LookinUp

I get the feeling that teams at all levels prioritize hitting from a player acquisition perspective. Once they acquire the players, sure they work on defense. I think that explains what we're seeing in this org. You can teach a hitter to be a good defender easier, in theory, than you can teach a good defender to be a future major league level hitter.

I follow baseball on much lower levels than we usually talk about here. That said, I see some of the best high school teams around routinely looking pretty bad in the field. I'm sure they work on it, but it really seems like the kids that rake the most get onto the field, and those kids very often didn't grow up with really good defensive fundamentals (footwork, positioning, situational stuff). I wouldn't be shocked if Delmarva's team isn't filled with kids like that. I'm sure player development sees it and will prioritize it.

Tony, this was in AAA, and AAA uses the major league ball now, right? If so, whoa!

Sometimes I get the feeling that most baseball coaches expect other levels of baseball to teach these kids how to play defense. It's such a game about pitching and hitting. I feel like defense doesn't get the practice time, and innovation, it deserves.

I can't be the only one who though Billy Boxscore was message board gold, was I? Don't get me wrong. He was over the top. He basically posted like an angry boomer who got onto the internets for the first time. I'm happy that Tony put an end to it (even though I did find a couple of his posts very interesting). But Billy Boxscore, when referring to SG, was just hilarious to me.

Ugh. Stupid BBref site sorts different than I expected. I didn't see that he played there last year, and clearly forgot.

As your post illustrates, Lofton played in an entirely different offensive era too. Expectations for Bradfield need to be in the context of today's game.

I don't doubt Tony's assessment of tools, but I'm not as down on Beavers' as this thread seems to be. Remember, he was always the guy who had the physical stature but hadn't gotten to his power yet. It was always supposed to be the last tool to come. I also don't want to over react to small sample sizes here. Beavers is in AA for the first time this year. Yes, numbers tend to go up there, but it's also been April/May weather, first time in the league, etc etc. With all of that said, he has 3 HR and 5 2B in 25 games. Over 150 game season, that's 18 HR and 30 2B. That's his pace while playing his first games in AA in relatively cold weather. If he can turn into that type of hitter at the ML level and play plus defense at the corners, he'll be a very valuable player. That's not easy to do, and the profile is different from the power potential that all of Cowser, Kjerstad and Stowers have, but it's still useful, and there's still time for more power to come through.

I actually tend to agree re: having skepticism, but I think a little perspective is in order. The O's knew the hitting profile they were drafting. They just drafted him in the middle of last summer. He's in his first full year of minor league ball. He's playing in a league where a lot of our guys have struggled. Everyone knew significant swing changes were part of his plan. Even with all of that backdrop, as others have pointed out, he's not really doing that bad. So we're less than a year out (much less in baseball days) and we're going to start drawing conclusions about a guy we knew had to develop? At this point, I think Bradfield and the O's deserve a grace period to let the kid develop. It's just waaaaay too early to draw any conclusions, IMO. I've never seen Kenny Lofton potential, but that doesn't mean he can't turn into a first division CF for many years.

OPACY is tougher to get to now as well after the Key Bridge accident. 95 and 295 north are a nightmare.

You might be technically correct. I don't know. The reason I feel the way I do is because the leg kick tends to mean that more weight is shifted to the backside leg. When I say it lengthens the swing, I mean it lengthens the time, not the path. It's like you're digging out of a hole to get that weight shifted. Obviously that's probably more of a youth problem than a Jackson Holliday problem, but I feel like I've seen his swing (when it wasn't working) before, and that's the problem I've seen.

For some reason I wasn't seeing him as a K guy. I guess that's just not how I think of ground ball pitchers. He is currently at 14k per 9 though, so that's awesome.

I love that we have him because he's a true SP prospect, and a lefty to boot. That said, I'm not sure what his actual ceiling is. The stuff is good, but not dominant, right? I'm thinking his ceiling is a #2/3 starter at this point. I certainly like that, but he's not in the Grayson Rodriguez level of prospect is he?

I'm kind of torn on this. A lot of slumps happen just because timing is off, nothing mechanical. Sometimes you're hot and sometimes you're cold. It's easily possible that Holliday's feel for hitting just had a slump at the wrong time. That happens. I know a hitting coach who talks about Pujols. When he went into a slump, he'd widen his stance and not even step. He removed all of that movement and basically hit with his hands and ungodly power. It was basically the same 2-strike approach that a lot of hitters employ. For my money, I don't love the huge load and leg kick. I think it really lengthens the swing in an attempt to generate power. When I saw Holliday, his swing looked just like that. Too long to catch up to elite ML pitching. Now maybe it was just a slump, but I'd personally prefer to see less movement, more contact, and progress from contact to power as he gets comfortable in the majors. And I know nothing, but that's my view of things.