Evan Gattis: Age Ain’t Nothin’ But A Number (but numbers are important)
February 15, 2013 at 1:04 pm by Franklin Rabon under Atlanta Braves
I guess at some point we had to take the bear on instead of poking it in the comments. You often hear the familiar trope, “age ain’t nothin’ but a number” and it’s often applied to the case of Evan Gattis by hopeful Braves fans, and perhaps even some talent evaluators who follow the Braves. In some sense they’re right, all it is is a number, but as it turns out, it’s a very important number. Today we’re going to discuss that number, what it does mean, what it doesn’t mean, and how it affects our evaluation of Gattis.
One charge we often get at Capitol Avenue Club is that we overplay the importance of age as the be all and end all of prospect evaluation, and we need to get our heads out of the birth certificates and WATCH THE GAMES. Evan Gattis is a beast they say, pummeling fourth world countries into near oblivion with home run power not seen the side of Giancarlo Stanton. Gattis has an interesting story they say, it’s not that he was a failed prospect, it’s that he was outside of baseball for several years, so we shouldn’t hold his age against him they say.
Let’s first observe how age changes the perception of a prospect. Rany Jazayerli laid out the importance of age very profoundly in his excellent piece in Extra Innings: More Baseball Between the Numbers from the Team at Baseball Prospectus
Rany’s study first looked at high school draftees, what Rany found is that controlling for the spot a player was drafted in, the five youngest player’s in a draft year produced 117 percent more value for their draft spot than the 5 oldest players in the draft. 117 Percent. That’s over twice as good.
Now, first you might think “well, that is the five youngest versus the five oldest, pretty extreme right?” Consider that this is for high school draftees only. So the five youngest players in the draft were barely a year younger than the five oldest. What we see is that a difference between 7-11 months in age when a player is drafted can mean that scouts undervalue their talent level by 117 percent.
On the flip side of that, we have the effect popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers: The Story of Success
The answer is no, these seemingly disparate trends actually point in the same direction, and for the same exact reason. And it’s neither good nor bad, as far as skill goes, to be young or old for your level. The reason why is that age doesn’t affect ultimate skill level (ie what a player will ultimately become), it affects perception.
Remember what Rany found wasn’t necessarily that the younger players ended up being better players than the older players. He found that, given where they were drafted, they ended up being much better than you would have expected. That is, that they were underrated. Conversely, he found that the older players were overrated, and ended up being much worse than would have been expected, given where they were drafted. People often confuse underrated with good and overrated with bad. When I tell people that I think BB King was overrated, it’s not that I think he was a bad guitarist, I think he was fantastic, it’s that I think he wasn’t as good as Freddie King, Albert King, not to mention a whole host of other great bluesmen not named King.
Similarly, the reason why kids who are ‘old for their level’ are more likely to be drafted is simply because they’re overrated, because they’re using an extra year of physical development to fool scouts as to their true projectable level.
Thus far we’ve been talking about the draft. However, the same principle applies throughout minor league development as well. Players who are old for their level will often beat up on less physically developed players, and fool you with regards to their talent level, if you’re not careful. Conversely, a player who is young for his level, but succeeds anyway, is an incredibly special player indeed. The most remarkable thing about Heyward’s rookie season wasn’t the raw numbers. It was that he put those numbers up as a twenty year old. Incidentally, it’s quite possible that the only reason Heyward fell to the Braves where he did was that he, like Mike Trout, was young for his level when drafted out of high school. It’s not a coincidence that a lot of teams are now wishing they had taken Heyward and Trout instead of letting them fall to the later portions of the first round.
Evan Gattis has primarily drawn attention through three avenues. First, his story is interesting. Sports writers like narratives. They like writing about how Gattis wandered the great southwest with spiritual advisers as he worked odd jobs. Secondly, Gattis is a large dude. Especially when he’s standing next to a bunch of gangly 19 year olds in A ball, the disparity can be stunning. Finally, he’s been incredibly productive in the minor leagues. He’s put up wRC+’s of 108 (rookie ball), 165 (low A), 240 (high A) and 139 (AA). The problem is that NONE of these tell us all that much.
The fact that Gattis taking several years off of baseball is often cited as a positive for his career arc is stupefying to me. I don’t fully comprehend how, from a pure baseball standpoint, those years can be viewed as anything other than years of lost development. Those were years when he wasn’t refining his defensive skills, when he wasn’t learning to pick up on the difference between a fastball and a slider earlier in the pitch’s flight, when he wasn’t learning how to take more efficient routes to fly balls. They’re years of development he can never get back. However, when you bring up his age, you’re inevitably greeted with some form of “well, but he took all that time off, so his age doesn’t matter.”
