Gordon: Splash or Flash (In-the-Pan)?

About 10 days ago I was on the radio with Kevin Kietzman and Danny Clinkscale, and towards the end of the interview the talk turned towards Alex Gordon, who for the second consecutive year is failing to live up to expectations. Two years ago Gordon was the Minor League Player of the Year, the year after he was named the College Player of the Year. He was the #1 prospect in the land the year after he was the #2 draft pick in the land. Playing for Wichita he hit for average (.325), he hit for power (29 homers), he hit the ball in the gaps (39 doubles), he had good plate discipline (72 walks), he had excellent speed (22 steals in 25 attempts.) Hell, he even did the little things well; he got hit by 16 pitches, and only grounded into 4 double plays. His defense got good reviews; scouts agreed that his numbers were no fluke. There was absolutely nothing he didn’t do well. He was as sure-fire a prospect as a player could be.

For two months last year, it looked like the Alex Gordon of 2006 had been secretly replaced by Folger’s Crystals. He was hitting .172/.287/.278 on June 4^th, with a grand total of 8 RBIs in 52 games. The Royals refused to send him down to the minors – though they were reportedly about to send him down when he woke up with a four-hit game on June 7^th – and over his last 99 games he hit .284/.328/.477. It was something to build on. Many Hall of Famers have had a rookie season like Gordon’s.

But here we are, past the halfway point of Gordon’s sophomore season, and nothing has changed. His final numbers last season, even with the atrocious start, were .247/.314/.411; he’s hitting .250/.333/.406 this season. Given that offense is down significantly in the AL this year, his performance is a little better this season; his OPS+ has increased from 87 to 96, his EqA from .246 to .257. The problem is that he’s trending in the wrong direction – over his last 39 games he’s hitting .199. His defense has gone south, at least according to the numbers (BP rated his defense as 2 runs below average last year, but 8 runs below average already this season). I’m not sure if I trust those numbers – fielding data over half a season is not particularly reliable. But even his speed seems to have evaporated – he stole 14 bases in 18 attempts last year, and is just 2-for-4 on the bases this year.

So the question is: should we officially be worried about Gordon now? As Clinkscales asked me on the air, how many times has a player who had TWO disappointing seasons to start his career gone on to become a superstar?

Among my many talents is not, unfortunately, the ability to think quickly on my feet, particularly in front of a live audience. While I came up with a weak answer by bringing up Mike Schmidt as a third baseman who struggled mightily as a rookie before having a breakthrough sophomore years, I couldn’t think of a single player who, like Gordon, played every day right out of the chute, but didn’t have the light bulb go on until season #3.

But this might not simply have been a problem with coming up with the right answer in ten seconds or less. Because even afterwards, I still couldn't come up with a list of players who had immense potential but took a little longer than usual to reach it – the kinds of players you want Gordon to be lumped in with when we look back at his career in 15 years. So I decided to research it.

Keep in mind, I’m looking for a player whose trajectory is very similar to Gordon’s; plenty of star players take years to reach their potential. Someone like Nate McLouth, for instance, is having a breakthrough season in his fourth attempt, but he’s a totally different player – a 25^th-round pick, an undersized guy who broke into the majors as a fourth outfielder type but never go the chance to play every day until this season. (By the way, why has no one made the comparison of McLouth to Brady Anderson yet? Both are speedy white guys who showed some secondary skills but didn’t hit much as part-time players, McLouth for three years, Anderson for four. Anderson was considered a fluke all the way through his 1992 season, and there are still a lot of people who are waiting for McLouth to turn into a pumpkin this year. Stop waiting, folks – flukes don’t swat 55 extra-base hits in 89 games. The Mighty Mite is for real.)

So I devised a list of players who:

1) had their rookie seasons between 1961 and 2000;
2) were 23 years old as a rookie;
3) batted over 400 times in their rookie season;
4) hit between .240 and .265;
5) had an OBP between .300 and .340;
6) slugged between .360 and .460.

I ended up with a total of 17 players, the most recent of whom being Carlos Febles, of all people. (Carlos the Lesser hit .256/.336/.411 as a rookie, though keep in mind that was at the peak of the Juiced Ball/Bat/Body era.) Let’s split those 17 players into four groups.

Group 1: Not that good to begin with.

