On Jesus Montero's Age-22 Rookie Season
Age-arc, dept.

.

There were two articles on the 'net lately, both from top-notch sources.  They analyzed Jesus Montero, one concluding that Montero probably is a longshot from this point, and the other deciding that, well, there's still some hope left for him.

SSI wants to follow on in "roundtable" spirit.  A few things we're not going to get into:

  • Who decided that Jesus Montero isn't a legit catcher, and what the rationale was/is
  • Why the presence of Mike Zunino implies something negative about Montero as a catcher
  • Whether a Baseball America ranking is reassuring 
  • Whether free swingers are the kind of hitter you want

There is a factor here that is being underweighted, though.  That is the career arc of a player who is already a decent-quality major league hitter in his early 20's.

We remember Bill James saying, with respect to Ryne Sandberg, that if a ballplayer were a regular, and a 2+ WAR player, by the age of 22, then he had roughly a 30% chance of having a Hall of Fame caliber career.  Now, with respect to Sandberg, he was considering the total package -- position scarcity, defense, etc etc, and saying that "if a player is an average-solid contributor to an ML team at age 22, then ..."

We get confused by the fact that we believe that Montero's out of position.  We grab a list of 22-year-old catchers who played at all and our eyes pop.  WOW!  What a list.  And then, immediately, we go "well, we better not count that list, because..." but what we want to notice here is our visceral reaction to discard positive data on Montero.  That is the "noise" that is getting in our way here; our laughter at Montero's catcher's gear is blotting out the sun on him.

...................

Let's simplify the situation.  

Suppose you took a list of all 22-and-under hitters AT ANY POSITION who hit the MLB average as rookies (since 1990).  What does that group look like?  It looks like this.  

It's a 150-player list packed with guys like Jim Thome, Carl Crawford, Ivan Rodriguez and Alex Rodriguez ... whoop, I said that wrong, because those rookies did NOT hit the MLB average as rookies.  They hit much worse than average.

Suppose we took ARod's, or Thome's, rookie seasons, and tore apart their F/X numbers, and tried to plot an arc from there?  We'd conclude that their strike zone management, contact rate, etc., was damning.  

Jesus Montero, compared to most other early-20's rookies, hit very well in MLB last year.  99 wRC+.  The 150 players on our 1990-2013 list were those who survived the playing time cut.  Run the same list to include everybody with 50 AB's or more.... 

Now let me point something out, good-naturedly.  Your instinctive reaction was probably to find some way in which Jim Thome doesn't really compare to Jesus Montero -- was he younger?  Did he walk more, and are OBP guys a better bet?, etc.  We edit the discussion against Montero.  In our zeal to be 'objective,' we lose sight of something important:  Jesus Montero was an MLB-average hitter at the age of 22.

...................

Now that's not nearly fair to Montero, because although he was a 22-year-old rookie, he was a 22-year-old rookie who was distracted by trying to catch.

Almost everybody will acknowledge that catchers develop later.  Lonnie, Mo' Dawg and others will remember Jason Varitek.  At ages 23, 24, people pitied the Mariners for having taking Varitek in the draft.  Varitek could hold his own against MLB pitching at 26, and started raking them at age 29.

Okay, catchers' hitting is retarded ....... um, suppose you compare Montero to 21-year-olds at other positions?  What comes back then?  What if a 20- or 21-year-old were holding his own in the AL -- what would he be at 26?

...................

At this point we tend to edit the discussion against Montero again.  "Well, suppose he hits like Billy Butler, but has to DH.  Who cares about him then, anyway?"

Again, we have a Seattle filter going:  Butler, and Morse, and Konerko, aren't very desirable players...  we're stacking bias upon bias here.  :- )

....................

Supposing that Jesus Montero goes on to become a legit #4 hitter, as so many rookies of his quality do go on to become.  If Montero does hit .300 with 30 homers, he's going to be slugging .550.  Whether it's as a DH/1B/C or not, well .... Jack Zduriencik doesn't care as much as we do.  He wants .550 sluggers, period.

..................

From a scouting eye, Dr. D has watched Jesus Montero square up low-away sliders, square up 96 MPH jam pitches, keep his hands back and torch good curve balls ... it's pretty remarkable to watch him handle every kind of pitch they throw at him.

What Jesus Montero does not do, yet, is hit balls hard enough to clear the fence.  In that, he reminds of the young Ken Griffey Jr.  It happened again Friday night:  Aaron Loup threw Montero a fastball right on the black, outside, and Montero crushed a 350-foot screaming line drive into the right-center gap.  Jose Bautista ran it down.  OOOOoohhhhhhh!  bummer.  Later on, Montero will be loading up more.  Where was Michael Morse at age 22?

