Panik and Susac move from prospects to made men

Baseball America Prospect Report


It looks like these guys will be moving off the prospect list once and for all. They are officially "made" men.

SF		MAJ		Panik, Joe 2B		4		2		2		0		.314		2B (7), BB (14)
SF		MAJ		Susac, Andrew C		5		2		2		3		.288		2B (4), HR (3)

It's nice to see Susac show his stuff at the bat as I initially thought he was rushed up due to the need presented by the Sanchez concussion.  This was based entirely on my observation that Susac "only" had 836 minor league AB's  prior to his call up and the number of AB's other Giants prospects had prior to their call ups.

A cursory look at Baseball Reference data showed the following:

Posey 750 AB's (2008-10)

Sandoval 1818 AB's (2004-08)

Belt 922 PA (2010-11)

Crawford 1189 PA (2008-11)

Sandoval was an INTL signing and the other three were collegiate draftees. 

Some other blasts from the past:

Conor Gillaspie 2223 PA's - College

Nick Noonan 3000 PA's - HS

Kieschnick 2000 PA's - College

Culberson 2900 PA's - HS
Jackson Williams 2000 PA's - College

Wendell Fairley 1600 PA's - HS

Burris 920 PA's 

Freddie Lewis 2727 PA's

Schierholtz 2428 PA's

Gary Brown 2500 PA's - College

Of the recent Giants call-ups:
Joe Panik 1620 AB's
Adam Duvall 1883 AB's
Matt Duffy 942 AB's
Andrew Susac 836 AB's

It seems like for prospects, the organization would seem to know what it has somewhere around the 1,000 AB mark for college hitters and around the 1,500 - 2,000 AB's for a HS hitter. This makes sense intuitively since the HS hitters is making his first 1,000 AB's in the minors. I don't want to get pinned down to a definitive marker and get yelled at and ridiculed like Erricson and the 10,000 Hour Rule, but as a rough rule of thumb, this seems to be the line in the sand that organizations employ. This takes into consideration that some guys are rushed due to organizational need (due to injury or performance) and some guys are blocked at a certain position and their stay in the minors is, in effect, over-extended. I still feel that Gillaspie was blocked in this way with the Giants, but Oh well.

An issue for further study. Here is another story that looks into the issue somewhat as well.
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from the Hardball Times:
The historic risk of Manny Machado’s promotion – The Hardball Times:

Machado was promoted to the majors after just 928 minor league plate appearances. There have been just six other first-round picks since 1997 who were drafted as position players out of high school and were called up to the majors with fewer than 1,200 plate appearances. Only one of these had fewer plate appearances than Machado.

Cameron Maybin (830)
Justin Upton (957)
Jason Heyward (1010)
Corey Patterson (1015)
Josh Hamilton (1148)
Joe Mauer (1177)

Hamilton had some extenuating circumstances, and was ultimately 26 years old when he made his major league debut, so let’s take him out of this discussion. With the exception of Mauer and Upton, this list is a collection of promise that has thus far gone unfulfilled, and even Upton has had hiccups in two of his five full major league seasons.

...

While minor league numbers often mean little when it comes to gauging a prospect’s potential, I’m a big proponent of allowing a player to dominate a level before moving on so that he gets a taste of what it takes to truly succeed, especially when that player has such an ability to do so. Too often, organizations are willing to play the “young for his level” card to upgrade an average performance in their own eyes.

Heyward is the most recent example of the possible pitfalls of a rushed prospect. Much like Upton and Mauer, he dominated the minor leagues, posting a .968 OPS in his final season, including a 1.057 mark in a half-season in Double-A. In his rookie season in 2010, Heyward looked like one of the few who could handle the limited developmental time, making an all-star team and finishing with an OPS+ of 131.

But the major leagues are unkind. Since then, Heyward has hit .248/.331/.433 and an OPS+ of 106, despite a nice job rebounding this season. He’s just 22, and I still believe Heyward will be a star, but his 2011 season should serve as a warning flag for those teams who believe prospects are ready without significant time in the upper minors.

'via Blog this'

And then, the only piece of expert evidence is from John Farrell, where he doesn’t really comment on the point, but implies that the gap between AAA and the majors is wider in bigger markets. Yet plenty of the prospects mentioned as under-performing were in small markets.

Here’s the concluding paragraph:

Too many at-bats in Triple-A is not going to stunt a player’s development, as seen with Andrew McCutchen. Calling up a player too soon, however, has the potential to have serious ramifications years down the road. As the 2014 rookie class clearly demonstrates, the recent trend of accelerated development clearly has not yielded the immediate success at the major league level they are designed to generate.

1. McCutchen, as the article even indicates, actually represents a bit of a departure from the prospect development of stars. Here’s another quote:

Among the notable successes in this class of prospects was Jay Bruce (405 PA), Evan Longoria (158 PA), Jacoby Ellsbury (400 PA), Andrew McCutchen (881 PA), Jason Heyward (13 PA) and Carlos Gonzalez (237 PA).

Now, it’s true, this doesn’t necessarily disprove the point that excess time in AAA can stunt growth. But that’s also not demonstrated by the article. Excess time in AAA didn’t stunt McCutchen’s growth. One data point is hardly generalizable.

2. “Calling up a player too soon, however, has the potential to have serious ramifications years down the road.” This was never really proven by the article, and is a strong, strong statement.

3. “As the 2014 rookie class clearly demonstrates, the recent trend of accelerated development clearly has not yielded the immediate success at the major league level they are designed to generate.” I would be fine with this, but there’s no real indication that there was any grand “design” in place, at least in the absence of some reasonable understanding of either the outside expectations or, more difficult to ascertain, the internal expectations. In other words, this could be true, but isn’t sufficiently proven, either.