That quote is taken directly from the young talent inventory in the 2009 Bill James Handbook and was written by James himself. In this inventory James also lists Prince Fielder as the best young player in the league. As you can tell by the title of the post, I'm not on board with that statement. The idea that a young Ryan Howard is better than equally (or better) performing players at up the middle positions and much better players at third base but who may be one year older boggles my mind. Not to mention ace starting pitching. Would any GM draft Fielder ahead of David Wright, Hanley Ramirez, Jose Reyes or Cole Hamles? What about Grady Sizemore, Evan Longoria or even Fielders teammate Ryan Braun? James defends his list by stating that he's not trying to create the perfect, end all top 25 of young talent, but rather to gather which teams have the most young talent and whether there is more young talent than normal. But how can you do this successfully when you can't even properly evaluate the young talent playing right now?
James ranked Fielder and Ramirez 1-2 on his top 25 list along with stating that both players suffered a performance drop. I'm going to contest both aspects of that argument. Both players are the same age, yet one plays SS and the other 1B. Any cursory understanding of the game validates that SS is the more important position. For a direct comparison I'm going use two Bill James tools; runs created and win shares (even though I don't really like them). I will also be using OPS+ and WARP1. Fielders 2008 line runs 105 RC, 23 WS, 128 OPS+ and 5.9 Warp1. For Ramirez it's 116 RC, 32 WS, 146 OPS+ and 10.3 Warp1. Their raw slash lines read; Fielder 276/372/507 with 34 HR and 301/400/540 with 33 HR. Ramirez wins the comparison hands down. James never gives any defense or reasoning as to why he picks Fielder over Ramirez, but from where I'm sitting, all evidence points to Ramirez being the far superior player.
My final disagreement is with the idea that Ramirez had a lesser 2008 than 2007. In James defense Ramirez lost 31 points of BA, 22 points of slugging and 16 SB. However his OBP increased by 14 points despite the drop in BA and his IsoP rose from .230 to .239. Plus his 32 WS surpasses James unofficial MVP mark of 30, while his 10.3 Warp1 is an increase of almost 3 wins from 07 as his FRAA rose from -22 to -3. Essentially his on-base abilities continued to increase, his power hitting up ticked in the slightest and he moved from one of the worst defensive SS's to an almost average one. Ramirez had an MVP type season and was most likely one of the 5 best players in the NL. To say that he had a lessor season makes it appear as if Bill James is drastically over-valuing raw BA, something he's been preaching against for decades.
Bill James has done more to develop and promote an analytical approach to baseball than I could in 15 lifetimes, yet here it seems as thought he's starting from a list and forming arguments around it. Hopefully this was just a result of James being rushed and not a sign of him reaching his decline phase.
*as labeled by the Wall Street Journal
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