ROOKIES – A RUSH TO JUDGEMENT?
Nomar Mazara is on pace for a .285-20-65-65 season. If he were to do that, as a 21 year old outfielder with the Rangers, it would be a remarkable season. Period. However, it’s not as simple as that.
Mazara hit .333 in April.
I was fielding question after question about Mazara being a .300+ hitter. I said there was no way he was a .330 hitter and that I would be stunned if he was a .300 hitter this season. For that Twitter lit me up. Person after person defended Mazara and said I was merely a rookie hater. We’ll get back to that in a moment.
As the month of May pulled to a close Mazara was hitting .302 with nine homers and 24 RBI in 44 games. That was a 150 game pace that would lead to a .302-31-82 effort. We’ll get back to that in a moment, though it’s obvious that his to date performance is nowhere near that hemisphere.
From June 1st to the All-Star break Mazara played 37 games. Remember, his great run to start the year was 44 games. After posting a slash line of .302/.348/.479 in the first half of his rookie season he has gone .257/.309/.346 in the second half of the first half of the 2016 season. Over the last 37 games since June started Mazara also has two homers and 12 RBI. That’s a 150 game pace of eight homers and 49 RBI.
FOR AS LONG AS HE WAS A STAR MAZARA HASN’T EVEN BEEN A LEAGUE AVERAGE HITTER.
That’s one of the main issue with rookies. Let me lay those concerns out, again.
1 – Just because a player is an elite talent/prospect does not mean he will be a star in his first season.
2 – We have no idea who will succeed or fail in their first season regardless of talent level (check out how bad Mike Trout or Clayton Kershaw were in their first seasons).
3 – Just because a player starts slowly doesn’t mean he stinks.
4 – Just because a player starts quickly doesn’t mean he’s a star.
I know, I know, you’re thinking I’m just railing against a few. I’m not. If you had any idea how many questions I get every single day about minor leaguers you would be stunned. It’s unending. Day, after day, after day. This leads to the fifth point.
5 – Make sure you understand who a player is. I know this sounds stupid to say, but you would be shocked as to the misunderstanding folks have with minor leaguers and rookies. Back to the Mazara thing from above.
I was bashed mercilessly when I dared to suggest that Mazara wasn’t a .330 hitter in April. Folks repeated their tired claim that I was a rookie hater and that I only like old guys. How dare I suggest he wasn’t a .300 hitter, the guy was hitting .330! But here’s the problem with everyone who argued against me – they had no idea who Mazara is.
As a minor leaguer Mazara was a .270 career hitter. Here are his batting average marks per season.
2012: .264
2013: .236
2014: .271
2015: .296
Yes he is tremendously young, but Nomar had failed to hit .272 in three of his four minor league seasons. So why did people suddenly believe he was easily going to hit .300 this season in the big leagues? Because they had no idea who Mazara actually is. Beyond the data, there’s the opinion of the scouting community, which I share, that the skills says that Mazara is a .265-ish type of hitter. Remember, Mazara has hit .257 since the start of June. As I said when the season began, I thought Mazara was a .260-25 type of hitter in a best case scenario. Again, that’s what the community thought of Mazara. Alas, no one listened, and those of you who didn’t are now stuck with a guy who hasn’t even been a league average hitter the last month and a half, and there’s no reason at all to think that he’s going back to the guy we saw the first 44 games of the season. None.
Now we’re on to the next “rookie superstar” in Alex Bregman who is on the cusp of being called up by the Astros (Jim Bowden reported it will happen in days). Bowden reports that the Astros will likely call up Bregman to play third base with Luis Valbuena being moved to first base. This means that A.J. Reed will likely 
be sent back to the minors. Of course, that's if you believe Bowden because on Wednesday manager A.J. Hinch directly refuted that report and said Bregman isn't coming up this week.
1 – Reed is one of the best power hitting prospects in baseball (he was ranked as the 11th best prospect in baseball according to Baseball America coming into the season). Reed earned that praise after annihilating minor league pitchers last season in 135 games with a .340-34-127-113 line that included a 1.044 OPS. Those are ELITE levels of production.
2 – Given his pedigree, everyone in the fantasy universe was falling all over themselves to add Reed when he was promoted a few weeks ago.
3 – Reed has appeared in 13 games with the Astros and has failed with a .143/.244/.314 slash line leading to a .558 OPS. Worse than those numbers might be the fact that he’s struck out 16 times in 35 at-bats, an atrocious pace.
4 – Now we’re hearing that Reed could be out and in essence replaced in the starting lineup by Bregman with the Astros. Remember folks, Reed is an elite power prospect coming off a massive season. He has a slow start and the Astros might be moving on from him for the moment. Does that seem reasonable to you? It’s the same thing that I castigate you all for doing – bailing on a player without the sample size being large enough. Still, with no background of success, all rookies are more likely to be benched or demoted when they struggle early on than a veteran is.
5 – A rookie, is a rookie is a rookie (words that you often hear from Lenny Melnick). The height of this hit me last night when one of my twitter followers asked me if he should drop Reed to add… Bregman.
Folks you have to plant your flag somewhere.
Get the data and make a stand.
If you’re going to hop around from one rookie to another every three weeks… what’s the point?
I still maintain, and the data overwhelmingly supports me, that depending on rookies to lead you to the promise land doesn’t work.
I don’t know why history saying that doesn’t impact you all more.
Ray Flowers can be heard Monday through Friday, 7 PM EDT and Friday on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio (Sirius 210, XM 87). You can also hear Ray Sunday nights at 7 PM on the channel talking fantasy sports. Follow Ray’s work at Fantasy Alarm and on Twitter (@baseballguys).