The fact that Gattis is such a physically developed man, especially in comparison to his teammates and competition in low A, high A and AA also isn’t a plus. What we’re doing is seeing his physical domination of those less physically developed players, and confusing it with him being a player with better upside. Essentially, Evan Gattis is currently as physically good at baseball as he will ever be, so putting up huge numbers in the lower and mid minors doesn’t tell us much of anything, other than what we already knew, which is that he’s more physically developed than his competition.
I’d love to see Evan Gattis succeed. I’d love nothing more than for him to defy all odds and become a productive major leaguer. However, I also have to understand that Gattis is already at his peak, and he’s never even seen a major league pitcher yet. He could very well be a bench player this year, but unlike other, younger players, he will most likely never get any better. Next year he will be 27 years old, and will already be in the physical decline portion of his career. It’s more likely than not that he will be out of baseball by the age of 30. I hope he proves me wrong, but I also understand that it’s just blind hope at an extreme long shot, because the most likely reality is simply what the number tells us, that he’s too old to end up being a productive major leaguer for very long. If being old for your level often fools even major league scouts, who should absolutely know better, we certainly have to be extremely careful that it doesn’t fool us.
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Great piece.
There may be something to Gattis lacking experience and possibly getting better with experience.
But it seems much more likely that, along with the fact that he’s already in the physical decline phase, that lost time was also lost development time.
Baseball is a game of repetition. You get better at baseball by playing baseball, playing baseball and playing more baseball. If you spend a significant portion of your early 20′s away from the game, you aren’t using that time to hone and develop skills. Yet another reason to be skeptical of the Gattis hype.
sure, I agree with that, he could gain some polish, polish that most players get by the age of 21, but polish non the less.
I get better at playing baseball by eating fries, but my baseline was pretty low.
I agree with your overall point, that many Braves fan are overrating Gattis and it’s foolish to think he’ll be a productive major leaguer when he’s playing against people five years younger than him. And I also agree, and I think most would, that if he does make the major leagues, he will have a shorter career than someone who makes it at a younger age. But I think it’s a mistake to say he’s too old to be a productive major leaguer. If he were a talented enough player, like Josh Hamilton was, he could overcome the lost development time and be a good player. The issue here is that there’s no reason to expect Gattis to be productive. Literally everything he has done in the minors is basically worthless information. He may be talented enough to be a major leaguer, but we have no reason to expect that, and since more players fail than succeed, we should probabilistically expect him to fail. His age isn’t really preventing him from succeeding, but it’s preventing us from having any useful information about whether he will succeed. You could put a 26 year old Albert Pujols in the minors, and pretend he was playing under an alias and we didn’t know he’s Pujols, and even though he’d kill it, you shouldn’t expect him to be good. Because everything he did would be meaningless.
I hardly think we’re going to take an Evan Gattis/Albert Pujols comparison seriously.
Did you read what I wrote? I didn’t compare Gattis and Pujols at all. My point was simply that you wouldn’t even be able know that Pujols was Pujols from 26 year old triple A stats. You basically have to throw out everything he does until he gets to the majors as meaningless. Dominating double/triple A tells us nothing about who a player is when said player is 26.
I agree with the article when evaluating Gattis as a prospect (i.e. his career value is limited because he may not be around for long). However, I want to see Gattis make this team because he may be the best option we have.
I think sometimes we get too caught up on prospect status instead of plugging the right person in to fill a need. I think we have better prospects (and young players), but I don’t know that we have a better bench bat for this season on our roster. So I say let him play and let his performance dictate whether he should stick around.
So if FatJuan starts, who swings the bat against a RHP late in a game? Chris Johnson? I hope we’d be able to do better than that.
Mejia or Gattis would be better.
I agree TOTALLY!
It’s too far an unknown quantity. If he does get a shot, I’d think he’d need to make the team out of a partial year in AAA.
Correct me if I am wrong, but didn’t the Angels get Trout with the pick they gained for the Yankees signing Teixeira?
Besides age (which is obviously huge) there are plenty of other reasons to think Gattis will not be productive in the majors.
Pujols, for instance, as a 20-year-old in A-Ball struck out 37 times in 440 PA.
Gattis 377 PA in A-Ball in 2011, at age 24, and struck out 53 times.
