Bringing Up Babies
Monday, August 30 2010 @ 04:28 AM EDT
Contributed by: Magpie
There has been some lively discussion round these parts and elsewhere
regarding the Jays handling of young Travis Snider. A wide spectrum of
opinions have been expressed. These views generally range from "the kid
should be out there every day" to "the kid has been rushed through the
system for no readily apparent reason."
Okay, I may be the only guy on the surface of the earth who holds the second opinion.
These are all just opinions, of course. Perhaps it's in the very nature of things that when all we have is our opinion - because none of us, on either side of the discussion, actually have anything more than that - we tend to bring out the hyperbole. If you're frustrated by Snider's amount of playing time, you may indeed start speculating that his erratic playing schedule may do him harm someway, somehow. This in turn prompts someone holding the opposite view (that would be me, hello!) to start calling such people a bunch of hysterical old women. (I didn't actually say that.) And on the other hand, why wouldn't you rush a player to the major leagues if you think there's nothing left for him to prove in the minors. Why wouldn't you play him every day if you think he's demonstrated conclusively that he can deal with major league pitching. For sure, a whole lot of people have come to the majors a whole lot faster than Snider has.
So my purpose here is to simply take a walk back through the Misty Annals of Years Past, and review how the Jays have managed their top hitting prospects. I then want to try to speculate a little as to what we should actually expect out of Travis Snider, Major Leaguer. (Because some of you do sound as if you're expecting Babe Ruth Mark II, and actually seem to believe that he is already one of the best hitters on the team. To which one can only say "Down, boy.")
I am aided in my Quest by the great Dave Till's 2004 opus on this very Batter's Box (here and here, although Dave observes that some of it appears to have been eaten by moths.) Dave's stated purpose was to provide "info on every Blue Jays hitting prospect I could think of since the dawn of recorded time." Even better, Dave assigned each prospect a Buzz Factor, "which is a non-scientific estimate of the amount of hype the player generated, from 0 (lowest) to 10 (highest)." I love the Buzz Factor...
Travis Snider is 22 years and 7 months old. We're going to stop the clock at that moment is the lifetime of all the Jays' interesting home-grown prospects and see how they stand, relative to one another. First, let's run the numbers. They're being listed in the number of major league plate appearances they had accumulated at that point in their lives.
Player G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BAVG OBP SLG OPS
Lloyd Moseby (May 1982) 358 1407 1284 126 296 64 7 28 142 27 26 84 280 .231 .279 .357 .636
Travis Snider (Aug 2010) 153 556 496 66 124 33 1 19 63 4 3 52 152 .250 .323 .435 .759
Alex Gonzalez (Nov 1995) 126 484 420 58 97 22 5 10 43 7 4 48 131 .231 .310 .379 .689
John Olerud (Feb 1991) 117 429 366 45 98 15 1 14 48 0 2 57 76 .268 .364 .429 .793
Tony Fernandez (Feb 1985) 103 292 267 34 72 6 4 3 21 5 8 19 17 .270 .318 .356 .674
Jesse Barfield (May 1982) 68 236 215 26 54 8 4 5 28 5 5 17 46 .251 .312 .395 .707
George Bell (May 1982) 60 168 163 19 38 2 1 5 12 3 2 5 27 .233 .256 .350 .606
Carlos Delgado (Feb 1995) 45 161 131 17 28 2 0 9 24 1 1 26 46 .214 .354 .435 .789
Shawn Green (May 1995) 44 127 120 16 26 5 0 5 15 1 2 5 25 .217 .260 .383 .643
Vernon Wells (Jun 2001) 35 125 120 14 31 6 0 2 10 3 1 5 24 .258 .288 .358 .646
Fred McGriff (May 1986) 3 5 5 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 .200 .200 .200 .400
There are numerous other talented major league hitters, from Glenallen Hill and Mark Whiten to Alex Rios and Aaron Hill, who came up through the Toronto system. Derek Bell. But none of them had played in the majors at this age. (Bell just misses - he was a couple weeks older than Snider is now when he made his ML debut, a mid-season cup of coffee in 1991.) And the age factor is everything. Glenallen Hill, for example, was a slugging outfield prospect who struck out a great deal - rather like Snider. And Hill's AAA performance was actually better than Snider's - hitting .321 and slugging .578 at Syracuse in the International League is much more impressive than hitting .337 and slugging .639 in the PCL (not to mention Hill did this for 125 games, Snider for just 48.) But - and here's the rub - Hill was 24 years old when he did these things. Snider was just 21. It makes all the difference in the world. (Hill was also repeating the level.)
