Another look at the rookie class of 2008, biggest risers

In my post of a couple of days ago, we took a look at the players who exhausted their rookie status in 2008, and who have had the biggest drop in our collective expectations of what their major league career will look like since then.  The vote for the biggest drop went to Geovanny Soto.  This time I am going to take a look at the players in the rookie class of 2008 who have had the biggest rise in what we expect from their career.  While I stopped at the top 20 on decliners figuring that expectations couldn't have dropped that much for a player if we didn't rank him even at that level, for this one I am going to have to go deeper and also look at players who we didn't even rank. 

1. Evan Longoria-  A player who is already #1 on a list can't really rise, can he?  But he has seemingly efforlessly picked right back up where he left off next year and clearly established that last year was a real level of performance.  Okay, maybe he isn't quite at Pujols level.  But he is awfully good.

2. Jay Bruce

3. Clayton Kershaw-  A little wild, but excellent h/ip and k/ip says he is the real deal.  Dave McNally and Sandy Koufax are #1 and #2 most similar players through age 20 per baseball-reference.com  

4. Geovanny Soto

5. Joba Chamberlain

6. Chris Davis

7. Joey Votto - boosted his OPS from .874 to .950 and his OPS+ to 144 by raising his average a bit,drawing a few more walks. and increasing his power output a bit. Hard to stay skeptical with 2+ years of nice performance under his belt.

8. Jair Jurrjens-  Was barely on the radar going into 2008 but his strong season pushed us to consider him at this level. If anything we were still underestimating him a bit as he had had a really great year pushing his era down well below 3.00. Only cautionary note might be a slight down tick in his strike out rate but for right now that is just quibbling.

9. Alexei Ramirez

10.Clay Buchholz-  I included him among players who stock had gone down, but there is enough difference of opinion on this (not to mention a really outstanding performance since the decliners post) to justify including him as an option this way as well.

11. Max Scherzer- very solid year as a starter including a very high strikeout rate.

12. Johnny Cueto- solid if unspectacular season improves on last year.  Cut in hr rate helped him, significant drop in strikeout rate though.

13. Jacoby Ellsbury - looking back this ranking seems lower than I would have thought.  I guess the concern was that he was a #9 type hitter in the Carlos Gomez mold.  Well, he has improved across the board, increasing his OBP into a fairly acceptable .350+ while continuing to run wild.  I don't think they will be pining for Coco Crisp's return to Boston anytime soon.

14.Pablo Sandoval- Okay, the average is down a bit, but at .326 there isn't much to complain about.  The power also really showed up and he has just been excellent as a hitter across the board.  In our defense he was one of those players who had barely enough at bats to exhaust his rookie eligility. If we had an entire season at this level to go on, he would undboutedly have been ranked much higher.

15.Chris Volstad

16. Jed Lowrie

17 Jeff Clement

18. Joey Devine

19. Denard Span- He's another player that we were particularly skeptical of, even performing at just about exactly the same level and proving that he is worth using as an everyday player has to be classified as a victory given his relatively lowly ranking.

20 Justin Masterson- actually got since my decliners post so his numbers don't look quite as good as they did a few days ago when I decided to classify him as an improver rather than a decliner.  Either way, if he is a dissapointment it isn't by much, and if his stock is up, it isn't by much.  He does finally have an opportunity to make something of his career in Cleveland.

others-Honorable mentions (based on voting probably would have in some order, been in the 21-25 level).  

Carlos Gonzalez- doing well for Colorado

Chase Headley- unspectacular 2009 almost identical to 2008 but does have and has held onto an everyday job.

Brandon Wood-

Jose Arredondo

David Murphy- After a horrible start has had a nice season.  Right on the edge as to whether he is an everyday playe which might be more than could be expected from someone not even ranked in the top 20.

others with significant support- these players got more than a few votes at times but were never close to winning a spot.

Daniel Murphy- Has played a lot but not all that well as a hitter.

Mike Aviles-

Manny Parra

Nick Blackburn- another season similar to last with a decent era, but 4.2 k/9 says he is living on borrowed time.

Homer Bailey- better than 2008, but not exactly good.

Hiroki Kuroda- ranked this low mostly because of age.  Another nice season, though.

Delisted players-  I am not going to list all of these but will list a few of note.  All of these players had such little support that they were dropped from the poll.

Armando Galarraga- hung around in the Tigers rotation for most of the season.

Daric Barton- doing a bit better this year with some late season playing time.

Luke Hochevar- bad looking surface stats but has had a few outstanding outings mixed in to suggest that there is still reason for hope here.

Brad Ziegler-  not a bad year but clearly was over his head last year--this ranking says we already knew that.

Kosuke Fukodome- pretty decent year but given his age this is probably as good as it gets for him

Ryan Sweeney- not a bad season for someone ranked this low.