If we look at how Gattis is putting up those impressive slash lines in the minors, besides age, we also see that it seems to be mostly based on power but his contact and command of the strikezone is not what we would expect from a 23-25-year-old in the low minors. This is further evidence that his impressive slash line is due to the fact that he’s just more physically imposing than the players he played against.
I know it’s not ideal and can be dangerous to purely scout a stats page but I think there is useful information there.
Okay, the numbers tell us that Gattis won’t be as productive as Pujols, but a few of us would have guessed that to be so even without seeing the numbers. But the numbers don’t actually tell us that Gattis won’t be average or slightly better than average in the majors, which would still be of value.
I understand what Gladwell was stating about outliers, so I certainly wouldn’t call Gattis an outlier.
I also agree that the probability of being successful for an extended period of time is also not in Gattis’ favor, but, there have been extremely good players that play well through their mid to late 30′s.
What if Gattis is actually that type of player. Where learning now instead of 4 years ago certainly limits the number of years he might have been able to play but it doesn’t limit him from continuing to learn and then beat the odds on the age that he can reach being an effective player.
I agree the odds are not with him but he has not given anyone a reason to give up on his career to this point.
If it were me I wold start him at Triple A this year and let him catch, play left field and play 1st base. He might become a very good utility player that can sub in at three positions plus be valuable coming off the bench.
It wouldn’t be giving up on his career if he doesn’t get a chance in the majors. It would be any number of reasons that he could lose the chance.
For quite a few years, we saw the Braves allow the last bench spot to be handled in the minors, but I would think that this would be a hindrance to Gattis, who would be much better off getting at-bats in AAA and getting the call up if he’s needed.
What if Gattis was born in the Dominican, and had falsely been reported as actually 23 years old????
I kid I kid. Good read, and I hope he proves people wrong.
A possible comparison: players who left MLB at age 22 in their rookie season for World War II and then returned at age 26. For those with spare time, the interest and the skills to analyze the relevant databases.
Also Josh Hamilton left the game from 22-26. Returned and basically went straight to MLB (Reds had to go with that as a Rule 5 pick). Of course Josh Hamilton is a rare talent, so I’m not sure that’s a fair comparison. But he entered the game when he should be in his “decline,” and has done nothing but get better (when healthy).
This piece does a great job of outlining the reasons to be skeptical about Gattis’s future. It doesn’t do the whole job, however, because it fails to discuss the other side of the argument.
For one thing, size and physical development alone don’t make a baseball player; if they did, Joe Morgan would never have played above A ball and Andre the Giant would be enshrined in Cooperstown. Baseball is unique among major league sports in requiring a range of skills some of which have nothing to do with size. Being 6’5″, on its own, doesn’t help you hit a ball on the sweet spot.
For another, the piece neglects to take mental development into consideration. While the analogy to baseball is certainly imperfect, I can attest to the fact that, having taken twenty-odd years off between my teenaged years in bands and my resuming my musical hobby in my early forties, my bass playing actually improved considerably (once I had my callouses back and got my finger muscles up to speed). Why? Because in the intervening twenty years I never stopped *thinking* about playing bass; I would listen to songs in the car and mentally (or even sometimes figuratively) finger the notes. Doing so strengthened the pertinent neural pathways in my brain, and when I finally picked up a bass again I was, in a very short time, a much better player than I had previously been. (This phenomenon is amply borne out by research data, and explains why practicing envisioning a task you want to improve at helps you get better at it.)
Third, speaking only for myself, I was a freaking idiot at 19. At 26 I wasn’t yet as wise as I hope I’ve become, but I knew more about myself and about the world, and found myself better able to focus on a goal and work with discipline to achieve it, with a strength of concentration and willpower the younger me would have been amazed at. Some of what Gattis will soon lack in physical potential may well be at least partially balanced by what he seems to have gained in maturity and focus, with a possibly salutary effect on his work ethic and mental approach.
Now, don’t misunderstand me; I’m not saying the piece’s conclusion is wrong. But there is, at least, another side to the argument, a side with some empirical evidence in its favor. The fact is, we don’t know what Evan Gattis is going to do. He will never be Albert Pujols; he may never be Joey Hamilton. We should not expect him to be. But he may well prove to be a valuable asset to a big league club for a while, which is more than the vast majority of us could ever hope for.
In these discussions, I’m always reminded that Mike Piazza, the greatest-hitting catcher of all time, wasn’t picked until the 62nd round, after 1,389 other players had been claimed. Let’s keep an open mind about El Oso Blanco and see what happens.
The problem with this argument is that we have substantial evidence that baseball players tend to peak by their age 27-28 season and drop off from there.
