The Next...Hank Blalock???

I have a little time to post another entry here today, but this is on a non-Yankee subject and one that's more related to the fantasy baseball players reading this. If you did your homework this year, places like Baseball Prospectus and Baseball America had Alex Gordon, the rookie third baseman for the KC Royals, as a sure thing to put up a solid season and possibly win ROY. In fact, if you discount Matsuzaka as a rookie/prospect, Gordon was the #1 prospect going into 2007 (and for good reason, he was College player of the Year in 2005, and minor league player of the year in 2006). And me being a reader at least of BP's annual book picked Gordon in one of my fantasy baseball leagues.

Now, I was thinking back to 2002 when someone you and I know that writes on some blog about the Yankees and Red Sox drafted a player under very similar hype, that played 3b and was to be one of the next George Brett's or Scott Rolen's just as Alex Gordon is talked about. That player is Hank Blalock, 3b for the Texas Rangers (and if my memory serves me correctly, this unnamed friend also drafted Sean Burroughs who was the other highly touted third baseman on the Padres that year and whose career is likely over now. Furthermore, and my memory is good on this one, I won that fantasy league in 2002 with "Hall of Fame" and "Top tier" caliber players--no one will get these terms except my friend since they're an inside joke) who came up in 2002 and posted a .211/.306/.327 line in 49 games all the while being shipped down to Triple-A around mid-May, then getting injured, and finally being called up in September again.

This year I've been watching Alex Gordon struggle mightily and am sitting him on my bench (luckily I have Garret Atkins in at 3b, who hasn't been great either, but better than Gordon). Up to today, May 14th, Alex Gordon is hitting .164/.297/.259 in 35 games with 2 HRs and 5 RBIs and is striking out 30% of the time (39 K's in 130 PAs). Much like Blalock's '02, Gordon's '07 is looking more and more like a big flop. How similar is Gordon's '07 to Blalock's '02? Well check out how their April's went:

Blalock, 4/2002: .200/.300/.329 1 HR, 5 RBI, 9 BB, 32% SO Rate
Gordon, 4/2007: .173/.316/.296 2 HR, 5 RBI, 11 BB, 32% SO Rate

That's pretty scary, but Blalock turned it around the next year, hit that go ahead HR in the 2003 All-Star "this time it counts" (or whatever the slogan was) game to give the Yankees home field advantage during the World Series in 2003--I guess this is related to the Yankees then-- and since then has forgotten how to hit coming into his prime years as a ball player. Anyway, I went into my BP account and read what they wrote about Blalock following his 2002 season:

"In one short year, Hank Blalock went from The Next George Brett to The Next Richie Hebner. He’s still a very fine prospect, but his flopping at the major league level in April and his subsequent disappointing, injury-plagued showing in Oklahoma serve as a good reminder of how big the error bars are on predictions based mostly on a single season. Unfortunately, that’s often all the evidence that’s available. But the next time you hear the name George Brett (or even, for that matter, Richie Hebner) mentioned in conjunction with a 21-year-old, set your hype-detector on high." --Baseball Prospectus, 2003

Gordon is 23, but that's not the point. I screwed up (as did BP in 2007) and I would guess if Gordon doesn't pick it up this month he'll be sent to Triple-A like Blalock and I'll relive the nightmare my friend did in 2002.