If there’s a will, there’s Wilyer — Wilyer Abreu thread

The Z-contact rate isn't good, but his batted ball metrics seem very strong (e.g., 84th percentile hard hit rate). I wonder if this is reflective of what seems to be an organizational approach to trade contact for impact. We've talked about how sometimes running a higher contact rate results in weak balls in play, so the question becomes can Abreu up his Z-contact to more like 81% without sacrificing his above-average barrel and hard-hit numbers? He's pretty good as-is, so it's exciting to think how much better he could be if he can do that.

As long as it's not health-related, Buxton comps are basically always nice.

Wilyer's platoon splits in the minors were never terrible, so it'll be interesting to see if that's a long-term issue or something he'll be able to figure out when they actually give him plate appearances against lefties. I think I saw Cora talking earlier this year about how they want to ease young LH batters in against lefties, almost irrespective of actual platoon splits.

To be clear, my point wasn't that he needs to improve his Z-contact. It was more that there's nothing wrong with his chase rate and all things equal, "weak" points in his game exist elsewhere. Completely fine with the profile.

I have no proof of this, but I always believed a lot of prospects who failed in 2019 were written off and forgotten about.  A lot of it due to age and level.  They were "behind."  

If he puts up his AA stats as a 22 year old instead of a 23 year old, he's getting more love.  Then you have guys like David Hamilton who was drafted in 2019 at the age of 21, yet didn't make his career debut until 2021 as a 23 year old in A+.  He finished the year at AA. It's pretty easy to write off a guy who is starting a year in AA at age 24 and hasn't done anything of note.  I did it all the time prior to 2020.  

It's part of the reason guys like Abreu, Valdez and Hamilton were available in the first place.   

based on what? 

A- Very small sample size
B- Not a whole lot out on him.
As we all know the longer you play the more they have on you. They find out what pitch you like to chase out of the zone and where that is. They even know when in the count to throw certain pitches. The more experience he gets I do think he will be 75 percentile. That might be 2 years down the road though if he can stay healthy.

rooting for Abreu if Rafaela cant do it but fWAR still has Cowser, Wells and Gil ahead. Gil is also ahead in bWAR

Well, damn. Search bar let me down. As you were…

On D, he has enough range to play RF at Fenway and one of the strongest OF arms in baseball.

Despite fairly average speed, he’s a very good base runner

He strikes out a lot but has serious power to all fields and can take a walk.

Also, he’s pre arb and won’t be a free agent until the 2030 season.

If I start hearing BSOHL stories about Abreu in the offseason, I'm picking him to win MVP next year

I love Abreu/Refsnyder as a platoon RF on a championship caliber team! I also believe that is likely Wilyer’s floor as a player, and hope that he can develop into a decent hitter vs LHP and an everyday player, but having Refsnyder on the roster next year is a nice safety net for him and Cora.