Physical specimen or not, many more times than not, you just tend to lose abilities after that time.
This has been addressed a little, particularly by Hotspur, but the point people have when they talk about Gattis missing several years is that, essentially, that moves his physical development ahead of his baseball development. It’s the same thing that Ethan is talking about in his prospect writeups, where he cautions that high school players (e.g. Justin Black, Fernelys Sanchez) from cold climates are set back in their development and will need more time in the minors – but also in some sense have a higher ceiling than they’ve shown. We don’t say that those players are irrevocably set back in their careers, although in a sense they might be. In Gattis’ case, obviously, it’s a lot more extreme, and the fact that he’s wasting his prime years in the minors is a problem. But it’s more than just “shine” that he might continue to pick up for a year or two, at least theoretically, no?
It is definitely an extreme example from what you proposed, but I don’t think there’s a problem saying that you could probably see Gattis get 2-3 decent years as a reserve with a big league club. I don’t think it’s out of the realm to say that he could be around for 5-6 years around replacement level.
I don’t post here often, but here goes:
This article ultimately just begs the question about WHY younger players over-perform and older players under-perform their expectations.
I suspect that the “Gattis detractors” and the “Gattis supporters” both generally acknowledge that this effect does, in fact, exist. However, this effect could be attributable to greater physical development, to greater skill practice and mastery, or to some combination of the above (or for some other reason that doesn’t immediately come to mind).
Gladwell’s point in Outliers actually seems to support the skill development theory, at least to some extent. Older players were overrated based on their physical skills, and consequently received more skill refinement opportunities. These opportunities compounded into more superior results, resulting in more extra practice, and so on. Ultimately, the over-representation of August birthdays in the majors isn’t in a direct way because of their greater physical development, not at that point — rather, it’s a result of their additional opportunities for skill refinement.
If skill refinement, moreso than physical development, is primarily responsible for the age-based over-rating found by Rany Jazayerli, then Gattis’s age really may be overblown, despite (and even consistent with) his findings.
Because it doesn’t actually speak to this question, I don’t believe that this article does much to help settle this debate.
What would be helpful to settle this debate? Well, we need to have an age-controlled study of development time versus overachieving/underachieving. That is, do players of identical ages who have had different development time over-perform their expectations? Does a 19-year-old with development time like that of a 15-year-old (perhaps because he spent 4 years out of baseball, or perhaps because he comes from a cold-weather area) ultimately shake out more like a 19-year-old with his level of performance or more like a 15-year-old with his level of performance? I’m sure that it’s actually somewhere in between, but what I’d *really* like to know where along that continuum the truth falls. Give us *that* data, and we can make some real progress toward understanding this unusual case.
An afterthought: This data is probably itself highly confounded, since teams and scouts are MLB scouts are “well aware of how important age is in evaluation” and since advanced age does screw with the cost-benefit analysis by bringing the older players closer to their physical decline years. Thus,the teams are disproportionately likely to deny subsequent skill development opportunities to older players even if those players’ opportunities for skill development match those of younger players.
A second afterthought: It might be argued in response that, sure, Gattis’s problem is that he’s behind of skill development, but, after all, he’ll also never catch up. Perhaps, but this assumes that the skill development curve for baseball is linear and doesn’t plateau. I don’t know the answer to this question either.
Okay, I hope I haven’t made a fool of myself. Discuss.
The writer of this article is an idiot. How dare you say that BB King was overrated. ALL BB KING DOES IS HIT!!!
(Keith-related sarcasm,no need to go to the ban hammer)
@ithaca
You’re exactly right. I’m all for Gattis getting a bench spot this year. I said as much in both the most recent podcast and in this article. And of course once he arrives, his performance will completely dictate where he ends up.
However, the point of this article is to provide a realistic long term projection, and realistically, it’s simply not particularly bright.
@carlton
Comparing Gattis to WWII era players wouldn’t accomplish anything. The whole issue with those players is that they had already proven they had MLB talent. It’s not my claim that Gattis’ age makes him worse, it’s that it makes most people overrate him. That his age has allowed him to dominate younger, less physically mature players. Gattis hasn’t proven he has the talent it takes to make it and stick in MLB. Perhaps the greatest predictor of MLB success is if a player holds his on at an age appropriate level, or even especially if he can hold his own at a level he is young for. Gattis has NEVER shown that. He has ONLY beaten up on less mature players. It’s simply something that should give us extreme pause about his numbers, and be very skeptical that he can stick in MLB.
