Rafael Devers and 20-Year-Old Call-Ups

Rafael Devers will be called up to the majors on Tuesday. Well, I suppose he may technically be called up today, but he’s not expected to start Monday’s game, so it might not be until Tuesday. Whatever day he’s officially promoted, he’ll become the first 20-year-old position player promoted to the majors this season. While Travis Sawchik has already discussed Devers in the context of the Red Sox’ situation, I’d like to look at him in the context of 20-year-old call-ups.

I went back to 1985 in pulling info for 20-year-old call-ups, and there are some interesting things to be shared. Let’s start at the beginning: Devers will become just the 78th player since 1985 to be called up to the majors for his debut as either an 18-, 19- or 20-year-old. Here’s a breakdown of all the relevant players:

(Note: You get one attempt to guess who the 18-year-old was. If you get it wrong, you must serve a self-imposed banishment from FanGraphs for a period of 10-10.5 hours.)

As you can see, the last three years have represented a bit of a dry spell for young call-ups. From 1985 to 1994, there were 26 call-ups. There were also 26 from 1995 to 2004 and 24 more from 2005 to -14. This season is far from over, obviously, but if this holds, it will become the lowest three-year total since ’85. The current lowest periods are 2014-2016 and 1999-2001, at five. Teams are either more cautious these days or front offices are experiencing less pressure to produce winners — which may be an inevitable result of teams purposefully tanking.

Or it could just be random variance. We’re talking about a handful of players, at most, per year. And of course, the end of this season, when these call-ups typically happen, could bear more fruit, so to speak. Now it’s time for a breakdown by month.

As you can see, 41% of such call-ups occur in September (as a result of roster expansion, surely) and are pretty evenly distributed across the other months. Some happen because of injury, some happen because the prospect forces his way, and some happen because the team has a need. How you want to classify Devers’ call-up is up to you, but it’s likely some combination of the latter two reasons.

Call-ups for team need are tricky, because if the prospect is rushed and doesn’t respond well to that, then the corresponding organization may do more harm than good. Which timeframe is more important for the team? It’s hard to know that sometimes, because as always, the future is unknown. What we can do, though, is look to see just where Devers fits in in the context of these past call-ups. I looked at how many games each player played at both Double-A and Triple-A before their call-ups. These figures might not be 100% exact; if not, though, they’re damn close.

As you can see, Devers is certainly on the low side, particularly when it comes to Triple-A, but he’s not all that close to the bottom. By Double-A games, he’s tied for 41st with Gary Sheffield, just two games behind his soon-to-be-teammate, Xander Bogaerts. The difference is that Bogaerts had 60 games at Triple-A, whereas Devers only had nine.

One thing I don’t think we can do is project Devers’ future from the number of games he played at Triple-A. The three players who had the most Double-A/Triple-A time — Rivas, Martinez and Newfield — didn’t exactly light the world on fire. We shouldn’t look at Rivas’ 67 extra games in the high minors as some magic formula for success, just as we shouldn’t look to the other end of the scale and see John Olerud or Rickie Weeks Jr. skipping the high minors as some magic formula.

Before we go, I want to look at two more things. First, how well did these players do once they were called up? Specifically, how well did they do that first year? (Note: players are ordered by wRC+, but the table is sortable.)

You know what? There’s a lot going on here. Let’s narrow this down to players who notched at least 100 plate appearances, because if he stays up for the rest of the season, Devers should clear that bar. (Once again, players ordered by wRC+, table is sortable.)

Again, not much to go on here. The top 10 has one guy who had less than 20 games in the high minors (Griffey) and two who had more than 200 (Cordero and Young). Similarly, the bottom 10 has two guys at 50 games or fewer in the high minors (Ramirez and Rodriguez) and two at more than 200 (Crawford and Lopez).

One way to more directly compare Devers to his 20-year-old predecessors is to look exclusively at others who’ve played the same position. How many other third basemen have been called up this early? What’s the positional breakdown?

So, Devers will be the 10th third baseman called up. He’s on the top side of the average and median for his position, though the position is on the low end for both. If you take Devers out of the third-base sample, the average doesn’t drop, but the median drops to 69 games, which is a nice number. Let’s take a quick look at those third basemen.

Well, isn’t that some nice company to be in? While two of the players included here didn’t stay at third base for very long, three of those nine players are going to end up in the Hall of Fame. Of the rest, the only ones who didn’t have great careers were Greene and Gillaspie, and they at least hung around for awhile — 655 games / 2,183 PA / 4.4 WAR for Greene and 506 games / 1,538 PA / 1.8 WAR for Gillaspie. There have been far worse careers.

What kind of career will Rafael Devers have? We can’t really say definitively based on these comps here. He didn’t play in the high minors for as long as others did, but he isn’t the greenest either. Was he rushed? Only time will tell. What we can say for sure is that, since 1985, 3,458 non-pitchers have garnered plate appearances in the majors. Only 77 of them have been 18-, 19- or 20-year-olds in their debut season. That Devers will be the 78th makes him pretty special, no matter what kind of career he ends up having.