5/14 Gameday Thread: Light Bulb Is Shining On Eddinson

Anyone seen Casa in person lately? His stars lately do not look good on paper.

The first two outs today were smoked line drives, a regular occurrence. Didn't see the rest of his at-bats. 

Northcutt with 14 homeruns.... anything to be stoked about or other factors?

Sprinkled in a double and a walk in addition to his usual strikeout and dinger too. Nice game from him

I highly doubt he’s a big leaguer but it’s never boring to watch power displays

Re: Northcut, at least he's proving he *can* hit a lot of home runs? I'm obviously hunting for positives here, but I do feel that "Plus-to-better game power, with a fringe-to-below-average at best hit tool and WAY too much swing and miss" (my imaginary scouting report on the new Northcut) is still a better profile to work with than "Potential well below-average hit tool...Will extend out of the zone and has a lot of swing-and-miss in his game...Plus raw power...unlikely power potential will actualize in-game" which are all excerpts from his current scouting profile here. To be clear, I'm not criticizing the scouting here, I think that's exactly who he was and that didn't have much of a future; whereas now he's showing a really valuable in-game skill which at least provides something to work with, even if the odds of building that into a sustainable approach are slim.

Re: Jimenez, I know some people love to pick on him, but I'm actually a bit encouraged by how things are going for him. We've known all along that he was going to have to make more adjustments than the average prospect, and everything I've seen over the last couple of years looks like he's making them. You expect to see ugly stretches as he makes these adjustments, but he seems to make them and be better (at least in a given area) for it. Hoping his current improvements aren't just a short hot streak but rather getting more comfortable with how he's swinging the bat.

Jimenez had a 33.3% K rate in April and he's cut it to 22.2% in May. He walked one time in April (1.6%) and has already done so six times (13.3%) in May.
Northcut had a 31.3% K rate in April and it's jumped to 43.8% in May. He walked three times in April (4.5%) in has walked twice (4.2%) in May.

Jimenez, for some reason, had a stretch where he swung at everything. Like, absolutely everything. He's stopped doing that and has been playing really well. Throw in the fact that Jimenez has other tools and your getting-compulsive "compare everyone with Jimenez" tic doesn't hold.

Honest question, are you saying "game power" only means "ability to hit home runs in the major leagues" or just that the scouting report here is only referencing what the player is expected to do in the majors? I take 0 issues with the scouting report here and was not trying to say it was incorrect, so if referencing that was a bad example/in poor taste I apologize, it was just easily available.

To restate what I was trying to say: Prior to this year, Northcut seemed like he had the potential to be a power hitter but wasn't getting to the power all that often in games, and had a somewhat poor approach at the plate. Now he is showing he *can* get to that power in games (this is what I always understood game power to mean, the ability to tap into raw power in a game situation,) and his approach is outrageously bad. I think there is slightly more optimism for the second version, as he has at least shown he can get to his power in game situations, and he was likely going to have to improve his approach either way.

Put another another way, I'd rather trade for an A-ball player with a .250/.300/.660 line than an A-ball player with a .260/.350/.510 line, given that both of them project to hit for low average with a poor approach at the ML level anyway.

First, I completely get where you're coming from so don't worry about caveating, etc. You're fine and I understood what you meant. Tried hard to make sure I didn't sound like I was being defensive, so apologies if I still failed there!

The easiest, most general response is that scouting reports here are all projecting what a player will be in MLB. We're not concerned with projecting what kind of player a guy is going to be in, say, Greenville. So yeah, when we're talking about any tool, we mean in MLB.

On Northcut, it is certainly better that he's getting to his power in games than not, right? But when you're projecting a guy, you need to look at how he's doing that. If he's hunting for a specific pitch that he can hit out of the park, and damn the torpedoes what happens if he doesn't get it, that approach will lead to gaudy HR totals in the South Atlantic League but he's going to get eaten alive in MLB, where pitchers simply won't give him that pitch, if not sooner.

To analogize, consider all the handwringing we did about Bobby Dalbec at the same level. He struck out at a 31% rate and was "only" slugging .573 when he got bumped up, with 27 2B and 26 HR in 100 G. Now, you do need to goose that up a bit for the Carolina League, which suppresses power, but let's still say he wasn't hitting as many HR as Northcut. But Northcut is now at a 37% (and climbing) K rate. And Dalbec was hitting .256 with a .372 OBP (60 BB). Northcut is hitting .250 with a .300 OBP because he's only walked 5 times. Now, consider what Dalbec, with the superior approach, is going through in MLB.

Using your slash lines, the only comp for the "other player" I can find for this year is Wil Dalton (.258/.368/.516), but that's a SSS from an older dude. But last year, this is pretty funny - there was a guy who hit .261/.352/.513 in Low-A (thanks in large part to a .368/.409/.772 September). You'll never guess who.

He was released but don`t know anything else

Thanks for the reply and clarification - sounds like the way we're looking at things is more aligned that I originally thought, just maybe from two different perspectives. I'm seeing it as "well, the scouting report indicated his approach was going to have to change anyway, that's still true, but look, at least the power is there now!" And I think your response would be "yeah, but look *how* far away from any sort of sustainable approach he is having to go to get to that power." Point well taken if that's the case, and I don't see this as necessitating a change in prospect status or anything, just a thought that maybe a passable approach is easier to teach than useable power is - no idea if that's actually true.

For the record, my slash line comps were both Northcut, last year (as I think you realized) and this year, just rounded to easy numbers. Without going down a whole other rabbit hole, its an interesting meeting of scouting and stats - in a vacuum Northcut's line from last year is more balanced and the player I'd bet on going forward, but introduce a scouting report that says he has a poor approach either way, and suddenly the second one becomes a lot more appealing to me (obvious caveat that there are better stats for analyzing a player than triple slash, etc.)

One thing I'll say about Northcut is that demonstrating game power isn't new to his game this year. He had a much more palatable BB:K rate of .51 with a 22.6 K% and still ranked first among qualified hitters in Low-A East in IsoP (.252 overall, .307 outside of Salem). Whether his stats normalize to something like that is an open question, or if he'll continue down a path of increased HR at the cost of approach.