Sure, Gattis could be productive into his mid 30s. It’s possible. I never said it wasn’t. What I did say is that it’s EXTREMELY unlikely. I wish it weren’t the case, but it just is.
And no, taking years off from playing bass, and then coming back to be sort of good isn’t remotely applicable to playing Major League Baseball.
Sure, Gattis probably did mature between now and then. But most players mature while also learning how to play baseball.
With respect, Franklin, I think that misses the point of the analogy. The point isn’t that the skills are in any way comparable; the point is that there is ample data to support the notion that mental visualization of a task strengthens the same neural pathways that actually doing the task does, and that the impact of having done that for several years, if indeed Gattis has done, might be non-negligible. It might not, but the idea isn’t far-fetched. (There are a number of major league pitching and hitting coaches who encourage players to use this technique, in fact, because the effect has been empirically established.)
Again, I think what you wrote is more likely to be right than wrong in the long run, but let’s not pretend there aren’t any factors working in Gattis’s favor at all. There are so few comps available that it’s nearly impossible to say for sure how this will play outl
evidence for this claim? your anecdotes and assertions have not convinced me
I don’t blame you; in and of themselves they shouldn’t. At the same time, I’m not a neuroscientist and I don’t keep on hand a list of relevant articles and studies. What I can tell you is that we’re not talking reiki or faith-healing here (I’m a rationalist, believe me). There have been copious studies in the last few years which put subjects in fMRI machines and look at which parts of their brains light up when they’re doing something as opposed to when they’re just imagining doing that thing. Pretty much without exception, the results indicate that the brain activity is similar in both cases, and in many virtually identical.
This isn’t counter-intuitive; similar results have been found when doing the same scans on people who are asleep and dreaming about doing specific tasks or visiting specific places. The ability of the brain to visualize something is, the conclusion goes, essential to our ability to improve at it, and the reason why seems pretty firmly to be that the connections between the same relevant neurons get strengthened in the same way in both processes.
If you’d like more specific substantiation, I encourage you to Google it; I’m not a reference librarian. I’m a little surprised at the hostility my minor point has received, especially since it’s not a controversial idea among neuroscientists, who until now I would have assumed to be more skeptical than sabermetricians. Believe it or don’t, as you like; it doesn’t make much difference to me. I’m done talking about it. Closed minds and intellectual arrogance aren’t really my cup of tea. I would suggest, though, that rational thought — the kind that created sabermetrics in the first place — isn’t something you can go halfway on. You don’t get to pick and choose which empirical data you believe. (And, contrary to what another commenter wrote, the data I’ve been referring to are indeed empirical, which has only one meaningful definition.)
By all means, forget I ever brought it up.
I’ve seen lots of studies on pre-visualization. All have said it’s a short term effect. It’s not intellectual arrogance, it’s pointing out that it’s never been verified to have long term benefits. Essentially the theory is that it mentally primes your brain, for a couple minutes before a task. Not for years of not doing that task.
I agree with Franklin here.
The muscle memory of doing the particular task needs to be established in order for the neural pathways to exist in the first place, do they not? The four years that Gattis lost in development time would completely hinder any positive effect of what you’re talking about.
I think Franklin hit it on the head. He is right saying Gattis is hitting well so far in his minor league career but it might be because he is physically superior over his peers rather than posessing talent that translates to MLB success. So it is a crapshoot at this point weither he succeeds at a MLB level and the odds are not in his favor. We just don’t know until he is plays in the majors for a period of time.
Yeah, that’s a pithier-put version of what I was trying to say. :-)
Ignoring age, Gattis was drafted 19th in the 23rd round, 704th overall. The average career WAR for every pick after the fifteenth round is less then one. Evan Gattis has an incredible story and has accomplished a lot to even get to this point, but I think it’s necessary to take him for what he is. It would be an incredible accomplishment if he even made it to the majors let alone was a productive player on a first division team like the Braves. If Gattis is an even moderately productive bench player the Braves get incredible value from the pick they used on him. Great story, but I don’t think we can realistically expect much from Gattis.
I understand what you’re saying. However, as best as I can tell, there in fact isn’t any “empirical” evidence that pre visualization works over anything other than the short term, and there are in fact no studies I’m aware of that apply even the short term effects to baseball. What you’re arguing for is a long term application of pre visualization, which isn’t even well established in the short term as far as hitting goes. And it certainly isn’t established in the long term at all.
