Is there any right seasoning for major-league success?

Anybody looking for a magic formula of when to bring players to the major leagues won’t find it.

Hall of Fame talent Albert Pujols essentially made the jump from Class A Peoria to the St. Louis Cardinals in one year.

Current Cub Bryan LaHair spent the better part of eight years in the minor leagues before cracking an opening-day roster of a major-league club.

So the new leadership of the Cubs came up with their own formula for first-base prospect Anthony Rizzo.

They said it wasn’t about money or service-time issues.

“Well, he’s going to be a super-2 even if he never goes back to the minor leagues anyway,” said Cubs general manager Jed Hoyer, referring to Rizzo’s timetable for early arbitration being accelerated.

“Really the biggest thing for us was we wanted him to basically spend a full year in Triple-A. Last year he got sort of a half-season and then we felt like, ‘OK, let’s get him another half of a Triple-A season and let him not only go down there and get his feet wet but have to adjust and have to make some of those swing changes.’

“If he had struggled, we certainly wouldn’t have done it now. I understand that Anthony has also made comments about how the last few weeks were probably good, that he made some adjustments based on some things he felt like he wouldn’t get away with in Triple-A. I think the length of time there was right.”

Only time will tell whether Rizzo pans out, and in the end, most of the onus will be on him.

Hoyer took the blame for bringing Rizzo up to the Padres during the 2011 season, only to watch Rizzo struggle, as he batted .141 in two big-league stints.

Rizzo had accumulated 1,449 plate appearances before his major-league debut with San Diego. He opened this season playing for the Cubs’ Class AAA Iowa club, getting 284 more plate appearances and putting up a hitting line of .342/.405/.696 with 23 home runs.

“Last year I didn’t struggle at all in the minors,” he said. “Getting called up and trying to do too much, I guess my youth showed. At the time, I didn’t think I was trying to do too much, but looking back at it this off-season, getting time to sit down, I thought long and hard about it.”

Recent Cubs history is full of examples of “phenom” position players being brought to the big leagues. Each was handled differently, and none really panned out: Corey Patterson, Hee-Seop Choi and Felix Pie.

Patterson is the most interesting case, as Pie had more than 2,100 minor-league plate appearances before the Cubs brought him up for the first time in 2007, and Choi had 1,775 plate appearances before his late-season call-up from Iowa in 2002.

Patterson still remains a hot topic of conversation for Cubs fans.

Former Cubs GM Jim Hendry ran the 1998 draft for the organization, and he took Patterson third overall, behind Pat Burrell and Mark Mulder and ahead of such players as J.D. Drew, Felipe Lopez and Carlos Pena.

Patterson tore up the Midwest League at Class A Lansing in 1999, going .320/.358/.592 with 20 homers.

“After he did that at Lansing, he dealt in the Arizona Fall League,” Hendry said Thursday while scouting for the New York Yankees.

Despite being the youngest player in the Fall League, Patterson batted .368 (43-for-117) with 4 homers.

The Cubs then made a key decision. They had Patterson skip the next level of Class A (Daytona of the Florida State League) and sent him to Class AA West Tenn of the Southern League. At West Tenn, Patterson went .261/.338/.491 with 22 home runs. He also had 45 walks and 115 strikeouts in 506 plate appearances.

In September 2000, he walked into Milwaukee County Stadium to make his major-league debut.

At the time, he had 1,015 plate appearances.

Patterson split time between Iowa and the Cubs in 2001, getting 403 more plate appearances at Iowa. He made it to the Cubs to stay in 2002, going .253/.284/.392 with 14 homers.

In 2003 he was an all-star candidate with a line of .298/.329/.511 when he suffered a season-ending knee injury running out an infield hit July 6 at Wrigley Field. Although his 2003 numbers had begun to slide by the time of his knee injury, the rest of that season remains the great “what if.”

Patterson hit 24 homers and drove in 72 for the Cubs in his comeback season, but he never attained star status.

Some blamed Patterson’s own stubbornness in refusing to adjust at the plate or his unwillingness to play winter ball early in his career.

To this day, Hendry says he believes the Cubs did not rush him.

“It’s hard to put a finger on why it didn’t go better,” Hendry said. “It’s hard to say we moved him too quickly when you looked at the start he got off to in ’03. I was a new GM. A lot of people weren’t expecting us to win in ’03, but we got off to a good start, and so did Corey.

“If he had hit a snag, I would have gone to Andy (team president MacPhail) and said we brought him too soon. But a lot of players skip a level in the minor leagues. Not going to Daytona had nothing to do with it.”

So is there an explanation?

“Maybe it’s just that it’s a lot harder in the big leagues,” Hendry said.

bmiles@dailyherald.com