Ryan McKenna 2019

[DirtyBird]

Ryan M just hit another song this evening

[Luke-OH]

I don't see any change to McKenna's profile this year. He's been messing with his swing (he does this a lot), but he's going to be fine. 

[hoosiers]

I think his prospect luster has dimmed a bit, but the purpose of the minors is to learn and adapt and grow as a player.  Development often does not translate into results that are a straight line up.  It is more important to show growth and to show perhaps that one has graduated a level with a strong finishing performance - so the year is hardly lost - as opposed to a strong start and then poor statistics.  Still time for this to be a year of growth as opposed to a lost year.

[orioles22]

McKenna with another homer - two tonight and nine for the season. Maybe he's our future center fielder. He still has two months to get those numbers up.

[sportsfan8703]

2HR game. .706 OPS this year.

He’s getting there after a horrendous start. He now has a career .695 OPS in 139 G and 516 AB. Also 12 HR and 14 SB. 

Not terrible for a 21/22 y o, CF, in AA. 

[Frobby]

3 hours ago, sportsfan8703 said:

2HR game. .706 OPS this year.

He’s getting there after a horrendous start. He now has a career .695 OPS in 139 G and 516 AB. Also 12 HR and 14 SB. 

Not terrible for a 21/22 y o, CF, in AA. 

He still has time to put together a pretty good season.    Hopefully he can stay hot.   

[DirtyBird]

32 minutes ago, Frobby said:

He still has time to put together a pretty good season.    Hopefully he can stay hot.   

He will finish the season with an OPS close to .800, +/- 10 points

[Tony-OH]

McKenna is locked in at the plate right now and not missing fastballs. The pitches he's been homering on have been center cut or middle-low 90-92 mpg fastballs, in other words, pitches he should be hitting. Saying that, he's putting good wood on these pitches and he's showing solid average major league power.

I'd like to see him hit offspeed pitches a little better though. I'm going to watch more of his at bats though to get a better look.

[ChuckS]

1 hour ago, DirtyBird said:

He will finish the season with an OPS close to .800, +/- 10 points

Bold prediction.  That would take a .900 OPS the rest of the way. I'd be satisfied if he finishes >.750. 

My disappointment in McKenna is that I expected him to be hot out of the gate and force a promotion to Norfolk since he was repeating Bowie.  Up until the last week, he actually performed better at Bowie last season.  

 

[DirtyBird]

Just now, ChuckS said:

Bold prediction.  That would take a .900 OPS the rest of the way. I'd be satisfied if he finishes >.750. 

My disappointment in McKenna is that I expected him to be hot out of the gate and force a promotion to Norfolk since he was repeating Bowie.  Up until the last week, he actually performed better at Bowie last season.  

 

His OPS was 1.023 in 67 games at Frederick last season. .900 the rest of the way is attainable 

[ChuckS]

3 minutes ago, DirtyBird said:

His OPS was 1.023 in 67 games at Frederick last season. .900 the rest of the way is attainable 

Attainable sure.  Would I bet on it?  No.  

[Frobby]

1 minute ago, DirtyBird said:

His OPS was 1.023 in 67 games at Frederick last season. .900 the rest of the way is attainable 

This seems like a non sequitur.    If A+ performance was predictive of what he’d do in AA, he wouldn’t have a .695 OPS in 597 PA in AA.   What he did in Frederick tells me nothing at this point.   I hope he can improve, but half-season numbers from a level lower than where he is now aren’t very relevant.  

[DirtyBird]

Just now, Frobby said:

This seems like a non sequitur.    If A+ performance was predictive of what he’d do in AA, he wouldn’t have a .695 OPS in 597 PA in AA.   What he did in Frederick tells me nothing at this point.   I hope he can improve, but half-season numbers from a level lower than where he is now aren’t very relevant.  

Not a non sequitur. It somewhat shows what his potential is as he adjusts to the competition and is closer to the avg league age.

He was -1.5 in A+ and -1.4 in the AFL, and had over a 1.00 OPS in both - he is -2.2  in AA. I'm not using those numbers as a pure predictive indicator of what he will do in the balance of his AA time, but I think it shows the potential is there to start producing at a much higher level than he has to this point.

[Ohfan67]

30 minutes ago, DirtyBird said:

His OPS was 1.023 in 67 games at Frederick last season. .900 the rest of the way is attainable 

I enjoy that a couple of you guys really like McKenna, but those 67 games are a huge outlier for his career. McKenna has a .393 slugging percentage at Bowie this year. His career slugging percentage in 1720 PA is .395. Outside of those 67 games at Frederick, his highest OPS at any level was .712. I see something very different when I look at McKenna's performance than you see. 1720 PA's is a pretty significant sample size. For comparison Mountcastle has 1990 PA's. Trey Mancini had 2053 minor league PA's. I hope that McKenna stays hot and starts to look intriguing again, but when you are approaching 2000 minor league PA's it seems like what you see is what you get for the vast majority of players. Yes, he's still relatively young, but he's not younger than other true prospects at AA. I hope he becomes a major league regular, but at this point I would definitely bet against it if I had to put money on it. 

[DirtyBird]

Just now, Ohfan67 said:

I enjoy that a couple of you guys really like McKenna, but those 67 games are a huge outlier for his career. McKenna has a .393 slugging percentage at Bowie this year. His career slugging percentage in 1720 PA is .395. Outside of those 67 games at Frederick, his highest OPS at any level was .712. I see something very different when I look at McKenna's performance than you see. 1720 PA's is a pretty significant sample size. For comparison Mountcastle has 1990 PA's. Trey Mancini had 2053 minor league PA's. I hope that McKenna stays hot and starts to look intriguing again, but when you are approaching 2000 minor league PA's it seems like what you see is what you get for the vast majority of players. Yes, he's still relatively young, but he's not younger than other true prospects at AA. I hope he becomes a major league regular, but at this point I would definitely bet against it if I had to put money on it. 

He's one year older than Kyle Stowers