What are the rookies gonna be ??

[*ochocincos*]

(08-25-2023, 01:09 PM)bengalfan74 Wrote: In the big picture down the road? For the most part it's still too early to say for sure, especially with CES and Marte. And like we talked about in a thread a couple months ago quite often rookies have a tiny bit of an advantage at the plate early on. Opposing pitchers and teams just don't have a great hold on their weakness at the plate yet, however:

McClain - age 24 seems to be pretty steady at the plate. Confident, not easily shaken and so on. He's batting .293 with 351 at bats so he's well past flash in the pan range. I feel pretty confident he's gonna be a solid piece going forward.

Steer - age 25 batting .271 with 458 at bats posting 18 HR's and 70 RBI's. Has decent speed and has been an unsung hero for the most part this season. Again I feel confident he's a solid everyday player.

Friedl - age 28 Not quite as young as the rest but still in game time fairly early in his career. One thing that I've always disliked about our MGR. Bell is the jumping around lineup he loves. I mean I jsut wonder what his production would be if Bell would leave him at leadoff all the time? Anyways I feel pretty good that he can be a regular CF. You don't have to have killer numbers at plate from CF anyways, and he's been pretty dang good.

Now here to me is where the questions start coming in

Elly DLC - age 21 With his speed, arm, and athleticism I have no doubt he's a bona-fide MLer. His only big question mark is can he learn to not swing out of his shoes at every pitch thrown to him? Will he stop swinging at balls that bounce a foot in front of the plate? I still don't think it's any big leap to pencil him in as a long term ML starter.

CE Strand - age 23 He will look like a true slugger for a couple of at bats then swing at stuff not even in same zip code of strike zone the next two AB's. Which is fairly common for rookies. The rest of the season will give us a little better feel of course. He has 118 at bats so far and 40 K's. I'm on the fence about him.

Marte - age 21 way to early to tell. It's hard to balance trying the rooks out and making a playoff run, I get it. But I still wish Bell would quit bouncing these guys around the lineup and field like superballs. I think it would help with their games on the field and at the plate.

I know overall I like where we're at waayyyy more than I ever dreamed I would back in April.

I'm definitely willing to give more time on the younger guys like CES, EDLC, and Marte.
However, you just hate to see low BA/OPS for anyone regardless of how young they are.

EDLC I think came in with so much excitement that realistically wasn't sustainable for an entire year. He's going to have lull periods, but he's going to have really exciting times too.
I just looked at Billy Hamilton's first full year to compare...about the same BA, but EDLC has a much higher OPS.

Marte has way too few ABs to get any real sense on.

CES is probably the most concerning to me, out of the three.
Dude has 141 plate appearances and touted as a power bat, but he only has 4 HRs and a .657 OPS?
EDLC has 310 plate appearances but 11 HRs.
I thought for sure CES would be closer to 7-8 at this point.
And his OPS is lower than Stephenson, Senzel, and Fairchild.
If he can't figure out how to connect more with this major league pitching, he won't stay around long. First basemen need to be some of the better hitters on the team.