Not Every Day a Starlin Rises

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At some point yesterday afternoon, I decided that I wanted to look into Starlin Castro on a historical basis. I go to Baseball-Reference and enter the filters required to get the desired results from the Play Index tool — notably shortstops, age 20, who played in at least 50 games and played at least 50% of those games at short. Nothing too strict, really, and naturally that query only returned 22 seasons. That within itself should give the impression of how rare Castro’s situation is.

Actually, we’ve been spoiled with 20-year-old shortstops: Castro this year, Elvis Andrus last, Jose Lopez in 2004, and Jose Reyes in 2003. If you reach into the 1990s, you have Edgar Renteria and Alex Rodriguez, with Gary Sheffield missing by a year. Between 1930 and 1950, only one joined the ranks (Arky Vaughan) – presumably the whole World War thing played into it – and it wasn’t until the 1970s when this sort of thing became an every-few-years phenomenon.

The question of importance is how Castro is performing against his peers. The answer is quite well. Throw out Rodriguez’s ridiculous 36 home runs, 1.045 OPS season in ’96 and Castro stacks up well against everyone else. Obviously, OPS+ is not the best measure of hitting performance in the world, but it does a worthwhile job here:

Rodriguez 160 OPS+

Vaughan 113

Jim Fregosi 108

Reyes 102

Travis Jackson 102

Whitey Witt 100

Castro 95

Garry Templeton 91

Everyone else had OPS+ below 90, including Ed Brinkman in 1962: he played in 54 games and his OPS+ was a mere 25. Nonetheless, Castro is in good company. Rodriguez is bound to join Vaughan and Jackson in the Hall of Fame, and Fregosi as well as Templeton appeared in numerous All-Star games. Truthfully, there are worse careers to mimic than Witt’s too. Sure, he was out of the league shortly after turning 31, but he appeared in more than 1,130 games and had a career OPS+ of 97.

Moreover, he had a name to compete with Starlin DeJesus Castro, too, as he was born Ladislav Waldemar Wittkowski.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/not-every-day-a-starlin-rises/

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Starlin '$#!ttin' on Templeton' Castro

I saw this on fangraphs, and I thought the article was pretty lame. Such a small sample size to really compare these guys, and they didn't talk at all about Castro's defense. I was hoping it would be a little more depth, and of course showing us that Castro is destined to be a HOF.

But it's basically just a semi-meaningless "for fun" article.

And I don't like fun! :

Holy **** I forgot Sheffield came up as a SS.

Good times.

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Originally Posted by hoggin88

I saw this on fangraphs, and I thought the article was pretty lame. Such a small sample size to really compare these guys, and they didn't talk at all about Castro's defense. I was hoping it would be a little more depth, and of course showing us that Castro is destined to be a HOF.

But it's basically just a semi-meaningless "for fun" article.

And I don't like fun! :

Yeah, it's pretty small, but the fact remains that as the youngest player in the league it would seem as though Starlin Castro is really exceeding all expectations. Especially over the last month, Castro has been phenomenal.

Here's a scary statistic. Out of all MLB SS's with 225 abs+......only 4 have a better OPS than Starlin. That's right. Castro is currently the 5th best hitting SS in the league. At 20 years old. I know a lot of this can be attributed to his massive last month, but the fact remains, he's been awesome.

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Originally Posted by 1908_Cubs

Yeah, it's pretty small, but the fact remains that as the youngest player in the league it would seem as though Starlin Castro is really exceeding all expectations. Especially over the last month, Castro has been phenomenal.

Here's a scary statistic. Out of all MLB SS's with 225 abs+......only 4 have a better OPS than Starlin. That's right. Castro is currently the 5th best hitting SS in the league. At 20 years old. I know a lot of this can be attributed to his massive last month, but the fact remains, he's been awesome.

It just shows how terrible SS is at offense.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1908_Cubs

Yeah, it's pretty small, but the fact remains that as the youngest player in the league it would seem as though Starlin Castro is really exceeding all expectations. Especially over the last month, Castro has been phenomenal.

Here's a scary statistic. Out of all MLB SS's with 225 abs+......only 4 have a better OPS than Starlin. That's right. Castro is currently the 5th best hitting SS in the league. At 20 years old. I know a lot of this can be attributed to his massive last month, but the fact remains, he's been awesome.

Well honestly, his massive last month can be attributed to his ability to adjust. I mean, those low and away pitches he was pounding into the ground constantly in June he's been turning into line drive singles and doubles.

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Originally Posted by poodski

It just shows how terrible SS is at offense.

That it does. SS is a blackhole offensively. But Castro is currently OPS'ing at .774, that's not too far away from .800, and according to fangraphs is a 1.4 WAR player.

Out of a 20 year old, I think that's about the top end of expectations one could have.