Perhaps you should consult with John Smoltz and Jack Lewellen (spelling?) the noted sports psychologist. Jack instructed Smoltz to “visualise” the perfect outcome of the pitch, i.e., to imagine the perfect pitch from inception to swinging strike. Smoltz employed this technique over the years and became a Hall of Famer (to be). Simply stating that there is no empiracle evidence is not only wrong, it is being arrogant.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
@david
Absolutely, if Gattis ever even makes a MLB at bat, he will have provides tremendous value to the Braves, given that he was drafted where teams typically take organizational filler.
I’m not thinkin’ he’s the next Jason Heyward, he’s not!!! He knows that. But, he could be a useful piece. Think about it…
What’s the likelihood that MOST Great prospects last well beyond their 30s. Fact is, he hits…well. For a slugger, he probably strikes out less often than many of ours on the team now. And, against some of the better talent in the minors as well.
He CARRIED the team in Venezuela. When he left, they lost…Bad. If we can find a place to hide him, he can cover some our weaknesses.
Depends on what you mean by useful piece. If you mean guy who can provide a bench bat for a couple years, sure. If you mean a guy who will ever see significant playing time, the odds are stacked HEAVILY against it.
Well, he has progressed much better than has been prognossed by many writers including CAC
He has? He had a 138 wRC+ while playing negative value defense (not atrocious, but definitely not value added on defense), negative value baserunning in AA last year playing with kids 4 years younger than him. He’s never even played in AAA?
In what way is having a good year in AA as a 26 year old exceeding much of anything? That’s the whole point, a 20 year old having the kind of year Gattis had in AA would be something to flip out about, a 26 year old, not as much.
As Rany’s data shows, even a 1 year difference in age at that point makes a GIGANTIC difference, and we’re walking about a 4 year difference.
This is the same exact thing as what happened with Terdo last year, when Braves fans flipped out about a guy who was too old for A ball hitting 52 doubles. And Terdo wasn’t even THAT old. We pointed out that he was too old for his level, and was just physically beating up on kids who were less physically developed. People scoffed. It’s the same thing here. You EXPECT a guy who is 4 years too old for his level to beat up on the kids they’re playing against. If he wasn’t then something would really be wrong.
Last year at his time the argument was that he had never hit above low A and when he got to AA he would be overmatched for the same reasons you are listing now. He is a very hard worker, has a low strike out rate, and has a tendency to come through in high leverage situations. Also you singled out his AA stats which were diminished by his injury, so not an honest way to solely evaluate his season.
The point is, what has Gattis proven? He’s never even seen a AAA pitcher, let alone a MLB pitcher. He’s never hit pitchers who are around his level of physical development. He’s only beat up on kids who were often either bad, or 4-5 years younger than him.
The point of the article, and I think it’s pretty clear about this, is that the odds are extremely low that Gattis will be a productive major leaguer. Not that it’s impossible, and not that he’s bad, but just that his chances are very low. It’s about being neutral, and not having wild eyed optimism about his likelihood of being a MLB regular.
It’s understanding that at this point in his career, his career arc looks almost exactly like Barbaro Canizares. A guy who only ever beat up on kids much younger than him, who played 5 games in the majors, and is now in the Mexican league. Barbaro walked and struck out at nearly identical rates to Gattis, had virtually the same power (though Gattis may have a bit more). Barbaro actually made better consistent contact. But it didn’t mean anything, because those numbers were all just from beating up on a bunch of kids who had yet to physically develop.
This post was great if for no other reason than it mentions the Three Kings of blues music, of which BB is the least talented by far (as anyone who really knows blues music knows). I was trying to teach my wife about the Three Kings the other day and reading that in a baseball post made my day.
I remember when 27 years old was the start of your peak years. Now it’s the year you begin your decline.
What happened?
27 is the physical peak, physically it always has been. For outstanding athletes, they can usually hold it a bit longer, especially great athletes who are also very intelligent (ie maddux, chipper, MJ, etc). The nature of a peak is that once you reach it, it’s a downturn after that.
Let me rephrase. I remember when players had peak YEARS, 27 to 32. Now it’s a peak year and then all downhill after that.
great players have ‘peak years’ at those ages. For the average player, that’s never been the case. (though even for great players it’s more like 25-30, not 27-32)
Love the piece. I don’t expect Evan Gattis to be much of a productive major leaguer, I will be overly happy with any contributions he provides in the short, or possibly long-term.
Here is a comparison that comes to my mind:
I am 26, played a little college ball but was never anything special. It’s been 4.5 years since I played an actual game. I now coach high school ball with kids aged 17-19. Lots of times during practice, be it when they are throwing in the cage or taking ground balls, I jump in for some reps and generally can make them look inferior. The fact is that I am an adult and they are kids. While they are (more) talented, more athletic, in better shape and have been playing consistently for the last 5-6 years, I still have the ability to excel as my physical maturity trumps theirs and nothing else.
