In case you’ve forgotten, here are the top bWAR seasons over the past 2 years by players who will be 26 or under in 2012.
All seasons of at least 3.9 WAR are listed. No SS or 2B reached that level, so in order to round out a lineup (see the top 8 in the table), I’ve included the top figure at each position. (Dustin Ackley’s 2.5 WAR in 90 games does project to 4.5 per 162G.) Lastly, I included Brett Lawrie’s 2011 on the grounds of his tremendous rate of 10.5 WAR per 162 games.
| Pos | Player | WAR | Rbat | Rfld | Rbr | Yr | Age 2012 |
Tm | G | PA | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | Pos | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3B | Evan Longoria | 7.6 | 143 | 36 | 13 | 4 | 2010 | 26 | TBR | 151 | 661 | 96 | 169 | 46 | 5 | 22 | 104 | 72 | 124 | .372 | .879 | *5 |
| RF | Mike Stanton | 5.7 | 141 | 30 | 20 | -3 | 2011 | 22 | FLA | 150 | 601 | 79 | 135 | 30 | 5 | 34 | 87 | 70 | 166 | .356 | .893 | *9/8D |
| CF | Andrew McCutchen | 5.5 | 127 | 24 | 7 | -2 | 2011 | 25 | PIT | 158 | 678 | 87 | 148 | 34 | 5 | 23 | 89 | 89 | 126 | .364 | .820 | *8/D |
| C | Alex Avila | 5.4 | 143 | 31 | -1 | -2 | 2011 | 25 | DET | 141 | 551 | 63 | 137 | 33 | 4 | 19 | 82 | 73 | 131 | .389 | .895 | *2/D5 |
| LF | Carlos Gonzalez | 5.0 | 143 | 36 | -2 | 5 | 2010 | 26 | COL | 145 | 636 | 111 | 197 | 34 | 9 | 34 | 117 | 40 | 135 | .376 | .974 | 789 |
| RF | Jay Bruce | 4.6 | 124 | 18 | 18 | 1 | 2010 | 25 | CIN | 148 | 573 | 80 | 143 | 23 | 5 | 25 | 70 | 58 | 136 | .353 | .846 | *9 |
| SS | Asdrubal Cabrera | 3.7 | 119 | 15 | -6 | 1 | 2011 | 26 | CLE | 151 | 667 | 87 | 165 | 32 | 3 | 25 | 92 | 44 | 119 | .332 | .792 | *6 |
| 2B | Dustin Ackley | 2.5 | 117 | 9 | 1 | 0 | 2011 | 24 | SEA | 90 | 376 | 39 | 91 | 16 | 7 | 6 | 36 | 40 | 79 | .348 | .766 | *4/D3 |
| 3B | Evan Longoria | 6.3 | 139 | 29 | 11 | -1 | 2011 | 26 | TBR | 133 | 574 | 78 | 118 | 26 | 1 | 31 | 99 | 80 | 93 | .355 | .850 | *5/D |
| 3B | Pablo Sandoval | 6.1 | 153 | 30 | 14 | 1 | 2011 | 25 | SFG | 117 | 466 | 55 | 134 | 26 | 3 | 23 | 70 | 32 | 63 | .357 | .909 | *5/3D |
| RF | Jason Heyward | 5.2 | 131 | 26 | 7 | 1 | 2010 | 22 | ATL | 142 | 623 | 83 | 144 | 29 | 5 | 18 | 72 | 91 | 128 | .393 | .849 | *9 |
| CF | Peter Bourjos | 5.0 | 115 | 9 | 13 | 3 | 2011 | 25 | LAA | 147 | 552 | 72 | 136 | 26 | 11 | 12 | 43 | 32 | 124 | .327 | .765 | *8 |
| 1B | Daric Barton | 4.2 | 120 | 21 | 11 | -2 | 2010 | 26 | OAK | 159 | 686 | 79 | 152 | 33 | 5 | 10 | 57 | 110 | 102 | .393 | .798 | *3 |
| RF | Justin Upton | 4.1 | 141 | 34 | -8 | 2 | 2011 | 24 | ARI | 159 | 674 | 105 | 171 | 39 | 5 | 31 | 88 | 59 | 126 | .369 | .898 | *9 |
| C | Matt Wieters | 4.0 | 113 | 8 | 10 | 0 | 2011 | 26 | BAL | 139 | 551 | 72 | 131 | 28 | 0 | 22 | 68 | 48 | 84 | .328 | .778 | *2/D3 |
| CF | Andrew McCutchen | 4.0 | 121 | 18 | -4 | 3 | 2010 | 25 | PIT | 154 | 653 | 94 | 163 | 35 | 5 | 16 | 56 | 70 | 89 | .365 | .814 | *8 |
| C | Carlos Santana | 3.9 | 124 | 22 | -4 | 0 | 2011 | 26 | CLE | 155 | 658 | 84 | 132 | 35 | 2 | 27 | 79 | 97 | 133 | .351 | .808 | *23/D |
| 3B | Brett Lawrie | 2.8 | 152 | 10 | 10 | 1 | 2011 | 23 | TOR | 43 | 171 | 26 | 44 | 8 | 4 | 9 | 25 | 16 | 31 | .373 | .953 | *5 |
