Being a rookie in Major League Baseball is all about adjustments. Pitchers are facing hitters far better than anything they have in the minors, and vice versa.
It’s even more difficult for first-year players because they have likely never faced any adversity before. When you are a top prospect, more often than not you are going to dominate every level you play.
But that won’t be the case in the big leagues.
Success is a difficult thing for any young player to have in this game. There are a few young studs who will not put up the numbers that fans are expecting from them.
Here are the high-profile rookies that will disappoint in 2011.
Yoenis Cespedes, Oakland A’s
Everyone has seen what Cespedes can do against Cuban pitching and in a gym. It all looks great, and provides hope for what could be, but it doesn’t actually tell you what is.
Cespedes has great tools—speed, power and throwing arm being the best—but he has really never been challenged by quality pitching in his career. No disrespect to the pitchers in Cuba, but they are the equivalent of a low Class-A team, at best.
He is already 26 years old, which means that his window to succeed is much smaller than a typical prospect. His swing is hard and fast, but he tries to pull everything as far as he can. He has to learn to shorten his stroke and take the ball the other way to succeed.
Cespedes is making the most money of any player on the A’s, so he is going to start with the big-league club. He might hit early because pitchers don’t know how to work him, but eventually they will catch on to tendencies. Then it falls on him to change things up.
Drew Pomeranz, Colorado Rockies
Pomeranz was the key to the Ubaldo Jimenez-to-Cleveland trade last July, and he wound up making his big-league debut last September. He should have the inside track on a starting spot for the rotation out of spring training, just by virtue of the team not having any real depth.
While he does have the upside of a No. 2 starter thanks to his size, low-90s fastball and dominating curveball, there are some reasons to be skeptical of him in Coors Field.
First, Pomeranz is a fly-ball pitcher. I don’t know if you have heard this, but balls tend to fly out of Colorado. He is going to have to miss a lot of bats to keep his home run rates down or find a way to get hitters to punch the ball into the ground.
Second, his curveball isn’t going to be as sharp and, as Kevin Goldstein of ESPN and Baseball Prospectus wrote, he is still looking for a consistent changeup.
Breaking balls tend not to break as much in the high altitude, so Pomeranz’s biggest weapon will lose some of its luster.
All of those questions without a lot of positive answers make Pomeranz a risky gamble this season.
Matt Moore, Tampa Bay Rays
Before the riots start, let me just say that Moore is going to be really good this year. But based on what he did last September and October, fans don’t want greatness right away.
It is important to remember three things regarding Moore. The first is that he is just 22 years old. He is still learning how to pitch, which is remarkable considering how much he has evolved over the last two years in the minors.
The second thing to keep in mind is that most of Moore’s success came in September, which is the worst time to try evaluating any player. Teams load their rosters with Triple-A players that they want to get in games, and that waters down the competition.
The third and final thing is Moore’s never dealt with adversity in the big leagues. He has dominant stuff and the makeup to be a top-of-the-rotation starter, but we have never seen how he responds to an extended period of failing.
The American League East tends to eat pitchers alive, because the lineups in the division are so much deeper than anywhere else. Moore is not going to go up in smoke, but there will be instances when he struggles mightily.
An ERA in the high-3.00 range is what we should expect from Moore. Again, nothing wrong with it, but it isn’t great either. He will eventually grow into one of the top five pitchers in baseball, just not this year.
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