I am not comparing myself to Evan Gattis nor my players as draft level talent just merely pointing out that physical maturity has to be a considering factor when evaluating the talent level of a player.
It is great Evan is mashing minor league pitching, but I agree, it means nothing unless he can do it in the bigs.
I think your situation hits the nail right on the head. It seems to be exactly what Franklin is speaking about.
Gattis will be productive for a short period for the Braves then will become prime trade bait.
@ Bob long:
I think you misunderstand the meaning of the word “empirical”
Also, again, those were short term effects, not long term. And smoltz was always very good.
A near perfect comparison is Barbaro Canizares. Came into MLB at basically the same age, have virtually the same exact skill set, put up virtually identical numbers in A+ and AA (even down to walk and K rates).
barbaro canizares was a RH hitting first baseman whose career high ISO (achieved in his final year in AAA at age 30) was .162. he never broke .150 in any other sample larger than 15 PA, even with all the manifset advantages of physical development he had over those poor kids as a 26-year-old.
gattis is a C/OF whose ISOs in his three existing samples above rookie ball are .278, .436 and .264
everyone, if they’re lucky, is 26 at one point in their life. but not everyone is the same person
Forgive me if I missed this in the article / comments, but are there any examples of players finding regular success in the majors with a similar timeline? I can only really think of Josh Hamilton.
If he does well in spring training I wouldn’t mind seeing him get starts at catcher with Laird as the backup until Canns comes back. It wouldn’t really hurt to see him get advanced starts especially compared to what we would get from Laird. This is also assuming he doesn’t totally blow behind the plate in camp. Beyond that I’d rather him spend time developing everyday in Gwinnett. With our farm system being so piss poor in the position player department at the moment, it would behoove us to at least give him a chance albeit a huge long shot.
I can’t think of any other that found regular success in MLB. Which I think is telling, that the only player that has ever accomplished what Gattis is trying to accomplish was a player that every scout that saw him play said was the most talented player they had ever seen.
and just so nobody accuses me of making straw men:
http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?s=248&f=2070&t=11291952
Excerpts:
“I project 30 HR power and an .850-.900 OPS from Gattis”
“I think he can be a star”
“based on some numbers I ran from last year and the winter league, I project he could hit 50+ HR in AA and AAA if he doesn’t make the MLB team”
He’s turned into some Everyman underdog character ala Jeremy Lin-and to a lesser extent Brooks Conrad. Fans love this kind of story and start to believe in it more and more especially when DOB writes story after story about him. I’m sure he has already hit 3 HRs in a game off of Halladay in the minds of most of the ajc commenters. I hope he makes it and it would be an amazing story for the braves but he might have screwed himself by leaving baseball to wander around doing acid during his prime years.
Interesting. But with the respect to the birthday phenomenon mentioned in Outliers, it’s also about rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer, right? So it’s not just that we’re overrating the older players (though that’s probably a huge part of it), but also that the older players are given more resources because they started out stronger, and therefore they develop along a different growth curve. I mean, it’s probably only really true that your development is dependent on your starting state if you have to compete for playing time, such as in Little League and high school, and less true in the minors where prospects will get playing time (and therefore develop along a healthy growth curve) no matter what – it’s just a matter of the level of the minors. It’s not like a AAA coach is going to bench a prospect and stunt their growth, but that’s exactly what happens to younger kids in Little League, regardless of the kid’s untapped potential.
actually that was Gladwell’s guess, and it was more or less refuted later on. When you control for players who actually played in high school, his supposition fell completely apart.
His data were still solid, his guess to the reasoning why was a guess that turned out incorrect.
Ryan Howard destroyed minor league pitching at 24-25 years old but he more than likely wouldn’t do that at the major league level…oh, wait.
I would think if he’s a great hitter, he should be destroying pitcher’s 5 years his junior. His bat is obviously advanced from the low to mid minors so I would guess advanced could mean MLB ready. I’ll take his bat for 3-4 years if it’s ready.
Now defense is another story.
Howard is an interesting case, and probably the best positive comparison for Gattis that’s reasonably, sorta kinda similar. Though part of why Howard was held down in the minors was that the Phillies had Thome at the time, keeping him down for at least a year longer than they probably should have. Howard was also a good bit younger than Gattis. Howard dominated AA-AAA at age 24, which is significantly different from dominating A+ and AA at age 26 (what Gattis did).