Anyway, if there's nothing to see, we're moving right along.
Lloyd Moseby
Dave gave the Shaker a Buzz Factor of 9 and commented that:
If you want to think of what would have happened to Vernon Wells had he been promoted to the majors right away, look at Moseby. The Shaker rocketed through the minors even faster than V-Dub did...
In fact no Blue Jay prospect was ever pushed to the Show faster than Moseby. (Snider, as it happens, is a fairly distant second.) Pat Gillick did many, many things extremely well during his long tenure running the Blue Jays. But Gillick very likely holds the all-time GM record for most first-round draft picks completely squandered on useless non-entities (most GMs who blow that many picks don't get to stay GMs.) Moseby was the glorious exception. He was taken second overall in 1978 (the highest Jays draft pick ever!) and he was still just a teenager when he tore up the Florida State League in his first full pro season (18 HR, .332.) He skipped over AA completely, and opened 1980 in the International League. After abusing AAA pitchers for a few weeks he was in the majors by late May, and he would never ride a bus again. Alas, he was still just 20 years old. As it turned out he wasn't even close to being able to cope with major-league pitching. He put in three full seasons as a .230 hitter with no power. In 1983, Bobby Cox finally decided to start platooning him and he began the season sharing CF with Barry Bonnell. But that, of course, was the year it all came together for Moseby, who made what was simply an enormous leap forward. He would be a durable and productive player for the rest of the decade, although like his comrades in that glorious 1980s outfield his career would be shortened by injury. Playing 155 games a year in the outfield, half of them on the concrete at the old Ex... it chewed those guys up and broke them down, all of them.
Anyway, I think Moseby is Exhibit A for why you don't want to rush a young player. It's not just that he was a terrible player for three years, although heaven knows that's a good enough reason for me. It's that he was a terrible player for fully half the time you know he belongs to you. He was free agent eligible after the 1986 season, when he was still just 26 years old, in the heart of his prime (and about to have the best year of his career.) Did you enjoy watching him flail at major league pitching as a 21 year old? I sure hope so. You're damn lucky you didn't have to watch him punish major league pitching in somebody else's uniform as a reward for your impatience, or stupidity, or whatever the hell they were thinking. I can't imagine any team would do such a thing today... Now Evan Longoria stays in the minors for three weeks just so Tampa can squeeze an extra season out of him before he hits free agency.
Travis Snider
You know most of this, I imagine. It's striking to me how much Snider's first two years as a pro parallel Moseby's. Both had an excellent showing in rookie ball followed by an outstanding first pro season in A ball. Snider began his third pro season still in A ball, but was quite quickly bumped up to AA where he was putting together a very solid, if somewhat unspectacular season (.262, 17 HRs in 98 games). At which point, team management appears to have gotten tired of waiting for him. Or something, I have no idea. He was promoted to AAA at the beginning of August, and then to the majors by the end of August. He did just fine in his very brief stints at both levels, but I still don't understand what the big hurry was all about.... Anyway, we need to assign a Buzz Factor to Snider, and it needs to be quite high. In my view - and it's just my view - a fair bit of the hype about Snider was generated not by Snider's play, but by: a) the organization's need to toot its own horn, and b) the fan bases's desperate yearning for a savior. He's probably been as eagerly anticipated as Delgado was, which I think is unfair. I don't think anyone should expect him to be as good a major league hitter as Carlos Delgado. That's setting the bar awfully high. Nevertheless, his performance, especially at A ball, has been legitimately Buzz-worthy, on a major scale. Buzz Factor: 10
Alex Gonzalez
Gonzo the first was supposed to become a very good major league hitter. As you probably know, he didn't. Back in the day, Alan Trammel was the comp I always remember hearing, and Dave gave him a Buzz Factor of 8. Gonzalez didn't hit much at all in the rookie league or in his first pro season at A ball, but at age 20 he appeared to take a big step forward. His full year in AA looks quite a bit like Travis Snider's year in AA. The Jays would actually open the 1994 season with Gonzalez as the everyday shortstop, which was certainly jumping the gun a little bit. But he went down to AAA at the end of April and would put together a very impressive year in AAA at age 21. The raw numbers are nowhere near the same, but I think what Gonzalez did in AAA can certainly stand being compared to what Snider did at that level. Gonzalez did it for a full season, in a pitcher's park in a pitcher's league. He hit for average, he had some power, he stole lots of bases, he even drew walks. He would take over the shortstop job in Toronto in 1995, and hold it for the next seven years. And he never developed any further as a hitter. He developed a great deal defensively - Fernandez is the only Blue Jay to play the position better, and I'm not even completely convinced that Gonzalez wasn't a better shortstop. But as a hitter? Nothing - not even a teeny, tiny bit. He remained exactly what he was at age 22 through the rest of his career.
