Gimme a break, man. There was a small army here this spring clamoring for Ryan Fitzgerald in right field based on his good few dozen spring PAs, you among them.
And I didn't say the Sox should start Cordero in '23. I said they’ll probably make a trade, and specified exactly who and why.
What is this nonsense? Baseball is a dynamic sport. Some of the ways that players can be good at it is constant, and others are fluid. But beyond that, I can't imagine having loved this sport the last 35 years without rooting for interesting marginal players. I remember once as a young child pleading with my parents to let me
pleeeease watch the Sox game, after they had grounded me for acting up at a county fair, and the argument I used was that I absolutely
needed to see how high Randy Kutcher's batting average had risen because he'd been on a modest hot streak.
There wasn't much rational basis for liking Randy Kutcher at age 7. There's
plenty for liking Cordero.
Are you deliberately overlooking his injury history?
2017,
age 22 season in AAA: .326/.369/603, 146 wRC+
3/28/18: 10-day IL, left abductor strain
5/28/18: 10-day IL, right forearm strain
6/21/18: transferred to 60-day IL, right forearm strain
4/8/19: 10-day IL, right elbow strain
5/31/19: rehab assignment to AAA
6/17/19: transferred to 60-day IL, right elbow strain
Feb 2020: global pandemic
7/16/20: traded to Kansas City
8/9/20: 10-day IL, right wrist sprain
8/10/20: transferred to 60-day IL, broken right hamate bone
2/10/21: traded to Boston
2/22/21: 10-day IL, COVID
What, no Sam Horn?
These seem more like the answers trivia questions than especially good comparisons for Cordero as a hitter. Lavarnway was a lumbering catching prospect who didn't especially have issues making contact. Alcantara was a head case. Petagine was a low-power, high-OBP first baseman. Does Franchy Cordero really remind you of Julio Zuleta? Like, as a hitter? Are you just naming some guys?
Also, are you not into exit velocity? Not saying it's
everything, but it seems like its correlation with major-league success is common knowledge. How am I supposed to take you seriously as a prospects guy if you're going to rib other posters for valuing guys who hit the ball hard?
Cordero's appeal is no great secret. He's got incredible, effortless power, including to the opposite field. He's also a roughly average outfield defender and an elite athlete and baserunner. Their marketability aside, the total package is not a ton dissimilar from Bo Jackson (another guy with a >30% K rate). But for more contemporary examples, the upside is Teoscar Hernandez, Adolis Garcia, Carlos Pena, Pedro Alvarez and even Hunter Renfroe. Byron Buxton had a .230/.285/.387 line in his first 1075 major-league PAs, with a 6.5 BB% and 31.7 K%.
The strikeouts are there, but Franchy's plate discipline is good -- the best on the team before Casas came up. The bet is whether he can make another pitch recognition/mechanics tweak, and it seemed like he had before the collapse in July. A two-month stretch with a .366 expected wOBA, a 51.4 HardHit% and a 26% K rate followed by a one-month stretch of a .202 expected wOBA, a 22.2 HardHit% and a 44% K rate suggests that something mechanical happened. It's no slam dunk Cordero put it all together, but the path certainly gets easier next year when more of his 100 MPH one-hoppers to second base will find their way through. I'd rather use the roster spot on someone with upside like him than a Tyler Naquin, Robbie Grossman, Corey Dickerson, Leury Garcia type in their early thirties.