Some positive national press...

Posted June 16, 200618 yr

...in the Wall street Journal, of all places. Good article about all the rookies having success throughout Major League Baseball this year, with major mention of the Marlins.

Rookies of the Year

Injuries to High-Paid Vets Give

New Players Starring Roles;

A 'Buffalo's' Home-Run Trot

June 16, 2006; Page W1

From the friendly ballyards of Boston and Chicago to the cavernous stadiums in New York and Los Angeles, fans of baseball's marquee teams are getting a firsthand look at a species they rarely encounter.

Rookies. Herds of them.

For a number of reasons ranging from injuries and payroll cuts to changes in the way some teams approach the draft, rookies are getting plenty of chances to play this season. They're not just making their debuts in some of the most nervewracking situations imaginable, they're stealing the show.

Melky Cabrera leaps into the hearts of Yankee fans by stealing a homer from the rival Red Sox.

Through Monday, rookies in the National League had the highest collective batting average in seven years and had hit 101 home runs in 526 games -- a 38% increase from last season's rate and the most in at least a decade, according to STATS. On the pitching side, rookies are not only keeping pace, they posted an earned-run average that's actually 3% better than the leaguewide average -- a feat that's been accomplished only once in the last 10 years. In the American League, rookie pitchers had won an impressive 56% of their games.

In Boston, the talk of the town is rookie Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon, the current American League saves leader, who mesmerized the entire league by converting every one of his first 20 save opportunities. This month, David Pauley, another Boston rookie, stepped in to make an emergency start in a city he'd never even been to: New York. He held the Yankees to two runs in just under seven innings.

In Los Angeles, Dodgers fans have watched their team overcome a plague of injuries to take over first place in the National League West -- thanks in large part to a posse of rookies. As of Wednesday night, three Dodgers rookie hitters had batting averages above .300 while four rookie relievers had piled up nearly 100 innings. Since the Dodgers called him up Memorial Day weekend to give the veterans a breather, 21-year-old outfielder Matt Kemp has launched seven home runs, including a clutch blast off Pedro Martinez. Mr. Kemp's stompy home-run trot has prompted fans on Dodgers chat boards to dub him "The Buffalo."

Nowhere is rookie fever more pronounced than in New York, where years of bloated payrolls have made rookies something of a novelty. Mets fans have taken a shine to a flamboyant rookie outfielder named Lastings Milledge who, after hitting his first major-league home run this month, jogged along the fence between innings to trade high-fives with the fans. Across town, the Yankees have rallied around another rookie sensation, 21-year-old outfielder Melky Cabrera, who recently scaled the outfield wall to steal a home run from Manny Ramirez of the archrival Red Sox. Not only did the fans coax him out of the dugout for a curtain call, they began a continuing debate about which nickname to give the soft-spoken kid from the Dominican Republic: "Melky Mantle," "The Melkman" or "El Leche."

For the most part, this year's rookies are getting their opportunities the old-fashioned way: through injuries. The list of highly paid veterans who've missed time or landed on the disabled list this season includes Barry Bonds, Bartolo Colon, Eric Gagne, Nomar Garciaparra, Derrek Lee, Hideki Matsui, Mark Prior, Albert Pujols and Gary Sheffield. Already this season, the Red Sox, Yankees and Dodgers, together with the Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, have been forced to throw nearly 50 rookies into the fire.

Shaving the Payroll

Another reason for all this: the Florida Marlins. Unable to close a stadium deal before the season, the Marlins shaved their payroll to about $15 million -- baseball's lowest -- mostly by replacing expensive veterans with rookies. Not only do the Marlins lead the league in youngsters passing through the clubhouse (18 so far) but they've boosted the stats for the entire rookie class. As of yesterday, three of the team's rookies had hit nine or more home runs -- accounting for more than 25% of the NL rookie total. The team's precocious pitching staff was also helping the cause. Josh Johnson, a 22-year-old, has the lowest ERA (2.05) among all major-league pitchers with at least eight starts.

While it's too early to make any firm conclusions, major-league teams may be hastening this trend by doing a better job of identifying talent. Take the Cardinals: In 2003 the team hired Jeff Luhnow, a former management consultant, to shore up the team's scouting operation. Since then, he has doubled the team's budget for what he describes as "R & D," building new databases and statistical models, adding more layers to the scouting process and investing heavily in youth baseball academies in places such as Venezuela and the Dominican Republic, which have proved to be prodigious sources of talent. Several of this year's top rookies, including Mr. Cabrera, were signed in their home countries as teenagers.

Detroit Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander

The draft may be playing a role, too. In recent years, more teams have targeted college pitchers in the early rounds because they tend to make it to the big leagues faster than kids from high school. So far, the strategy seems to be working: Nine of this season's top rookie pitchers are college kids who were drafted since 2003. Perhaps the rapid rise of pitchers such as Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers, who was drafted second overall in 2004 out of Old Dominion, has created a momentary glut of ready arms. A rough count of this year's rookie pitchers who were acquired through the draft suggests that more than half of them attended some college.

Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti says the increasing impact of rookies probably has less to do with the supply than a rising level of "open-mindedness" in baseball front offices. Last year, he says, the pool of veterans available as free agents was "fairly thin." So while he signed several free agents before the season, he says he made sure the deals were short enough to keep them from blocking all the promising kids in the minor leagues. Nowadays, Mr. Colletti says, when general managers look at veterans who might cost $5 million to sign, "you look at the economics and start to say 'wait a minute, I may have a college pitcher in the system who's pretty close.'"

Despite the early returns, it's a little too soon to proclaim 2006 the Year of the Rookie. Baseball executives are quick to note that early in the season, the only rookies who stick around are the ones who are performing well -- so the collective numbers tend to be better early on. As teams fall out of contention and begin calling up rookies just to give them a taste of the big leagues, the numbers may drop.

Buzz vs. Bad News

Nevertheless, this year's rookie class has provided enough buzz to balance at least some of the bad news coming out of baseball -- like the continuing revelations about players using steroids. Scott Olsen of the Florida Marlins is a good example. After struggling early in the season with a 6.64 ERA, Mr. Olsen found himself in this situation last month: late innings, one-run lead, full count, Barry Bonds at the plate. The rookie struck him out with a slider. On Tuesday, with his team down by one run to the Red Sox in the bottom of the 12th inning, Minnesota rookie Jason Kubel came up with the bases loaded, worked the count full, and then lifted a ball just over the fence for a game-ending grand slam. His teammates dumped a Gatorade cooler over his head.

But if current trends continue, it may be the rambunctious Marlins -- a team populated by such household names as Dan Uggla and Ricky Nolasco -- who will make the biggest splash of all. As of yesterday morning, the kids had won 14 of their last 20 games.

Write to Sam Walker at [email protected]

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