Well, that happens sometimes. Dave offered this:
One of the things I'd like to know about a prospect is how soon he matured. Early maturers can gain their adult height and weight as much as four years earlier than late bloomers. A-Gonzo looked pretty young when he came up, but I wonder whether he was already fully mature. This may explain why he looked good when he was young, but never got better.
John Olerud
Olerud is an outlier on this list - he is the only one of the players looked at here who came out of college rather than high school. And Olerud, famously, didn't play a single game in the minor leagues before joining the Jays (he would finally make his minor league debut at age 36, a three game tuneup for Pawtucket before his swan song with the 2005 Red Sox.) Was there a buzz about Johnny O? Indeed there was - he is one of the very few to whom Dave assigned a Buzz Factor of 10, saying:
Hailed as Superman brought to life when first signed: He can hit! He can pitch! He's recovered from a life-threatening ailment! He can fly if he wants to! What you may have forgotten: by 1991, the papers were calling for him to be sent down for seasoning in favour of Ed Sprague. If my memory serves me correctly, some writers of the time saw it as practically a moral issue, implying that Big John needed the sort of character-building experience that only crappy minor league ballparks can provide.
Through the point in his career we're considering, Olerud had come straight out of college and played one full season in the majors, serving as the LH half of a DH platoon. He was the best 21 year old hitter in Jays history - only Snider really approaches him and no one else is in the same ball park. (Delgado's two week run when he really was the second coming of Babe Ruth pushes his numbers into the same vicinity - but it was just two weeks...) Olerud was blocked, of course, from full-time duty at his natural position by someone who just happened to be one of the very best hitters in the major leagues at that time. It's obviously impossible to criticize the manager for that. But life can show you some strange things, I've noticed. Back in April of this year, the Blue Jays picked up an outfielder from the Giants. What was just about the first thing that struck me about Fred Lewis? This:
I'm scratching my head at how much Fred Lewis reminds me of Fred McGriff. Not their games, of course - just the way they look. At first I figured I was just imagining it because of the name. But Lewis' batting stance also reminds me a great deal of the young McGriff, and facially he also reminds me of McGriff (sans that little mustache that Big Fred favoured.)
Bauxite Chuck immediately offered that he'd noticed the same thing.
Well. I ask you? Who was the player blocking John Olerud from everyday duty in 1990? It was the man for whom Lewis is an eerie doppleganger, the Crime Dog himself - Fred McGriff. And who was the manager back in those days, when young Olerud was breaking into the lineup? Why, it was Cito Gaston, of course.
Spooky!
Although, to be strictly accurate (always irritating in these instances!) Gaston's handling of Snider is really not very much like how he handled Olerud, who played quite regularly as a 21 year old, albeit in a pretty strict platoon. Strangely, it's probably a little bit more like the way Bobby Cox broke in the next guy on the list...
Tony Fernandez
Oh Dave - tell us about the excitement (Buzz Factor 10!) surrounding the arrival of El Cabeza. Because Buzz there was:
Except for Delgado, Fernandez was possibly the most-heralded prospect in Blue Jays history. Skipped AA ball entirely, and was playing AAA ball at 18 (!!)
