Quote:
Originally Posted by kaldaniels
Minor league stats help project a guy going forward, but so do 554 big league PA's. Just don't brush them aside...include them in your reasoning.
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The bolded part is SO IMPORTANT. Good point kal. It's understandable that people try to project, using minor league numbers (performance), in order to try and get a feel (gauge) what a player may do at the big league level. What else can one go on? If one wants to use the terminology "educated guess" that's fine, but it's nowhere near an exact science. Pretty incomplete IMO. The whole purpose of the various levels of minor league is about progressive development and getting to the next level. It's about taking a raw, yet talented and athletic kid and refining that potential that is already there.
Career-wise, Todd Frazier had pretty solid minor league totals. Now what does that tell me personally? That he has nothing left to prove at that level, and his next "test" is in the majors. He's done everything he could to prepare himself for that "test".
And so far, given the opportunity, he's passing that test with flying colors. That's really all that matters to me at this point. It doesn't necessarily mean he will continue to do so; but it certainly doesn't mean - simply by looking at minor league numbers - that at some point he's going to "come back to earth" or regress either. I just don't put that much stock in minor league numbers.
We can run down a gauntlet of ballplayers, either way, who have had either stellar minor league numbers, or even average careers, who washed out when it came to the bigs, or went on to success.
It's like trying to predict the weather.