Buck Rodgers hit .258/.309/.372 as a rookie catcher for the LA Angels in 1962, and that would prove to be the best season of his career. Byron Browne was a rookie outfielder for the Cubs in 1963, and hit .243/.316/.427. Over the next year he would bat just 85 times, for three different teams.

Rick Schu hit .252/.318/.373 as the Phillies’ third baseman in 1985, quite an accomplishment for a guy who was signed as a non-drafted free agent out of high school, but he would never bat more than 300 times in a season again. Febles started battling injuries his sophomore season and was never the same.

Group 2: Takeoff in Year Two. Sort of.

Bill Melton really doesn’t fit well into the three other groups, but he’s not a great fit here either. He was a rookie third baseman for the White Sox in 1969, and hit .255/.326/.433. After hitting 23 homers as a rookie, he would hit 33 each of the next two years, and after the 1971 season had to be considered one of the best young players in the game. But he got hurt and missed much of the 1972 season, gave the Sox three good years from 1973 to 1975, then was out of the game within two years, his career over just after his 32^nd birthday. I’m not sure what the story was here, to be honest. Melton had a short peak, but it was a pretty nice peak.

Larry Walker hit .241/.326/.434 as a rookie for the Expos in 1990, but technically he wasn’t a rookie because he had spent an entire year on the DL while in the minors, and in those days time spent on the DL counted as service time. As a result of Walker’s rookie season, the rule was amended so that time spent on the 60-day DL didn’t count as service time for purposes of rookie eligibility. (Although it continued to count as service time for purposes of free agency – which is why Walker was a free agent after just five years in Montreal.) He hit .290/.349/.458 as a sophomore, and I was tempted to put him in Group 4, because while he definitely improved between years one and two, it was an incremental improvement and not a breakthrough. The only thing that he did better was hit for average; his homers dropped from 19 to 14, his steals from 21 to 14, his walks from 49 to 42. The breakthrough came in year three; he hit .301/.353/.506, was named an All-Star and finished fifth in RoY voting. Walker’s career will always be difficult to evaluate fully because we just don’t know if, away from Coors Field, he would have been a superstar or just a star. Regardless, he’s probably headed to the Hall of Fame. His lifetime numbers are .313/.400/.565, and as Daniel Okrent once said of Baker Bowl creation (and Hall of Famer) Chuck Klein – career line: .320/.379/.543 – there’s just too much there.

Group 3: The plodders. The list you don’t want Gordon to wind up on, the guys who showed promise their first two seasons but never built on it.

Dick Green was a rookie second baseman for the Kansas City A’s in 1964, and hit .264/.311/.395. He hit just .232/.308/.363 as a sophomore in 1965, but given the era those numbers are better than they look – Green’s OPS+ his first two seasons were 92 and 91. He would continue to be the A’s starting second baseman more or less through 1974, and was the starter for three straight world championship teams, but aside from a nice little year in 1969 (.275/.353/.427), was no more than an average second baseman throughout his career. He hit just .155 in 36 postseason games; in 1972 he was the starting second baseman that manager Dick Williams would routine pinch-hit for after one at-bat, as Williams used the expanded rosters to carry three or four second baseman and pinch-hit for each one of them in turn.

Jim Lefebvre hit .250/.337/.369 as a rookie second baseman for the Dodgers in 1965, which was enough to win him Rookie of the Year honors. In 1966 hit .274/.333/.460 with 24 homers, making the All-Star team. But that would be his high-water point; Lefebvre continued to hit around league average for the next five years, but after playing second base his first two seasons the Dodgers started jerking him around, having him play third base some, and after a poor season in 1972 his playing career came to a sudden end at age 30. His contributions to baseball were far from over, as he would become a long-time coach, manage for three teams, and sire an occasionally self-righteous broadcaster. (Seriously, Ryan – tone down the rhetoric a little, okay?)

George Wright was a fourth-round pick of the Rangers in 1977, and was a rookie outfielder for them in 1982, when he hit .264/.305/.377; the following season he played in every game, hit .276/.321/.424, and even received a tenth-place MVP vote. He would hit .243, .190, and .202 the next three years, and his career was over. I must confess I’ve never even heard of this guy, although that may be because when I think of George Wright, I think of the guy who, you know, helped invent professional baseball.

