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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
My 1997 Bowman #87 - Chad Hermansen RC is now down to $0.20. I’m hanging tough!
So, what happened here?
I have seen a lot of Hermansen over the years, and his problem is easy enough to diagnose. He can’t hit breaking balls. It was his weakness back in 2000 and it is his weakness now. He still has bat speed and power, but he’s very pitchable and hasn’t been able to get past a swing-from-the-heels approach for any length of time.
When he was young, the theory was that given his age that he would be able to resolve this problem eventually, but it never quite happened, granted his major league playing time was erratic and spread out, and the injuries did not help. But even if someone had given him 500 more at-bats to adjust to the majors, I doubt he would have been able to keep his batting average any higher than .240 at best, with a mediocre OBP and very high strikeout rate.
Lesson Learned:
Age-relative-to-league is important but not an absolute thing.
Some guys peak early and don’t develop their skills even if they are young for their leagues early in their career.
Repoz
Posted: February 26, 2008 at 08:07 PM | 18 comment(s)
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So the only curves he can hit are hanging, Chad?
He came up through the Pirates system. Case closed.
I think I speak for all Chads when I say, God I am sick of those jokes!
Why do they not equate "prospect" with ARam? They both came up at the same time.
They might be better off equating it with Aramis Ramirez. Not that his fate was a whole lot better with the Pirates.
The guy who reminds me of Hermansen right now is Andy Marte. Same sort of thing. Marte, like Hermansen, never really did that well, just well for his age. Making him a good prospect, but only a prospect. I'd much rather guys just hit like Alex Gordon or Travis Hafner or Ryan Howard did. You don't have to worry about their age much since they don't have to get much better to be good MLB hitters. 1.000+ OPS totals know no age. :)
The Bucs have a similar guy now: Pearce
Yeah, something like that. The farm system back in 1997 was rated at or near the top by BA and heavily hyped in Pittsburgh, but things didn't exactly turn out well. Then we had years of Dave Littlefield assuring the fans that the farm system was in great shape and so things were certain to get better. Of course, that was a bunch of BS, but most fans probably don't follow the minors that closely. I see a lot of comments online about how rebuilding doesn't work, from people who don't distinguish between bad strategy and bad execution. (Of course, in Littlefield's case, there was no legitimate attempt to build through the farm system at all, just a lot of false claims that the team was doing that.) Hermansen seems to serve as a symbol for all this.
Unfortunately, it looks like Indianapolis is going to have Pearce.
I've been campaigning for the O's to trade some of their newly acquired pitching for Pearce, but as usual nobody listens to the Dingbat.
I think he just lost his swing, and wasn't able to re-find it.
I've been campaigning for the O's to trade some of their newly acquired pitching for Pearce, but as usual nobody listens to the Dingbat.
Maybe you should change your handle to Insightful Charlie.
Epiphany. I just realized that this is exactly the line in the edited-for-TV version. I wonder if the writer/editor who used "forget" for \"####\" wasn't making a very oblique "Major League" reference.
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