From a rather better scouting eye, Jack Zduriencik compared Montero to Albert Pujols.  At the time, Pujols was hitting a little better than he is now.  Then, Montero goes out and hits the league average at 22, and we say, "well, that proves Jack wrong... "

??

..............

I don't say that Montero is going to be a star.  Jose Lopez was a good MLB hitter at age 22.  Delmon Young had a quick start.  Wil Cordero.  Melky Cabrera.  Daric Barton.  Jason Kendall.  Tony Batista.  I'd say 50%, 60% of quick-start players go on to disappoint.  But Montero isn't being given credit for a quick start.  We think of his rookie season as a failure.

There are a few current MVP candidates who, when they first got here, had to hit 100 OPS+ for a year or two before they started partying hearty.  Not so many people land in the bigs like Mike Trout did.  When did a 100 season become a failure for a rookie?  For that matter, why did the whole concept of "arc" stop applying to Montero at all?

Montero can't be painted with the brush that Justin Smoak is, nor with the brush that Dustin Ackley is.  Justin Smoak's future is in peril, and Dustin Ackley's future is by no means certain.  But Jesus Montero?  My $0.02 is that we are being just a leeeetle bit impatient on this kid.

Cheers,

Dr D

Blog: 

Comments

1
bsf's picture

He came in and it was expected he'd be the offensive saviour for this team. He wasn't, he was merely average, hence failure.
If he had come in and everyone was thinking "oh, that rookie, let's see what he can do" than a 100 wRC+ would have been great.
Everything from then on is called "confirmation bias" in a lot of cases (Look it up on Wikipedia if you don't know it. We do that more than we'd like). Or hyperventilation after a three-week slump where he looked in between a lot of pitches.

2

They had some pretty young guys who were still learning the game. Jack Sikma played in a tiny college and probably faced nobody who went on to the NBA. Wilkens inserted this 22 year old kid at power forward. Marvin Webster was all potential. Dennis Johnson was in his second season. Gus Williams - I think he had a rep as a talented but rockheaded kid. He tended to disappear after the first quarter, but that first quarter - it set the tone and established that the Sonics had come to play. I see a similar nice mix between youth and experience in this Mariner team. I'd like to see a little more youth. Does anyone thinks that Sikma, Webster and Johnson played flawless ball during that stretch to climb out of the 5-17 hole Hopkins had them in when he left? Well, raw talent overshadowed a lot of youthful flaws. Montero hit a big home run in this recent good stretch. It was a "hard rbi". I expect to see more throughout the year.
People treat pessimism as "realism" and optimism as "unrealistic". But optimism is grounded in reality just as much as pessimism. It's funny when you have to be offer clear eyed reality to get people to climb out of their unrealistic pessimism regarding a player like Montero, or Brandon Maurer (3 quality starts in his first 6 ML starts as a 22 year old rookie who skipped AAA. Why aren't we comparing him to Mark Langston?) . Yeah, we'll find a reason. It'll be a good reason. But it wont be the whole story, and it will overlook something we are witnessing before our very eyes - that this guy is winning ball games against teams we have to beat if we are going to win a pennant.

3

Montero's DOWNSIDE is that he will be a guy who beats the snot out of LHP and he can catch decently. Will probably have a 1B glove, at some point, as well. If he's ONLY a guy who does that, then he has value, lots of it.
He's a career .320-.371-.456 vL guy. And that includes this year's .148-.233-.259 (.174 BABIP).
It looks like he's always going to have a significant split, that's just a fact of Montero life. But he's WAY better than not bad, and he's ours.
Go team

4

That's not the kind of player you want back for Pineda. Better than the returns for Fister and Morrow, but pretty disappointing especially when viewed in that sequence of trades.

5
fairness's picture

have you seen pineda for the last two years?

6
SeattleNative57's picture

we don't know what kind of player Montero will be. And as for Pineda, he's yet to even pitch for NY. Most trades need a minimum of 3 years to evaluate. This one may need more. Montero's first year was not awesome, but it also was not awful. He had some distractions which hindered his development, including playing with Olivo, imo. For the first year, 22 years old, I'll take league-average, 15 homers. I want improvement, which has not appeared yet this year. But I believe it will. Seeing Ackley and Smoak struggle and begin to rise should influence him some. He's also watched Condor blossom. I think his influences are better this year, including Shoppach. I see better things ahead for Jesus Montero.