Yeah, that's how I remember it, too. We couldn't wait for him to get here. But wait we did. Fernandez played well in AAA as an 19 year old - but he was still a teenager, so naturally he stayed in Syracuse for another year. He had an even better season as a 20 year old, hitting .302, walking more often than he struck out. And still they made us wait! At age 21, he spent his third season in Syracuse - it was basically identical to the one before, except he continued to improve his K-W ratio and he finally - finally! - made his major league debut as a September call-up. He might have broken camp with the Jays in 1984 - but he broke his hand instead. So he started out in Syracuse, spent a few weeks tuning up, and came to the majors to stay in May 1984. Where he was used... most erratically indeed. Shortstop was occupied, by an established veteran (Alfredo Griffin.) Fernandez would start just 53 games as a rookie. He would come in off the bench after Griffin was pinch hit for, he was used as a pinch hitter himself a few times, he pinch ran, he even found himself at third base on a few occasions. But he was too damn good to sit behind anyone, and by about August he was getting the majority of the starts at short. The Bill Caudill trade that winter was as much about clearing the decks for Fernandez and Barfield (by moving out Collins and Griffin) as it was about acquiring a relief ace.
Jesse Barfield
Barfield was not all that impressive as a minor league hitter. He didn't hit much in the rookie league (well, he was just 17) or in his first taste of A ball. He started to show some progress in his second full season as a pro, still in A ball, still a teenager. He spent his age 20 season at Knoxville (AA), hitting .240 with 14 HRs - he repeated the level at age 21, and improved just a little. Still, it was enough to get him a September call-up in 1981, and as it turned out his minor league days were over. He skipped AAA completely.
Well, it's not like there was anyone good standing in his way.
Dave gave him a Buzz Factor of 8, and noted:
A broad base of skills, including very high triples totals. Had high walk totals and strikeout totals, which suggests somebody who waited for his pitch, but didn't always hit it when he got it. This is exactly the player that Barfield became in the majors. One of the few players to become successful in The Show despite high strikeout totals in the minors.
I'm pretty sure everyone knows Barfield was platooned when he came to the majors - I'm not sure everyone realizes that he was platooned for three full seasons, batting more often against southpaws each season. Maybe it was because his playing time was being rationed but in those early days he was also the streakiest hitter I have ever seen - I can remember him hitting 7 HRs in a single week back in 1983. He also struck out far more often than anyone who had ever worn a Blue Jays uniform to that point. The Dave Collins trade finally cleared the way for him, at age 25, and he played brilliantly for two years. Then the injuries began to grind him down...
George Bell
Bell is one of two players on this list who actually began his professional career in another organization. Bell charged through the Western Carolinas League as a teenager, terrorizing pitchers left, right , and centre. But he lost most of his age 20 season (1980) to injury - he played just 22 games - and the Blue Jays were able to steal him in the Rule 5 draft when the Phillies tried to sneak him through the winter meetings without adding him to the 40 man roster. Oops. (Dave reports that the Phillies fired whoever was responsible for that misbegotten manoeuver.) However, this meant Bell would lose most of the next year as well. Forced to stay on the major league roster as a Rule 5 guy, he mainly sat on the bench and watched during the strike year of 1981. He got into only 60 games, 42 as a starter. He was supposed to resume his interrupted development path in Syracuse at age 22 - but instead he got hurt again, and missed most of that season as well, playing just 37 games. So yes - from ages 20-22, George Bell played a grand total of 119 professional games. He got back on track at age 23 in AAA, and was summoned to the majors in July - he played off and on for the rest of the year (39 games over the second half of the season). In 1984, he was finally able to begin abusing major league pitching on a regular basis. Good times. And it occurs to me now that this is like an accelerated version of the Jose Bautista saga, who also lost a year as a Rule 5 guy and had two other years messed up by injury. Bell just got all that crap out of the way at once, over three consecutive years.
