The much anticipated arrival of potential five-tooled phenom Lastings Milledge in New York has already passed, and at the tender age of 21, he is holding his own quite nicely against Major League pitching. The question must be asked, will he last in the short term or will there be growing pains for the new outfielder? Before we get to that I want to take a look at what kind of player Milledge has proven to be in his minor league career. The following chart depicts total statistics from Milledge's entire professional career including all minor league stops and his 2006 Spring Training numbers with the exception of his AAA line from this season prior to being called up.
| G | AB | PA | HR | SB | CS | BA | OPS | BABIP | ISOP | BB% | XBH% | K% |
| 227 | 848 | 958 | 24 | 62 | 29 | 0.314 | 0.892 | 0.377 | 0.168 | 0.067 | 0.346 | 0.190 |
Let's walk through some of those percentage stats and dissect their meaning in a bit more detail here. His BA/OPS figures look quite solid for a man so young moving so quickly through the Mets' system, and tell the story of an uber-prospect on the rise. I am certainly not going to argue with dozens of scouts when they all agree that Milledge is a legitimate five-tool stud heading toward an all-star career if things break right. However, Milledge is not without his flaws.
Major League average BB rate is slightly under 9% and Milledge, for his entire minor league career managed just 6.7%, while striking out almost three times as often. There have been dozens of players who have defied traditional "Moneyball" logic that you want prospects with low K/BB ratios and gone to outstanding careers despite never learning the control the strikezone. Miguel Tejada leaps to mind. However the common thread with just about all of those players is that it often takes them 4 or 5 years to get into their rhythms and learn how to be successful while still being aggressive. That's not a hard and fast rule, and Milledge could certainly prove me wrong, but base on his minor league K/BB, I'm immediately expecting some shaky seasons at the start of his career.
A sabermetric toy that is often used to judge a player's power potential in the minors is the percentage of his hits that go for extra bases. This works better as a projection method for minor leaguers than ISOP because most young sluggers hit more doubles than home runs as minor leaguers and then learn to convert those doubles into longballs as they fill out and get better contact. Milledge's 34.^% rate is pretty good. It compares favorably to guys like Carlos Beltran and Miguel Tejada, but it doesn't scream future 50 HR threat. I believe Milledge will be a solid 30 HR producer in his prime, but it may take a few years to get there.
You can also see from his SB and CS figures that Milledge is pretty speedy. 91 attempts to steal a base in the equivalent of 1.4 major league seasons. He's got the natural speed to steal 40 eventually, but he's also not a particularly adept baserunner, getting himself gunned down nearly 1/3 of the time against minor league catchers, which is never a good sign. He's going to have to learn how to use his speed before it becomes a major factor in games, and I don't expect a huge number of attempts in his first couple of seasons until his manager feels confident that he's become smart enough to take better risks.
One final thought on Milledge's minor league career. Take a look at that BABIP! Now the average minor leaguer will have a BABIP of about .320 because minor leaguers don't field as well as major leaguers do, but .377 is good in any league. When he makes contact, he's hitting it hard, and probably more often on the ground than on the fly. As he matures into a better slugger, the GB/FB aspect will probably even out or even bias more toward flyball outs, but he should always carry with him an above average ability to make solid contact.
It's too early to draw any conclusions from his major league numbers, but thus far, the hits have not really been falling for Milledge as shown by his mediocre BABIP (.276), but when he is getting the hits, they're for extra bases more often than for singles. That won't continue...he's just not that big yet. That's alright, however, because despite the prediction that he'll face some growing pains at the big league level, I think he'll continue to do well enough to hold down a job if the Mets are smart and allow him to learn on the job. Mets fans can sit back and enjoy watching as Reyes, Wright, Milledge and Pelfrey form a new young nucleus of a club a lot of potential.
