The Pro Yakyu Report Vol. 1.26 - Golden Age of Rookies

I was recently tasked with writing about the theme "The Golden Age of Rookies" for the upcoming issue of "Baseball Magazine." Unfortunately, history being my weak point, I can't just point to a time period that produced a bunch of great rookies. I need a methodology to follow.



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Resources
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Wikipedia - Golden Age
Jim Albright's Japan Top Players

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Pocket Calendar
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Inter-league play is now done and teams restarted playing within their own respective leagues from last Friday. The next big calendar event will be the All Star Series toward the end of July.

The Japan Weekly Podcast will welcome John back to Japan as Jim talked with the returning Chris carter of the Saitama Seibu Lions. They plan on talking about happenings around the leagues, such as Ohtani's outing where he both pitched and played right field in a game, and they'll be answering listener questions. I look forward to that tomorrow, June 24th.

Sorry for taking a while, but I had to do a little research before I replied

I was going through some random years and thought to myself, 1968 Draft was quite a good year on all appearances

Dragons had Hoshino, Carp had Koji Yamamoto, Braves had Yamada, Lotte had Arito, Lions had Higashio, Tigers had Tabuchi

Albeit not everyone had good rookie years, after a certain draft class, you have years of oblivion for draftees more or less, probably because many teams didn't use the data we have now to assess players or they just expected way too much

But I think (albeit with very quick research but by no means conclusive), just looking at a spread of top players, the late 70s to the early 80s may be a good period to use as a golden age if any, but that could be because i know certain names better than others (even though I wasn't alive during that period)

I know what you mean by the late '70s and early '80s having so many familiar names. Players from that era are now managers, coaches, and do TV commentary. Highlight reels often highlight them, triggering nostalgia for a particular age group. I had joked one time when my Dad visited that I could name more of the coaches during the pre-game warm up than the players.

I wanted to try to avoid that kind of bias, so I set numeric parameters. But, yes, the players who got their starts in 1969 (1968 draft) had a lot of future stars with names I recognized.