Carlos Delgado
We all remember this guy. We may not remember how it all began. Oh Dave:
Without question, the most highly-touted prospect in Jays history, as he started appearing on radar screens in 1991 after pounding 18 home runs at Myrtle Beach. When he dismantled Florida State League pitching in 1992, batting .324 with 30 home runs and 100 RBI, people were starting to name their children after him. He won the Baseball Weekly Minor League Player of the Year award that year, and was the first player in eight years to reach the 100 RBI plateau in the FSL.
Delgado tore apart AA at age 21 in 1993, and by gum, we were getting excited. But here's the thing - he was a catcher. He wasn't a particularly polished one, although he was willing enough and worked at it dutifully. And the Jays had a World Series MVP, no less, behind the plate. Delgado was supposed to spend 1994 in AAA - he was still a few months shy of just 22 years old - further refining his defensive skills. However, a couple of things happened. One, the team noticed that they had no left-fielder, and two: Delgado simply pulverized everything thrown at him in Florida that spring. And in late March, the team decided - what the hell - I wonder how the kid would look in left field?
Pretty bad, but no one cared. Not at first, anyway, because Delgado hit 8 - eight! -.home runs in his first 13 games, some of them just monstrous, awe-inspiring shots. Has anyone ever announced their presence with more authority? Not that I can think of. AL pitchers certainly noticed, however, and seemed to make a collective decision to never, never, never throw this kid a fastball anywhere near the plate. Drastic measures indeed, but they had the desired effect. Delgado began to scuffle seriously at the plate (he hit .183 over the next 30 games, with just 1 HR) while every day providing new evidence that he was not born to be an outfielder. In June, the team went back to Plan A - Delgado went down to Syracuse and beat the crap out of AAA pitching while working on his catching skills for the rest of the season.
And that - finally - was the end of his catching career, which was something I had been suggesting should happen since 1992 (yes, I was around and I was hanging out at the Dome back in those days!). It's one thing to play an outstanding hitting prospect behind the plate if he's also an outstanding catching prospect, like Joe Mauer. But that wasn't Delgado - he was willing, he worked hard, he just wasn't that good. He spent much of 1995 in Syracuse, learning how to play first base. He was up in Toronto briefly in May, for no apparent reason - with Olerud at first and Molitor at DH, there was nothing for him to do except pinch hit. He came back up in September, and spent most of his time playing left field, there being nowhere else to put him. But Molitor left as a free agent that winter and the path was finally - finally - clear.
Shawn Green
There was a great deal of buzz about Green when he was coming back - like Snider, he was a left hitting and throwing outfielder drafted out of high school in the middle of the first round. Unlike Snider, Green didn't do much to impress anybody in his first two years as a pro, one at high A ball and one at AA. He hit for OK averages (.273 and .283) but with no power at all. This didn't seem to discourage anyone - the Jays even gave him a September callup after his AA season. As Dave noted:
Highly touted, even when his minor-league numbers weren't good; many many people said that Green reminded them of a young Ted Williams... He sure didn't look like a power hitter when he was younger, as he was, basically, scrawny.
Well. Every tall, skinny LH prospect with a pretty swing is going to remind someone of Ted Williams. It's just one of those things. As for Green, he moved up to Syracuse in his third pro season, now 21 years old - and just exploded on the league, hitting .344 and beginning to add some pop as well. The Jays even summoned him to the majors for a month in mid-season, but after going 3 for 33 he went back to AAA to finish the season. It was the end of his minor league career, however, and he began the 1995 season as the Jays LH part of a platoon in right field.
There are two widely held beliefs about Shawn Green that are so deeply instilled in Jays lore that it seems almost pointless to even try to deal with them. One of them, discussed here many times, is Gaston's alleged refusal to let him play every day, which is sort of half true - Gaston tried to make an everyday player of Green in his sophomore season, but by mid-June, with the kid struggling badly, they went back to the platoon arrangement he'd worked under as a rookie. We've been over that one many times. The other legend, however, is that Green had the big breakout year everyone had been waiting for when Tim Johnson took over in 1998 and played him every day. That's not quite true - Green did hit 35 HRs and drive in 100 runs in 1998, obliterating his previous career highs. The counting numbers were entirely the result of the additional ABs - his overall production, however, was almost exactly the same as in his rookie season of 1995. As a rookie, Green hit .288/.326/.509; in his "breakout`season he hit .278/.334/.510. In one of those years he had an OPS+ of 115 and in the other he had an OPS+ of 116. His real step forward came in 1999, his last year as a Blue Jay, when he slugged .588 and hit .300 for the only time in his career.