Is his bat ready? We’ve seen that he hits well at those lower levels, but is he going to be fooled by the older, more refined pitchers that he faces in the majors?
It’s definitely something that we can’t say for sure, but I highly doubt that we can point to the one or two successful players and say that he will or will not be that. The biggest thing here that is being pointed out is that it is **more likely** that he will not be a successful player, but more of a bench, role player around replacement level.
Good article that a lot of people are misinterpretting. This is not an article about Gattis’ chances to play in the majors; this is an article that explains why you shouldn’t get too excited about his numbers. It’s clear that he has some talent. Nobody without talent, regardless of physical development, could put up those numbers in professional baseball. But the article does a great job of pointing out reasons why those numbers can’t be trusted the same way we would trust them from a 22 year old.
I believe Gattis may be able to play in the major leagues, but if he was putting up those same numbers at 21 I would expect him to become a superstar.
Thanks Adam for clarifying the article.
If he is going to make in the majors in anything beyond token appearances, I suspect it will not be with the Braves but as a designated hitter in the AL where his power might give him a chance without having to deal with his defensive liabilities. In other words, the Braves might display for a brief period and then see if they can get some trade nibbles if he does show some power at the major league level. He would also have the advantage of coming cheap for a couple of years.
Gattis is interesting because there is still some uncertainty to what he can do. He has obviously been more physically talented than the levels of competition, which is most likely due to the fact that he is more advanced physically. The interesting thing about him, is that the performance has not yet proven that he can’t hit MLB pitching. Like Franklin has said, that is unlikely. But he has hit like you would expect a MLB caliber hitter to hit if one was to spend half a season in the minors. So, to clarify, the past performance is not entirely worthless, simply because there is no evidence that he won’t be a MLB caliber hitter. However, his past performance is also not a good indicator of whether he will be able to hit MLB pitching because of the whole age vs. level thing.
yeah, I think that’s ultimately the biggest issue. He hasn’t shown in any way that he could hit MLB pitching, so, the default assumption tends to be that for players who were picked that late twice, who scouts dont really like, that they PROBABLY won’t succeed. But in the end it’s all just probabilities. It’s way more likely than not that he won’t make a significant impact, and the predictions of a .900 OPS and that he might push McCann out the door are just laughable, but there is a really long shot chance he could be a productive bat for a few years.
I get the point about lost years, but there should be value seen in the maturation and development process be went through away from baseball. Finding your center goes a long way in such a mental sport.
“The fact that Gattis taking several years off of baseball is often cited as a positive for his career arc is stupefying to me. I don’t fully comprehend how, from a pure baseball standpoint, those years can be viewed as anything other than years of lost development.”
i’ll explain. the positive angle on the lost years isn’t that the lost years somehow actually made him a better baseball player than he otherwise would have been. (the entire “visualization” subthread in the comments above strikes me as a baffling waste of time, especially considering that we don’t even have any suggestion that gattis was doing any such thing while he was away.)
the point is – as you correctly point out in another comment, gattis has never succeeded against players his own age. but he’s never failed against players his own age, either.
most guys who are still in AA at 26 are still there because they’ve failed to hit their way out of the minors faster than that. which is generally a bad sign for their ability. that’s not true of gattis. he’s hit like a bastard every time he’s been on the field. he just hasn’t been on the field very much yet. maybe he’s just this good? there’s very little evidence to the contrary.
the thought experiment – and i saw someone else already do this upthread and immediately get yelled at for comparing gattis to pujols, so let me just say up front, that’s not what i’m doing.
but, think of it this way. if albert pujols drifted ashore in miami on one of those cuban studebaker rafts at age 26, walked up the beach into a minor league stadium and started to hit, how would you know it was him? he’d tear the cover off the ball, no doubt. but he’d be really old for the league…
the minor league age curve is a really important analytical guideline. but all rules have exceptions.
i’m just curious how, specifically, people think pitchers are going to get gattis out. he has massive power and also doesn’t strike out very much. that’s a rare and good profile. people keep saying he won’t amount to anything, but they never go into ANY detail about why that is OTHER than the fact that he’s so old, end of line.
on twitter the other day i saw a picture of gattis at age 14 or 15 with the USA development team. i’m not totally sure what that team is or how it’s put together, but some of the other guys in the picture (out of about 15 dudes total) were justin upton, billy butler, homer bailey and austin jackson. so there *was* a time when gattis got put into that kind of company via some sort of scouting process, back when he was the same age as everyone else. he was originally supposed to go to texas, which is a major college program, before he dropped out of everything.