For space reasons, I abbreviated some Play Index terms in the table header:
- “Rfld” is Rfield, a.k.a. War Runs Fielding.
- “Rbr” is Rbaser, a.k.a. War Runs Baserunning.
Note that the age listed is the age they will be in 2012.
And yes, I capriciously set the bar at 3.9 WAR in order to include Carlos Santana.
Who will be the new young stars this year?
Two things:
First, Evan Longoria. Sheesh. It seems like he’s been around a long time, so I forget how young he actually is sometimes. What a player, though. Yikes.
Second, I have an obnoxious question. Do you know if there’s any possibility of getting sortable tables from b-r? I ask because when there were these posts over at the ol’ b-r blog, that made it really easy to find things out, like which team had the most players appear or which player was the youngest, or who had the fewest PAs, or who was on the list more than once, etc. So, if there’s any way to bring that feature over to HHS, it would be awesome.
Dr. Doom, I am looking into that issue. I suspect we can improve the table display now that we’re on a standalone platform and I can run any scripts I want. I’ve asked Sean for his input.
It looks like no team has multiple players (if you only count the actual 3.9 bWAR seasons) on the list.
PIT and TBR have 2 entries, but they are the same players (McCutcheon & Longoria). CLE has 2 entries, with one @ 3.7 (Cabrera – added to find a SS) and the other at the “capricious” bar of 3.9 (Santana).
It is nice to see the young talent spread out through the Leagues. Of course, in order to see any Yankees, I will have to wait for the “Age over 36 and WAR less than 3.9” list.
JA, it looks like you wrote this post after me but it got posted before mine, burying itself automatically. I’m not sure why, but perhaps your time zone is set incorrectly within your profile. I tried to check it as ad admin but I have no access to it–check it out within the WordPress dashboard.
The balance of talent between the leagues is a little more balanced than I thought it might be before reading the article. Just glancing over the ROY voting for the past few seasons a month or 2 ago it seemed to me that the NL had considerably more potentially big impact talent in the pipe-line than the AL but it appears that might not be the case. Especially since guys like Mike Trout and Bryce Harper and a bunch of KC Royals have yet to show what (if anything) they are capable of. And that’s a good thing since young talent like this can help small-market teams be competitive or turn some poorly run franchises around. I’d love to see 5 or 6 division and wild-card races go down the the final weekend every year.
It is beginning to appear like the AL is finally taking the DH spot seriously, rather than as an excuse to display players who otherwise should have retired.
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My first real prediction of 2012;
Look for Yonder Alonso to make this list after this season.
How about that Mike Stanton? His age/rank combo really stands out.
its comical that daric barton makes the list basically because of all the walks he had in 2010. check his numbers for last year and i don’t know who would want him.