Gabe Kapler was a late-round find for the Tigers, who drafted him in the 57^th round in 1995. He hit .245/.315/.447 as a rookie in 1999, then was traded to Texas in the massive Juan Gonzalez trade and hit .302/.360/.473 as a sophomore. He was considered one of the most promising young hitters in the game at that point…but for whatever reason, things never worked out for him, although he’s having a mini-renaissance off the Brewers’ bench this season at age 32, after retiring and coaching in the minors for a year. Young players don’t fulfill their promise all the time. Many times there’s an obvious reason in retrospect. (Mark Quinn, anyone?) Sometimes, like with Kapler - a notorious workout fiend and a good guy by all accounts – there isn’t.

Group 4: The late bloomers.

Here’s the important list, the one that we hope Gordon can be added to in the future. In chronological order:

Lou Brock hit .263/.319/.412 as a rookie centerfielder for the Cubs in 1962. In 1963, he moved to rightfield and hit .258/.300/.382. He stole 40 bases in those two seasons – combined. In 1964, he was hitting .251/.300/.340 on the morning of June 15^th, when the Cubs declared it official – he was a dud. Brock found himself in a Cardinals uniform that night, having been packaged in a six-player trade. The Cubs wouldn’t regret this trade for at least a few weeks. Brock hit .348/.387/.527 the rest of the season, and the Cards would win the World Series that fall. Brock stole 43 bases in 1964; starting in 1965 he would steal 50 or more bases for 12 straight years, culminating with a record 118 steals (at age 35!) in 1974, and maintained an OPS+ of 107 or better in all 12 years. He would be inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1985. On the flip side, Ernie Broglio did win 8 games for the Cubs in his career. (He also lost 19.)

As much as I like the Lou Brock comparison for Gordon, I like the next one even better. If the amateur draft had been instituted a year earlier, Bobby Murcer would have been an almost sure-fire first-round pick. He was dubbed the next Mickey Mantle from the day he signed, as he had the misfortune of hailing from the same state (Oklahoma) and being signed by the same scout (Tom Greenwade). Murcer, as you may have just read in his obituary, got some playing time with the Yankees at age 19 and 20, but then spent two years in the army. He was in the Yankees’ Opening Day lineup in 1969, at age 23, playing third base. He had a fine rookie season: .259/.319/.454, with 26 homers. A fine season, but a disappointment to those who were expecting Mick Jr. The disappointment intensified the next season, when he hit .251/.348/.420. By this point, he had been stationed in centerfield like the Mick, and in 1971 the breakthrough finally came: Murcer hit .331/.427/.543, and if you translate those numbers to a 2007 Kauffman Stadium context, they become .373/.473/.611. 1971 was the first of five straight All-Star appearances (and first of three Top-10 MVP finishes) for Murcer. He would remain a productive player in a slowly-diminishing role until 1982, when he was 36. May he rest in peace.

Von Hayes was a seventh-round pick of the Indians in 1979, and made the majors for a cameo in 1981, hitting .257/.346/.394 in 109 at-bats. As a rookie outfielder in 1982 he hit .250/.310/.389, with 14 homers and 32 steals. Hayes was nonetheless so highly regarded that after the season the Phillies traded five different players for Hayes straight-up. (We can finally put that trade to rest – one of the five was Julio Franco.) Hayes hit just .265/.337/.370 in his first year in Philadelphia, though fortunately Philly fans are famously tolerant of poor first impressions by their players. In 1984, though, Philadelphia got what they traded for – Hayes hit .292/.359/.447, stole 48 bases, and played a strong centerfield. He would remain an above-average hitter through 1990, and became one of the most patient hitters in the game, twice drawing over 100 walks. The end came quick for Hayes – he was done at age 33 – but he had a nice, extended peak.

Ron Gant was a fourth-round pick of the Braves in 1983, and in 1988 hit .259/.317/.439 as their rookie second baseman (yes, second baseman), finishing fourth in Rookie of the Year voting. (It’s always fun to remember where some sluggers started their major league careers. Gary Sheffield was the Brewers’ shortstop once upon a time. Danny Tartabull played 24 games at shortstop for Seattle, and 31 at second base. Kevin Mitchell was a shortstop once. I’d love to see some video highlights of these guys at their original positions.) The next year, Gant was moved to third base and then the outfield, and collapsed, hitting .177/.237/.335. He spent some time in the minors clearing his head, and came back the next year a different player. He hit .303/.357/.539, hit 32 homers and stole 33 bases. The next three seasons he anchored the Braves lineup as they started their consecutive postseason streak, but he hurt himself after the 1993 season (if I remember correctly, he was in a motorcycle accident), the Braves released him, and he missed all of 1994. He returned with the Reds in 1995 and didn’t miss a beat, then started the have-bat-will-travel itinerant portion of his career, but to the end he could rake.

