My thinking on Leon is that he has 187 games and 805 PA thru his age 24 season. Jose Siri had 594 and. 2438. Jake Marisnick 811 and 3029 including 238 and 722 in the majors. 2023 will be the key. If he takes the same step up in 2023 that he did in 2022 he could become a plenty good major league CF.
Leon is still #4 on my list and I still expect him to impact the 2023 team in some way, just not sure how. 1 Hunter Brown 2 Drew Gilbert* 3 Colt Gordon* 4 Pedro Leon 5 Will Wagner*
I had someone that no longer works for the Astros tell me that he had a couple of guys that were scouting say that Kenni Gomez stands out and low key may be a rapid riser at a very early age. This jives with what I heard months ago from inside the Astros, that Gomez is very young but blossoming rapidly.
Right and not all infield spots are created equal. A number of our lower minor league guys could play passable at first in time and maybe a few could play second… but SS and 3rd are very hard to play.
It's easier to play corner OF than 1B, easier to play CF than middle IF 3B ****ing sucks, that takes a special kind of person.
Other than 1B. Any donkey can play there. Well, it’s a skill thing more than an athletic thing there anyway.
I think 2nd will be a lot harder to play going forward. Being able to play deeper helped a lot of bad defensive 2nd basemen. I find it funny that it wasn't long ago that poor defenders were hid at 3rd base instead of 2nd.
It takes less skill to play corner OF. It takes less athletism to play 1B. On being easier, it depends if one has skill or one has athletism. On CF versus 2B (prior to this year), I would say the ability to read the ball off the bat at MLB CF level is a harder skill to teach than playing shallow RF. Having to play closer could change the game back a decade or so in which having some skill at 2B might be required. There aren't that many defensive 2B any more, and most of those are just SS's on teams with a SS.
I will take that one further - I think the Astros are going to have some issues on that side of the infield between Altuve and Abreu. It was one of the things I was mildly concerned about. As for third base, I think that position has always been low key hard to play. There are not really a lot of 3rd basemen in the HOF for example. It doesn't require quite the range that you need at SS but you need really quick reflexes and a strong arm.
I don't think it has gotten much harder to play 3B though the shifting probably maybe it more valuable to have a better defensive 3B. This is anecdotel, but it sure seems like defense has improved the most at 3B over the past 10-15 years (not counting C).
I think the value of defense across the board has gone up. For awhile if you could swing the stick, that is largely all that has mattered. Also, we have seen a lot more emphasis and increased resources spent on maximizing players on offense and defense. I look at the Phillies for example, they did a deep dive into Castellanos and figured out that he was far more effective as a fielder coming in on balls at a particular angle, and made that change... they did it with Bohm as well. As for 3rd base specific, I do remember Goldstein telling me that they figured out that there were a lot of runs that came from poor range and positioning at that spot - so it isn't really a huge surprise. If you remember, at one-point teams were evaluating shortstops purely on errors, and not range and total number of outs. For a game that a lot of fans say they don't want to change - it changes a whole lot.
The availability of quantifiable defensive metrics has changed a ton. You don't even have to be a stat nerd to pull up the numbers anymore. I imagine it makes it far easier to sell to owners how valuable a player is when you can point to DRS and WAR. I vividly remember the Adam Everett talks I had back in the day, all I would hear is "why doesn't he have any gold gloves if he's so good".
Grae Kessinger hit a HR in the big league spring game today. He was my pick for “make or break position player” at the start of this thread. He has shown solid power and speed and defense and plate discipline; he hit 16 HR and stole 23 bases in AA last season and posted a healthy 13% walk rate while playing the vast majority of his time at SS. His downfall has been his outcomes on balls in play; he hasn’t posted a babip higher than .261 at any full season level. Looking at his batted ball data the thing that stands out is his insane infield fly rate; last season it was 32.8%. The rest of his batted ball numbers look good and his GB/LD/FB %s and his HR/FB rate track in AA in 2022 track closely to Alex Bregmans mlb career numbers. Without digging deeper I don’t understand what the cause of that is. It doesn’t seem to be a pure lack of power since his HR rate is good. But if whatever is causing that IFFB%/BABIP is fixable, he could be a very good player. I think another poster has commented on this before but I don’t recall if they expressed hope or not.
It appears there will be Statcast data for the WBC games. Astros' prospect Derek West played in the Netherlands game yesterday, but more interestingly will be the games that Colton Gordon pitches for team Israel. Should hopefully get some interesting insight on his stuff from Statcast when he does pitch. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/game...tFilter=&hf=playerBreakdown&sportId=51#719542
Asheville ballpark update: The poll that the ABC station in Asheville is running is currently 80-20 for "yes," city funds should be used to upgrade McCormick Field to keep the Tourists in Asheville.
This was a problem with Adam Everett. He was judged by the popular standards and not for what he truly brought to the table. More errors on plays others didn't even try for. Making difficult plays look easy. If I remember right, he was one of the first to play deeper and then move up for the ball to expand his range. Unfortunately a bat barely above the Mendoza line. He would have been appreciated far more if he had played a decade later.
