Keep those e-mails coming! First New Jersey, now Ottawa, Canada. I tell you, world domination is not so far-fetched an idea…

Now for a few quasi-random thoughts:

The Inky Signing

The Padres’ signing of Pete Incaviglia is unusual; unless someone else (Damian Jackson, Mike Darr, Ray Lankford) is traded, I don’t see him making the club. Best I can tell, he’s insurance for Ron Gant. Some folks have expressed concern at Inky and Gant taking playing time away from Bubba Trammell but that’s not the case. As it now stands, Lankford and Gant are in left, Kotsay is in center, and Klesko and Trammell are in right. Lankford/Gant and Klesko/Trammell probably will be close to straight platoons. Jackson will back up in center.

With or without Gant, Trammell should get about 300 at-bats this year. The one other possibility is that Sean Burroughs isn’t ready and Phil Nevin moves back across the diamond, setting off a chain reaction which would result in Trammell playing everyday in right. I don’t think that’s going to happen but you never know.

Sean Burroughs vs George Brett

I don’t want to flog a dead horse but the comparison between Burroughs and Brett has been made by more than one person lately, so I thought I’d take a quick look at the two players. First, a quick piece of philosophy.

Brett played 20 years in the big-leagues and is in the Hall of Fame; Burroughs is 21 years old and has yet to play a single game in the bigs. In making a comparison between the two players, I’m talking about career path to this point. Just because a prospect puts up numbers similar to a Hall of Famer at a similar stage of development doesn’t mean the prospect is headed to the Hall of Fame. But it does put the prospect on a nice path. A lot can happen between Triple-A and Cooperstown. The player can stagnate offensively and not grow according to fairly well established patterns of development. See Gregg Jefferies. The player can be passed over in favor of other prospects and see his skills deteriorate from lack of use. See Mario Valdez or Karim Garcia, or the cult figure Roberto Petagine. The player can suffer injuries that either temporarily or permanently sap his skills. Brent Gates and Paul Wilson are good examples. The point is, in baseball as in life, there is no such thing as a sure thing. The best we can do is look at history, examine parallels, and make educated guesses. Which is precisely what I do when I compare a guy like Burroughs to someone like Brett, or Jim Thome for that matter.

Okay, enough of that; let’s look at some numbers. I don’t have access to Brett’s minor league record but I do know that in his first full big-league season, at age 21, he hit .282/.312/.363. That was 1974, when the AL as a whole hit .258/.321/.371. Last year, the NL hit .261/.327/.425. Without gettting into park factors, and assuming that offensive levels are roughly the same in 2002 as in 2001, Burroughs would need to hit roughly .285/.318/.416 this season to be on par with Brett’s rookie year. Burroughs’ MLE last year was .297/.352/.416. In other words, he’s pretty much already there. If Burroughs can make the transition from Triple-A to the big leagues and produce roughly the way he did last year, he should have no trouble matching Brett’s rookie season.

Brett really exploded in his sophomore season, hitting .308/.353/.456. The AL hit .258/.327/.379 in 1975. Again assuming offensive levels remain the same, in order to keep pace, Burroughs would need to hit .312/.353/.511 in his second year. And that slugging percentage, while ultimately within his reach, is probably too much to expect from a 22-year-old who hasn’t shown much power yet.

However, and this is where it gets interesting, if Burroughs even shows middling power this year — I’m talking 30+ doubles and mid-teens homers — then an 864 OPS might not be unreasonable, although it may be shaped differently, e.g., .312/.383/.481. If that happens, then we’ve got something special on our hands. But, as guys like Jefferies, Valdez, Garcia, Petagine, Gates, Wilson, and countless others will attest, that’s a big if.