7

Montero "owns" impressive hitting skills, as Jeff noted. It'll take time for them to coalesce. I am amazed at how quickly people both sign on and bail on a prospect. Expectations were indeed sky high on Montero, especially after those 69 PAs the Yankees gave him in September (.996 OPS!). As bsf noted, expectations were indeed sky high. We wanted at least an .800 OPS - I think we have to admit we were kinda hoping for that. It's not as easy to project a superstar as we want it to be. But again, I say look at Alex Gordon, the most major league ready hitter to come out of a draft, maybe ever. He didn't put it together until age 26.
I hope we give Zunino some room to grow. I can already read in my mind the articles quoting unknown scouts saying he can't catch up to a major league fastball, his footwork is subpar, etc. I certainly can see why a front office would be very reluctant to bring up a prospect. Look at Ackley. Two years ago, we were all so pumped for this guy. Less than a year later, Sully's wondering if we have another Jeremy Reed, people want to know where the power went, he's TOO selective, etc. Here I have to give Dr. D major props for calling, alone, for moving Ackley to second base. Turns out this was the easiest adjustment to make.
We handed Z a pretty impossible job, when you think about it. Rebuild a juggernaugt. You have a star pitcher, a star right fielder, a bevy of terrible contracts, and a barren farm system. Oh, and compete. Turns out, like Ackley, the one that looked hardest - compete - he did out of the gate. It's been a hard slog ever since.

8

of calling superstars early is Dave Cameron. He doesn't whip out the statistics when he does, because it's too early to use them. But Dave was a super early adopter of Felix, Asdrubal Cabrera, and Mike Trout. Some really astute scout has his ear. When Cameron gets all pumped about an 18 year old, I take note.

9

That's not the point at all.  My comment is directed at the idea that if Montero turns out "ok" then it was ok to trade Pineda for him.  At the time of the trade, Pineda was a young, cost controlled SP with both dominating stuff and command *and* also projectable improvement, a great pitchers body *and* proven in the AL. IOW, one of the most valuable assets in MLB. You would expect something like that to bring back a major asset in return. So it would be a major disappointment if we traded Pineda for a player that would top out at a lefty mashing backup C backup 1B. Eg something "not bad". If Montero turns out to be a more then that, then no problem. But we've traded away a lot of high level pitching (Fister, Morrow, Lee, Bedard) for very meager returns so far.  My point is that a role player is not the kind of player you want back from trading a player like Pineda (especially when a player like Campos is included). 
 
 

10
GLS's picture

"...our laughter at Montero's catcher's gear is blotting out the sun on him."
I really like this turn of phrase. I write well, but my brain doesn't come up with this sort of thing.

11
GLS's picture

I like this article. It made me think a bit.
There are a couple of variables at play that I think I need to understand better:
1) How truly bad is Montero's defense at Catcher? I remember reading about him years ago in Baseball America and even back then the consensus was that he wouldn't stick at catcher. But then, why did the Yankees keep playing him there? What are the historical comparisons for his defensive profile? Is he better or worse, for instance, than Mike Piazza? Is there any one thing Montero could improve on (e.g. blocking pitches in the dirt, throwing out runners, etc) that would change his defensive profile?
2) What is the truth of these rumors about his lack of a work ethic? Didn't this come from Drayer? Is this reporter bias? Is it possible that he has a normal work ethic, but something in his personality makes people think he lacks that fire or whatever? Do we have an unreasonable fear that he'll turn into Jose Lopez?

12

Well, he gave up four steals today and is now averaging one per start. That is not good. Drayer notes that he often drops to one knee as he receives the ball and supposes that he's been booked. She says that it was something that the M's wanted him to work on in the off season but he didn't, a refrain I've read before.

14
SeattleNative57's picture

on successful steals with Montero catching this year. Usually the runner steals bases on the pitcher. But against Montero, he takes forever coming out of his crouch and often doesn't throw at all. He failed to throw on one attempt today. Another quirk I've noticed is he closes his eyes each time he catches the pitch. That can't help his timing while trying to throw out runners.

15

Here, for instance.
 

The major concern about Montero involves maturity. He does not turn 22 until November and -- among other items -- his work ethic and day-to-day concentration have been in question. There were Yankees officials who claimed Montero became bored with Triple-A and that his attention was only galvanized if he saw a reason essentially to show off. For example, with Cashman in attendance a few weeks back, Montero homered on a 97 mph fastball from Ryan Madson, who was on an injury rehab.
When Alex Rodriguez was recently on injury rehab, members of the Yankees' Triple-A affiliate suddenly noticed Montero was taking extra batting practice.

Now I remember Robinson Cano being "lazy" too in the minors. He found that ethic.  But it's something to keep in mind.
~G

Add comment

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd><p><br>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

shout_filter

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.