On the first Sunday in September, Andre Ethier is a rookie in title only. In the minor leagues, it’s the final day of the triple-A season, but Ethier has been in Los Angeles instead of Las Vegas since early May. He was summoned to the major leagues not to be an impact player, but simply to bide time while outfielder Ricky Ledee got healthy.

Ethier altered the plan.

Ledee is long gone, a journeyman on his way. No one should be brazen enough to proclaim that any 24-year-old is here to stay, but Ethier has shown signs that this rookie season is not an aberration, but the forecast of a level of consistency and production that many major league teams didn’t think he could achieve.

The major leagues are the great equalizer, the place where countless players that have hit at every level on the way up, falter. Suddenly the stench of failure becomes more powerful than the pressure to succeed. The oldest adage of scouting applies here: There are no such things as prospects in the major leagues. There are only those who produce and those who do not.

Within that iron-clad distinction of success and failure is where many fresh-faced major leaguers fall off the vine. Ethier has avoided this trap, and the reasons why can be found in places other than his numbers. It can be found in his approach, an even keel that perhaps comes from being one of seven children, a level of maturity that expels the notion that he’s a raw rookie.

“You have to rise to the occasion and to the level of competition,” he said. “But if you hit 20 home runs in the minor leagues, it doesn’t mean you have to hit 30 here. You have to stay with what got you here. It’s as simple as it sounds, but a lot of guys get here and they try to do a little bit more to distinguish themselves. They’re not doing what got them here.”

What Ethier did to get to the big leagues didn’t excite everyone in amateur or professional baseball. Though he was a second round pick out of Arizona State in 2002, Ethier’s skill set was never considered scout friendly. He wasn’t an exceptionally fast runner. His arm was playable, but not outstanding. His best ability was to make contact, but where was the power? In the eyes of the steroid era, a line drive hitter with gap power was considered a glorified singles hitter.

In many ways, Ethier was a victim of the kind of player profiling that became rampant in the steroid era, and to a degree, still exists now. Teams covet power bats and power arms to combat them. The value of players who did things with skill instead of tools began to decline. The value of contact hitters, finesse pitchers, athletes who can run, began to fall. Teams wanted, and still do, players with the quickest path to the major leagues and who can exhibit power the moment they get there.

Ethier simply play the game well. He brought knowledge of the strike zone, which doesn’t have to translate into walks, but only into a hitter’s recognition of which pitches he can drive and which pitches he will get himself out on. Ethier is hitting .335 with 11 home runs and 53 RBIs in his first 106 games. He hits left-handed pitching, though he doesn’t drive the ball as consistently against left-handers, his .379 average against them has made him an everyday player. The level of success can be traced to the level swing and the level head.

“Some guys try a little too hard,” he said. “At the same time, they’ll use excuses. I know that if I would fail at a certain level I would come up with an excuse. I would say, ‘I wasn’t prepared or I wasn’t ready.’ Maybe they were a little better then me. You have to stay away from pressing and you can’t have excuses up here. I’m not going to give people a reason to question me or why I’m not. Don’t read anything. People will pick apart little things like that.”

Though Either’s even keel has benefited him, it isn’t wise to underestimate his believe in his own abilities. Throughout his career, he has been tagged as a player who can’t do enough to be a superstar.

Perhaps this motivates him. The guy with the average arm has seven outfield assists, which leads NL rookies. He isn’t a speed burner, but he’s got enough to legs to have 20 doubles and seven triples. Only a few years ago, this set of skills wasn’t though to be enough.

There are players whose value can best be seen over the course of a season more than in the course of a weekend. Ethier felt he was too quickly dismissed. He felt he got a wrongful reputation as a college head case. He felt that he was too quickly dismissed as a minor league prospect because he didn’t look like the kind of player certain publications were looking for. It’s become one of the great faults of baseball’s player development system: tools are valued more than skills, yet those with skills routinely outperform those with tools.

“You’re dealing with people who are passing quick judgments on which, which is scouts and these college writers who have to tab who they think are the best and who they don’t think are the best,” he said. “I think, with Baseball America and me, they’ve never been a big fan of me or a big fan of my game, so they always have to figure out a route to demeanor my game and put down my game. They’ll always put me in a category to watch for, but they’ll never give me the full benefit. I think a lot of people in college the scouts never thought I would get this far and they tagged me as a certain thing. Of course a tag will follow you.”

Either has quietly discarded that tag in his rookie season, and that too is rewarding, even if he is the only ones who know it.