Young position stars of 2010-11 |

In case you’ve forgotten, here are the top bWAR seasons over the past 2 years by players who will be 26 or under in 2012.

All seasons of at least 3.9 WAR are listed. No SS or 2B reached that level, so in order to round out a lineup (see the top 8 in the table), I’ve included the top figure at each position. (Dustin Ackley’s 2.5 WAR in 90 games does project to 4.5 per 162G.) Lastly, I included Brett Lawrie’s 2011 on the grounds of his tremendous rate of 10.5 WAR per 162 games.

Pos	Player	WAR	OPS+	Rbat	Rfld	Rbr	Yr	Age 2012	Tm	G	PA	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	OBP	OPS	Pos
3B	Evan Longoria	7.6	143	36	13	4	2010	26	TBR	151	661	96	169	46	5	22	104	72	124	.372	.879	*5
RF	Mike Stanton	5.7	141	30	20	-3	2011	22	FLA	150	601	79	135	30	5	34	87	70	166	.356	.893	*9/8D
CF	Andrew McCutchen	5.5	127	24	7	-2	2011	25	PIT	158	678	87	148	34	5	23	89	89	126	.364	.820	*8/D
C	Alex Avila	5.4	143	31	-1	-2	2011	25	DET	141	551	63	137	33	4	19	82	73	131	.389	.895	*2/D5
LF	Carlos Gonzalez	5.0	143	36	-2	5	2010	26	COL	145	636	111	197	34	9	34	117	40	135	.376	.974	789
RF	Jay Bruce	4.6	124	18	18	1	2010	25	CIN	148	573	80	143	23	5	25	70	58	136	.353	.846	*9
SS	Asdrubal Cabrera	3.7	119	15	-6	1	2011	26	CLE	151	667	87	165	32	3	25	92	44	119	.332	.792	*6
2B	Dustin Ackley	2.5	117	9	1	0	2011	24	SEA	90	376	39	91	16	7	6	36	40	79	.348	.766	*4/D3
3B	Evan Longoria	6.3	139	29	11	-1	2011	26	TBR	133	574	78	118	26	1	31	99	80	93	.355	.850	*5/D
3B	Pablo Sandoval	6.1	153	30	14	1	2011	25	SFG	117	466	55	134	26	3	23	70	32	63	.357	.909	*5/3D
RF	Jason Heyward	5.2	131	26	7	1	2010	22	ATL	142	623	83	144	29	5	18	72	91	128	.393	.849	*9
CF	Peter Bourjos	5.0	115	9	13	3	2011	25	LAA	147	552	72	136	26	11	12	43	32	124	.327	.765	*8
1B	Daric Barton	4.2	120	21	11	-2	2010	26	OAK	159	686	79	152	33	5	10	57	110	102	.393	.798	*3
RF	Justin Upton	4.1	141	34	-8	2	2011	24	ARI	159	674	105	171	39	5	31	88	59	126	.369	.898	*9
C	Matt Wieters	4.0	113	8	10	0	2011	26	BAL	139	551	72	131	28	0	22	68	48	84	.328	.778	*2/D3
CF	Andrew McCutchen	4.0	121	18	-4	3	2010	25	PIT	154	653	94	163	35	5	16	56	70	89	.365	.814	*8
C	Carlos Santana	3.9	124	22	-4	0	2011	26	CLE	155	658	84	132	35	2	27	79	97	133	.351	.808	*23/D
3B	Brett Lawrie	2.8	152	10	10	1	2011	23	TOR	43	171	26	44	8	4	9	25	16	31	.373	.953	*5

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 1/31/2012.

For space reasons, I abbreviated some Play Index terms in the table header:

“Rfld” is Rfield, a.k.a. War Runs Fielding.
“Rbr” is Rbaser, a.k.a. War Runs Baserunning.

Note that the age listed is the age they will be in 2012.

And yes, I capriciously set the bar at 3.9 WAR in order to include Carlos Santana.

Who will be the new young stars this year?

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Dr. Doom

12 years ago

Two things: First, Evan Longoria. Sheesh. It seems like he’s been around a long time, so I forget how young he actually is sometimes. What a player, though. Yikes. Second, I have an obnoxious question. Do you know if there’s any possibility of getting sortable tables from b-r? I ask because when there were these posts over at the ol’ b-r blog, that made it really easy to find things out, like which team had the most players appear or which player was the youngest, or who had the fewest PAs, or who was on the list more than once,… Read more »

Admin

Andy

Reply to Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom, I am looking into that issue. I suspect we can improve the table display now that we’re on a standalone platform and I can run any scripts I want. I’ve asked Sean for his input.

Tmckelv

It looks like no team has multiple players (if you only count the actual 3.9 bWAR seasons) on the list.

PIT and TBR have 2 entries, but they are the same players (McCutcheon & Longoria). CLE has 2 entries, with one @ 3.7 (Cabrera – added to find a SS) and the other at the “capricious” bar of 3.9 (Santana).

It is nice to see the young talent spread out through the Leagues. Of course, in order to see any Yankees, I will have to wait for the “Age over 36 and WAR less than 3.9” list.

JA, it looks like you wrote this post after me but it got posted before mine, burying itself automatically. I’m not sure why, but perhaps your time zone is set incorrectly within your profile. I tried to check it as ad admin but I have no access to it–check it out within the WordPress dashboard.

Hartvig

The balance of talent between the leagues is a little more balanced than I thought it might be before reading the article. Just glancing over the ROY voting for the past few seasons a month or 2 ago it seemed to me that the NL had considerably more potentially big impact talent in the pipe-line than the AL but it appears that might not be the case. Especially since guys like Mike Trout and Bryce Harper and a bunch of KC Royals have yet to show what (if anything) they are capable of. And that’s a good thing since young… Read more »

Frank Clingenpeel

Reply to Hartvig

It is beginning to appear like the AL is finally taking the DH spot seriously, rather than as an excuse to display players who otherwise should have retired.

High Heat Stats » Young hurling stars of 2010-11

[…] our post on the young position stars, here are the pitchers’ top bWAR values over the past 2 years by those who will be 26 or […]

My first real prediction of 2012;

Look for Yonder Alonso to make this list after this season.

Tristram12

How about that Mike Stanton? His age/rank combo really stands out.

Cory Atchason

its comical that daric barton makes the list basically because of all the walks he had in 2010. check his numbers for last year and i don’t know who would want him.