Craig Biggio, like Gordon, was a first-round pick, and two years after he was drafted he was in the Astros’ lineup as their catcher, hitting .257/.336/.402 as a rookie. He hit .276/.342/.348 as a sophomore, his homers dropping from 13 to 4. You know the rest of the story – after three years behind the dish he moved to second base, he started to hit for power at age 27, and from 1994 to 1998 he was one of the four or five best players in baseball. He was never the same after that, but held on long enough for 3000 hits and the inevitable parade in Cooperstown.

Biggio’s teammate Luis Gonzalez was taken in the fourth round in 1988, and hit .254/.320/.433 for the Astros in 1991. He slumped to .243/.289/.385 as a sophomore, and Vegas had taken the odds that he would still be in active in 2008 off the board. Gonzalez hit .300/.361/.457 in his third season, and was a good solid player for the next five years, but let’s be honest: no one saw what was coming. After the 1998 season the Tigers traded him straight up for Karim Garcia, for God’s sake. From 1999 to 2003, Gonzalez hit .314 and averaged 33 homers and 87 walks a year. He won’t go to the Hall of Fame, but if he was inducted, he’d be far from the worst outfielder there.

Ray Durham was a fifth-round pick of the White Sox in 1990, was called up early in the 1995 season and hit .257/.309/.384 as a rookie. As a sophomore, he hit .275/.350/.406, which was an improvement but still not anything to write home about in that era; his OPS+ went from 83 to 95. As a junior, he hit .271/.337/.382, but his durability and speed still made him an asset at the position. Then in 1998 he turned his game up a notch; he tacked on about 15 extra-base hits and 20 walks a season, and had an OPS+ above league-average for nine straight years. He was basically the prototype for Orlando Hudson, with a better bat and more speed but a much worse glove. He’s had a heck of a career.

When I started this study, I didn’t expect to analyze every single player that compared to Gordon – I figured I’d just find two or three guys who went on to greatness and see if Gordon’s profile fit theirs or not. What I found surprised me, in a good way. For one, I would have expected to find dozens of guys who had a rookie season similar to Gordon’s, given the wide parameters I set up – instead I found just 17. But what’s really remarkable is how many of those players went on to great career, even though nearly all of them did not have a breakout season in their second year. Just two out of the 17 had a star-caliber sophomore year, and both examples (Melton and Walker) are borderline at that. Apparently, if you want to have a Cal Ripkenesque sophomore season, you need to have a Ripkenesque rookie season.

But if you can simply follow up a solid rookie season with a roughly equivalent performance as a sophomore at ages 23 and 24, the odds are still very good that you will eventually go on to have a very fine career. Eliminate the first two groups, and we have 11 players who, like Gordon, have followed up their rookie seasons with more of the same.

Four of those 11 would go on to have disappointing seasons – Green, Lefebvre, Wright, and Kapler. Green and Lefebvre were both second baseman, and there is a long chain of evidence that second basemen do not develop as well as players at other positions. While the exact reason is not certain, owing to the fact that second basemen make the pivot on double plays – and usually with their back to the runner – the theory is that second basemen are prone to minor injuries which impede their development. When it strikes, we call it “Brent Gates Syndrome”, after the A’s second baseman, who had a terrific rookie season in 1993 and then had his OPS+ drop for five straight seasons. Carlos Febles is an obvious victim of this. Gordon plays third base, obviously, and more critically he has been injury-free to this point in his career. His durability is one of his best traits, and makes it less likely that he will suffer this fate.

George Wright really doesn’t belong on this list; he was never well-regarded to the best of my knowledge, and to my mind resembles Darryl Motley more than Alex Gordon. That leaves Kapler, who serves as a cautionary tale that there are no sure things with prospects.

But even Kapler was a 57^th-round pick. Gordon’s pedigree is impeccable, which puts him in with the guys in group four. Biggio was a first-rounder, and Murcer would have been. Brock might have been; he was a black player who attended a traditionally black school in 1960, so he might have fallen in the draft through no fault of his own. The other draft-eligible players all went between the fourth and seventh rounds, although all of them were signed out of high school – all of them may have been first-round picks if, like Biggio, they had gone to college instead.