Vernon Wells
Dave gave Vernon a Buzz Factor of 9, noting that:
Only Stieb and Moseby shot through the minors faster than V-Dub. There were doubts about him after he struggled in Syracuse in 2000 and 2001, but players asked to wait their turn often slump a bit.
It may not seem that way in this context - compared to Moseby and Snider, the Jays took their sweet time with Vernon Wells - but that's an accident of this particular context. You must remember that most guys don't get to play in the majors at all when they're 22 years old - Wells is one of the few who did. The Jays were set in the outfield during those years, with Stewart, Cruz, and Green-Mondesi. Wells was called up and sent down three times before making it to stay (fourth time's the charm.) He dashed through the lower levels of the minors, but then spent two full years in Syracuse in AAA. This was partially because of the logjam in the major league outfield, and partially because his AAA season seemed so disappointing. It was indeed disappointing at the time - Wells hit just .243 in his first full year at AAA. The year before, at age 20, he had stormed through three levels, hitting .343 at Dunedin, .340 at Knoxville, and .310 at Syracuse. He probably just needed some time to consolidate those gains. It's also pretty clear at this point that he hit in a fair bit bad luck at Syracuse in 2001, but I don't recall too many people checking batting average on balls in play for minor leaguers in those days.
Fred McGriff
It is my opinion that Fred McGriff is the greatest hitter produced by the Jays' system. Two quick qualifiers are required immediately. Like George Bell, McGriff actually started out in another organization. But he was still a teenager when the Jays stole him from the Yankees in what must be regarded as one of the most ridiculously one-sided trades in the history of the game. And it's certainly true that Carlos Delgado is the greatest hitter in Blue Jays history (McGriff's time as a Jay accounts for less than a quarter of his career.) Delgado's career OPS+ is also slightly better than McGriff's, but I believe McGriff's has been depressed slightly by being placed in the context of the monstrous offensive numbers posted by some suspiciously mutated bodies during the second half of McGriff's career. For example - for most of his career, McGriff was quite clearly a better player than Mark McGwire, a player the same age and active at the same time. In fact, there's really no room for debate on the subject. McGwire, however, has that five year burst from age 31 to 35 during which he hit 284 homers (almost half of his career total) while McGriff was belting a mere 128. We are learning to discount these things, are we not?
McGriff came along more slowly than any of the other players on this list - when he was Snider's age, he'd had just 5 major league plate appearances. I myself was at the old Ex for the first one - he started at DH, singled and scored in the second inning, his first major league at bat and was replaced by a pinch hitter (Cliff Johnson) next time through the order. As noted, he started out in the Yankees' system - he was just 17 when he made his pro debut in rookie ball. He struggled, as you might expect, but he did better as an 18 year old (.272 with 9 HRs and 48 BB in 62 games.) This was when the Jays acquired him. They started him out in the South Atlantic League, where he raked for a few weeks and got moved up to Kinston. He kept hitting homers, but he struck out an awful lot and hit just .243. He did much the same thing the next year - his season was split between two teams (Knoxville in AA, Syracuse at AAA) - he hit home runs and drew walks, but he struck out a lot and had trouble hitting for a decent average. And then he got hurt - he played just 51 games in 1985, still at AAA, and hit just .227. He finally got in a full year at AAA (minus his one week cup of coffee in the show) in 1986 - and it still didn't look that impressive (.259, 19 HR, 83 BB). Syracuse was a pitcher's park in a pitcher's league - but still. There had been a Buzz, of long standing, about this kid. Dave put the Buzz Factor at 8, and noted:
Never put up a monster season in any particular league, as he either switched levels mid-season or got hurt. Hit 28 home runs in 1983 and 22 home runs in 1984, so everybody could see him coming. Injuries delayed his development a year or two. Was seemingly born with good plate discipline: his walk totals were good all the way through his minor-league career. Never hit for a high average in the high minors, probably because he was young for his level.
