Jumping from AA

[Edgy MD]

Robert Carson joins a small club in joining the Mets after jumping from AA without a prior stop in AAA. Mets I can recall doing this are Lee Mazzilli, Kelvin Chapman, Jaime Cerda, and Dan Murphy and Nick Evans together. Ron Hodges jumped all the way from A-ball, and Dwight Gooden kind of jumped from A-Ball, but made a two-game stop for the AAA playoffs in between.

Any others spring to mind? I'm sure there are several. (Oh, Kevin Elster, of course.)

[Gwreck]

Jeff Duncan?

[Edgy MD]

Mos' def'. Good one.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Jenrry Mejia?

[Guest The Second Spitter]

Phillip Humber!

[Edgy MD]

Both are correct!

We can start a little Leapfrog Society. The sad part is that, in retrospect, none of these guys would go on to demonstrate that their lack of seasoning benefited them. Only Gooden and Mazz stuck. Murphy kinda did, but kinda didn't as he was farmed out to learn new positions.

Cleon Jones went from A-ball to a brief taste of the bigs in 1963 before bouncing back to AAA in 1964. Leapfrog!

[MFS62]

Edgy DC wrote: Cleon Jones went from A-ball to a brief taste of the bigs in 1963 before bouncing back to AAA in 1964. Leapfrog!

IIRC that was because of a crazy "first year player" rule of the time. There was no draft, so you could sign as many players as you wanted, but could only option one to the minors, the others you had to add to the major league roster for at least one year or lose them. (I don't recall the mechanism for that.) I believe Cleon was the guy they added and Kevin Collins(?) was the guy they optioned. Maybe I have them switched.
It was an administrative clusterfuck and they changed the rules shortly thereafter.

Later

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Yes, many early 60s Mets in that same boat. Dumb rule that was a pre-draft scheme to drag bonuses.

[Edgy MD]

Yeah, it was only on players that were deemed "bonus babies." If you made X amount you had to be a big leaguer.

Un-American.

[RealityChuck]

Greg Goossen jumped from A ball.

Nolan Ryan jumped from AA.

Both were sent down before sticking, though.

[smg58]

Did Parnell play in AAA before his first call-up?

[Ceetar]

smg58 wrote: Did Parnell play in AAA before his first call-up?

yup, promoted from AA-AAA-Bigs in 2008.