If there’s a red flag here, it’s that the parameters I selected are slightly favorable to Gordon – he hit .247/.314/.411, which is about the midpoint of the range I selected, but he played in 2007, in an offensive environment that was better than most of these players enjoyed. That’s mostly a problem in comparing him to the guys who debuted in the 1960s, but you could argue that his rookie season does not stack up against the rest of the group. Here’s his EqA as a rookie, compared to everyone in groups three and four:

Biggio: .292
Murcer: .287
Gonzalez: .282
Lefebvre: .278
Gant: .277
Brock: .259
Green: .258
Hayes: .251
Kapler: .249
Gordon: .246
Durham: .243
Wright: .242

Based purely on his rookie performance, Gordon’s a little out of his depth. But factor in his track record, his pedigree, his second-half performance…I don’t think it’s incorrect to lump him in with these other guys.

Seven of the 11 players would go on to have stellar careers; two of the 11 went on to be Hall of Famers. Gonzalez hit his stride late in his career – it does the Royals no good if Gordon becomes a perennial All-Star in his 30s – but the other six guys would be named to an All-Star team or finish in the top 10 in MVP voting by their fifth season – all but Hayes by their fourth season. And keep in mind that you could easily lump Larry Walker in with this group, which would increase Gordon's odds to 8 out of 12, or 3 out of 12 for a Hall of Fame career.

I don’t know about you, but I feel a lot better about Gordon than I did when I started this study. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in what a player isn’t doing – in Gordon's case, hitting left-handers – that we overlook what he is doing. Gordon isn’t hitting lefties (.193/.273/.220), but by the same token, he’s hitting right-handed pitching very well (.276/.358/.490). I think batting him third against LHP is nuts – Hillman finally seems to agree – but against RHP, I think batting him third is wholly appropriate. Gordon is striking out at the same rate he did last year, but his walk rate is up almost 50%. When he gets ahold of one, he still hits the ball farther than any Royals hitter from the left side since George Brett.

Honestly, I think what bothers Royals fans more than Gordon’s performance is his attitude. When a guy with Gordon’s demeanor is playing well, he’s praised for being stoic, for not letting himself get swept up by the highs and lows in the game from day to day. When he’s not playing well, he gets ripped for not caring. But this is something we simply can’t know as fans. Sure, it looks bad when Gordon takes three straight pitches for strikes in the bottom of the ninth of a tie game, then trudges back to the dugout, as he did on Tuesday. But it’s easy to be fooled by the perception that someone is trying hard, when in reality we have no idea who’s working out in the weight room after the game, who’s spending the extra time working on defensive drills, who’s eating right and getting eight hours of sleep every night. Castigate Gordon for his work ethic if you think he deserves it – just don’t rip him because of the look on his face.

A few years ago the Royals had another player that was immensely talented, but also very quiet in the clubhouse, a stoic personality who didn’t seem to get overly upset when things didn’t go well, and it led a lot of people into thinking that he just didn’t care. It didn’t matter when Carlos Beltran won Rookie of the Year honors, but when he hit like crap as a sophomore and missed half the season with an injury, the whispers started. They hit a crescendo when Beltran refused to report to the team’s spring training camp to rehab – remember that?

And for the first half of 2001, he hit as badly as he did as a sophomore. On June 24^th, he was hitting .249/.294/.372, with seven homers all year. On June 20^th, I brilliantly wrote in a Rob & Rany dialogue that “even I’m beginning to give up on” Beltran. (Ten days later, after Beltran had a six-game stretch when he went 11-for-23 with five homers, I asked for forgiveness, pointing out that Beltran had changed his stance back to his 1999 form and that had made all the difference. Hey, don't tell me I don't know which way the wind is blowing.)

But halfway through his third season, Carlos Beltran looked like a bust, like the rookie hype was a mirage. Three months later he would finish with the best season of his career, and his superstar projection was back on track, a projection he has mostly justified since. But even years later, when Beltran had a terrible first season with the Mets, people close to the team argued that Beltran couldn’t handle the pressure New York. But just because a player doesn’t provide a good quote or throw his helmet after a bad at-bat doesn’t mean that they aren’t working their ass off to get better.

So let’s lay off Gordon for now. I still think the best is yet to come.

(Please tell me this makes up for my long absence, right?)