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Let's say you're player X and you make it to the bigs at age 25.  You're amped up, and you're laser focused, because this is the big time.  You're going to find out if you can run with the big dogs.
And you have a great season.  You start out balls of fire, maybe you're a ROY candidate by the end of the year.  After a couple months you relax a bit, feeling good about yourself.  Go into the offseason, and you think, I'm a player.  I've arrived.
And next season, it's just not as easy.  Pitchers start exploiting your weaknesses even more than they did last year.  Maybe you go in to a little slump, just by chance.  And of course now you're not as keyed up, you're more relaxed, confident, you KNOW you're going to hit, becuase you did that all last year.  So your focus is a bit weaker.  You're not going to the plate wanting to have a good at bat with every fiber of your being, you've got something a bit less than that.
And then your production starts to tail off a bit more.  And now you start to doubt yourself.  And now coaches start to give input on stuff, and you try different tweaks at the plate, and you review old video to see what you were doing back then.  And pitchers continue to attack your weak spots.
Anyway, I've experience similar, but smaller scale, events in my life where, through luck or serendipity I encountered early surprising success.  Only to find out later it really wasn't that easy.  Especially to sustain.
Jeremy Reed came up in September and batted what, .450 or something?  Stats guys would call is a small sample size; I would say there's that, but there are also some players who can handle success and temper their enthusiasm better than others.