Even when middlebrooks was good there was concern that his 70/13 k/bb total could be a sign of trouble ahead, as he had the same issue in the minors.
No, he wasn't. In fact, Middlebrooks was a significant disappointment as a prospect for the first two years, considering his draft pedigree and scouted tools. Devers has consistently been among the youngest kids at each stop in the minors, and last year showed good willingness to work on the discipline aspect of his plate approach.
Forced me to go look up Middlebrooks. He actually had a decent walk rate as a 20 year old at Greenville 48 in ~450 PA and a not horrible 35 in ~475 PA at Salem as a 21 year old. It wasn't until he got to AA that he completely fell off the table 95/20 K/BB in ~400 PA. And they promoted him anyway.
Devers has already cracked some top 10 lists. I think he was as high as 7 in one of the more popular publications.
In 2017 preseason rankings, he was #18 on Baseball America, #17 on MLB.com, and #13 on Baseball Prospectus. BA currently has him at #14 and MLB.com has him at #13. BP hasn't published anything updated yet.
Keith Law had him at #7 mid season last year.
I mean, it was a pleasant enough puff piece, but I didn't see the part about cautious optimism for it continuing, other than "Jose Iglesias was wretched in the minors, too."
With Marrero hitting against lefties and Sandoval against righties, you have a combined:
If you're wondering, that's 4th in all of baseball (min 10PA). Hooray for SSS.
At this point, I don't think the decision to not cut bait is based on what he does (or doesn't) do. It's simply the lack of alternatives. Particularly right now with Pedroia, Holt, and Hernandez all on the shelf for varying periods of time. I mean, they're already four deep on their list of utility infielders...who thought Deven Marrero would be a regular starter on this team by Memorial Day?
I dont know if that's a reason. The team has shown that its quite comfortable paying guys who suck, but not playing them, regardless of salary. (Craig and Castillo as exhbits 1 and 1A.) They may not be able to use whatever option scenario they used on Craig to bury him at AAA, but if they think they have an alternative -- and they think that he truly can't hack it anymore -- I am pretty sure they'd release Sandoval, or trade him for a bag of balls.
I'm not sure I agree. Without digging super deep, teams that theoretically have short-term 3B available include the Royals, White Sox, Pirates, Rangers, Athletics (two of them), Angels (two of them), Padres, Cardinals, Marlins, Blue Jays (if they wanna move Donaldson); even the Mets if the Sox are somehow interested in a subsidized Jose Reyes.
Chase Headley's 73 OPS+ (lower than Sandoval, fwiw) suggests another team might be looking.
True, good point. Though after putting up a 148 OPS+ in April, they might see Headley as just having a really bad month.
Headley had an OPS+ of 91 last year and 90 the year before; April was the outlier. I could easily see the Yankees upgrading. Headley is owed 13 mil next year, but they can easily afford to pay 11 mil of that for him to play elsewhere without disrupting any of their plans.
You know more about the Yanks' farm system than me so I'll defer to your judgement, but just to be clear, my assumption is that a deal for 3 months of Frazier or Moustakas won't involve any serious assets, more along the lines of what NY gave up for Headley in the first place.
How much would he really drain the system? He's going to be FA at the end of the year, the Royals probably won't extend a QO and are currently 22-33, and there are few if any other contenders who will be in the market for a 3B. Obviously I wouldn't want to give up a top prospect, but how about a guy ranked 15-20 group and another lower guy? That's what we paid for Brad Ziegler last year, who was closing for Arizona at the time.
I'm not sure how comparable the Craig and even Castillo scenarios are to this one. Lot of different and unique variables going into each of those, with the added curve ball that both surprising stalled out at the AAA hump (which more or less forced the walk away decision in itself).
Candelario would easily be our #4 prospect, and I'm not at all sure he wouldn't outrank Sam Travis for #3. He is very much blocked with Chicago, but I can't imagine what we have that the Cubs would want (unless we're sellers in July and trading Pomeranz), and I don't know why we'd want to pay for six years of control over a young player when we really only need three months' worth (or perhaps less, given how well Devers is bouncing back from his brief slump).
He's also three years removed from playing for his first and (barring a miracle) last big contract. I don't mean that quite as pejoratively as it sounds. I don't think it indicates an egregious character flaw for a person to perform at a whole 'nother level when there is a huge potential benefit riding on their performance, and then ease off the throttle a bit when there is nothing but pride at stake. It indicates that they're like most people. What's surprising about professional athletes is how relatively unlike most people many of them are in this regard. But Panda, from what we've seen, doesn't appear to be one of those.