All this time, of course, he was "blocked" at the major league level by Willie Upshaw, who was still manning first base for the Jays when McGriff came up to stay in 1987, as part of a DH platoon with Cecil Fielder. McGriff hit more homers, drew more walks, and scored almost as many runs in 107 games as Upshaw did in 150 - well, he was Fred Freakin' McGriff, after all - so they moved Upshaw out of his way the following spring and handed over the first base job.
In Conclusion: Travis Snider and the Future
Fred McGriff, quite obviously, grew as a hitter and he grew to a remarkable extent. Not everybody does (Alex Gonzalez, hello!) McGriff played 538 games in the minors - his career BAVG in the minors was .249 - at only one stop along the way (33 games in the SAL) did he hit better than .272. As a major leaguer of course, McGriff hit .284 lifetime, over 19 seasons and 2460 games. As a minor leaguer he struck out in almost 30 percent of his at bats; as a major leaguer, he fanned just 21% of the time.
To be a great offensive player in the majors, Travis Snider will have to do the exact same thing that McGriff did. And I'm afraid that seems a little unlikely to me.
The strikeouts are the thing. I don't mind guys who strike out 150 times a year. On the contrary - I think every team needs one or two of these guys. It's nice to have some hitters who never make two outs at a time.
What worries me about Snider is the possibility that he'll strike out 200 times a year, or more. There comes a point when the strikeouts just swallow up your game. Your batting average on the balls in play, however good (and Snider's was quite good in the minors) just can't make up for that many balls that never get put in play. And as a minor leaguer, Snider struck out about as often as McGriff - which is an awful lot. It's much more often than Carlos Delgado or Adam Dunn, who both struck out around 21-22% of the time as minor leaguers.
As major leaguers, McGriff, Dunn, and Delgado went in three different directions. So which way you going, young Travis?
As noted, McGriff struck out much, much less often in the majors, cutting his Ks from 29% all the way to 21%.
Delgado stayed more or less about the same (his K rate actually went up slightly in the majors, from about 22% to 24%).
Dunn at age 30 is basically the exact same hitter now that he was at age 20 - which means while he struck out just 22% of the time as a minor leaguer, in the majors his K rate has shot through the roof, up to 32% of his at bats. Major league pitching will do that to you, if everything else stays the same. Dunn's been able to get away with it because he was also starting out with outstanding plate discipline and enormous raw power.
In this context, Snider is starting out closest to McGriff. What that means is that if he follows Dunn's path, if his K rate increases dramatically in the majors... well, he'll be in a mess of trouble. The fact that he won't have Dunn's enormous walk totals only makes things worse. He'll be a LH version of Rob Deer, or someone like that. Happily, there are already pretty strong indications that this will not be his destiny. (So relax, everybody. Breathe regular!)
Carlos Delgado is the middle way, and for that reason Delgado's degree of development as a hitter seems by far the most reasonable to expect. If Snider proceeds along Delgado's path, if his strikeouts increase a little in the majors - well, he's a really good player. He's a dangerous major league hitter. He's Adam Dunn lite - Adam Dunn without all those bases on balls. (Snider's plate discipline is pretty good, but this is a very tough group - McGriff, Delgado, and Dunn had outstanding plate discipline. And they appear to have had it from the moment they first picked up a bat.) I don't quite expect Snider to have Dunn's kind of power either - I just don't see him pounding 40 HRs year after year, but 30 will do just fine, no?
Developing the way Fred McGriff developed - cutting his minor league K rate dramatically as a major leaguer - is obviously Snider's best case scenario. If Snider can do what McGriff did... well, Cooperstown is where that road leads. It's not particularly likely, of course, and in fact Delgado's path is indeed the one Snider is following so far. He's striking out a little bit more against major leaguers than he did against minor leaguers, just as Delgado did.
And that's OK. I think most teams can use a guy who hits .250-.260 with 70 BB and 30-35 homers. Because that's my best guess as to what we should expect.
How sure am I?
Well, I was pretty sure that Phil Plantier was going to hit 400 home runs in the major leagues. I don't know if I've been sure of anything since....
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