? as for the rest, I think a case can be made that overall Patterson is better than any of them right now (excluding Beltran and Edmonds). And he has not even entered his prime yet. Corey has had to learn how to play at the major league level. He was rushed to the bigs after one season of A and one season of AA ball. So what you are seeing is his growth process. Hold it against him if you will. Maybe some people have unrealistic expecatations of Patterson? I don't know. But it is getting to be patheticly ridiculous. What about Andruw Jones who was just thrusted into a major league role at the age of 18? And of the list that OSM provided, here's the three year OPS stats for those guys: 2003 2004 2005
Corey Patterson .840 .772 .753
Brady Clark .733 .782 .882
Milton Bradley .922 .786 .856
Johnny Damon .750 .857 .849
Carlos Beltran .911 .915 .820
Mark Kotsay .727 .829 .741
Aaron Rowand .779 .905 .765
Dave Roberts .676 .716 .800
Jim Edmonds 1.022 1.061 .961
Juan Pierre .734 .781 .643
Andruw Jones .851 .833 .822
Torii Hunter .763 .805 .776
Vernon Wells .909 .809 .738
Brad Wilkerson .844 .872 .812
Craig Monroe .736 .825 .807
Of those guys, Rowand, Andruw Jones, Vernon Wells, Wilkerson, Bradley, they're all in their prime and the latter four have put up better OPS numbers than Patterson. It it is simply inaccurate when people say Corey's on the plateau right below Beltran and Edmonds. His OPS numbers certainly do not indicate that to be true. And if his pitch recognition doesn't increase sometime soon, it will likely stay this way throughout his career. Great SLG with a terrible OBP makes for an average OPS hitter.