how he wasn't really a top prospect because his stats weren't impressive (probably in the Marcum trade thread) into the callup discussion. Guess I was wrong.

 

Where can you check MiLB splits for past seasons? I know minorleaguesplits.com is obviously long dead at this point.

[ninja33]

i can't find any minor league splits. But fangraphs has his game log, and it looks like he was pretty much killing it the whole season (although it's hard to tell because there's no running tally of rate stats). That's how I remember it as well. He was playing great before the injury (everyone was pining for him to get called up, from a fantasy standpoint)...then he came back and had a couple rough games before picking it up again.

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/statsd.aspx?playerid=5247&position=3B&season=2011

[logan82]

Yeah kind of destroying AAA pitching. .353/.415/.661/1.076 Baseball Reference is my go to for MiLB stats. They don't have splits though. Splits for minor league stats are hard to come by.