It's nice that he has done this for a quarter of a season...but the guy is like 26. It's possible he is a late bloomer, but if he has that much difficulty making consistent contact against minor league pitching, what reason do we have to believe he is going to be able to come close to hitting major league hitting?
sorry i don't mean to be overly harsh on him but guys his age who have that kind of terrible plate discipline don't normally make it. he does have nice tools but that kind of plate discipline doesn't get better with practice. but more importantly, it's pretty funny seeing someone who is that big of a windmill.
Trust me, nobody with a name a goofy sounding as Charlton Jimerson will be a success in the majors. It's a proven fact that pro sports success is directly proportional to the coolness of the athlete's name...
OPS is a very simplified measure of offensive production... Some people think OBP is up to three times more important than slugging. Also you have to factor in the park, and the level of play, etc.
This has already been hit on, but those numbers are from roughly 100 AB. For his career, he has a 0.300 OBP and 0.425 SLG in almost 2,000 AB. For a 26-yr old with 1 career big-league AB to make any kind of career in the majors with those numbers would be an absolute miracle.
Forget Jimerson... the organization should be focusing on Pence more. I know scouts say the guy has a hitch in his swing (or something like that), but the guy hasn't failed to just flat-out HIT at every level he's ever played at. Also, the Texas League has quality arms... sometimes with better stuff than the guys you'll see in AAA (where you put veterans who never had the stuff for MLB... like Tim Redding). Here are his stats thru yesterday... he leads the league in HR's and RBI's, is 4th in batting average: G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI TB BB SO SB CS OBP SLG AVG 32 134 30 46 10 4 10 32 94 11 24 4 2 .395 .701 .343
Pence with a 1.096 OPS....yikes! That's good for 2nd in the league, as the leader is putting up a 1.110 (Jason Perry, batting .404). There's a total of 9 players with an OPS above .900 in the Texas League. Granted, there's also only 8 teams in the league. Just an add on for Nick, Pence also leads the league in runs and triples, and of course slugging, where he has nearly a .060 lead. For comparison, Jimerson's OPS of .902 now, certainly nothing to sneeze at, is 29th in the PCL, a 16 team league.
Who says they're not? And what does "focusing on" mean anyways? He is definitely kicking serious arse.
Well, if he's continuing at this pace by the ASB, he should get promoted to AAA and continue his progression, and he can possibly be a viable alternative if/when the Stros decide to part with Preston Wilson. I felt that there was no reason for him to be down at Lexington as long as he was last year, and as a result it prolonged his ascent to AA till the beginning of this season (he definitely could have reached there last year). I also doubt the organization holds back players in order to not have to start "paying" them for their 6 years of big-league service time... but I would start to be highly suspicious if they decided to make him spend an entire year at Corpus, if he's still knocking the crap out of the ball.
I don't understand how the Astros organization has gotten the reputation for bringing along their prospects slowly. I mean, I know the recent examples, but didn't Oswalt and Berkman both FLY through the minor leagues to get into the majors? And Taveras went from AA to the majors, right?
Oswalt didn't really "fly"... in fact, Nolan Ryan had to practically convince Gerry Hunsicker that he had no business still pitching at AA Round Rock (and when you consider that Round Rock was owned by Nolan, and would have benefitted by having him longer, that's quite a testament to how Nolan feels about keeping great pitchers back). He also struggled towards the end of his first season in the minors... had that amazing car-shock incident (that made his shoulder feel better)... and has been lights-out ever since. Berkman was drafted in 97, and spent two full years in the minor leagues before being called up for good in 99. That's kind of the same path that Pence is on, but Berkman was by no-means another A-Rod or Pujols (guys that basically skipped minor leagues all-together). Willy was more of a necessity, rather than a merit-based promotion. At times, he still shows some defeciencies that could have been addressed in AAA, but its also an example of why holding a player back (when there's a spot on the big leage club for him) may not be necessary.
I read somewhere that ML pitching would expose that hitch pretty quickly -- like Bell or Hidalgo redux (although IIRC those guys developed "loops" in their swings, not "hitches").
First of all, Bell and Hidalgo had pretty damn good careers before they either lost focus, got out of shape, or both. If Pence has anywhere close to that sort of production after he reaches the big leagues, I'd take it in a second. Secondly, scouts always love to say stuff like "he's got flawed mechanics, he'll get exposed"... and that very well may be the case... but you still can't argue the fact that he's hit (and hit very well) at every level he's played at. It goes back to the whole premise of "this guy won't be good because he doesn't look good." Luke Scott looks like he'd be a perfect MLB hitter... sweet left-handed swing, good attitude, solid upper body, no abnormal facial features... he just looks like he'd fit in. But, we all see what happens when he goes from AAA to MLB... he's not the same guy. Meanwhile, you have guys who people scouts derided and said would never pan out as a power hitter: Pujols and Bagwell most notable. For whatever reason, some guys are just able to block out the horrible mental aspects that go along with this game... and despite their horrible mechanics, they know exactly how to approach a pitcher and swing a bat. Hell... Bagwell had a horrible swing... dropped his hands everytime he swung the ball... and he's the greatest Astros hitter of all-time.
Hope we get to see that this summer, and I hope he's the next Bagwell. As far as Bell and Hidalgo, they developed the swing mechanics issues after their initial success. Neither one (iirc) had those issues during their successful campaigns.
With respect to Berkman, the Astros had a pretty good outfield in 1998. Alou, Everett, Hidalgo and Bell. They also had a pretty good first baseman. Alou, Bell and Hidalgo were all over .300 and Everett was at .296. There was no reason to play Berkman over any of these guys and he got everyday at bats in New Orleans.
