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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Thursday, December 01, 2022
Gleyber Torres, 2B, Yankees
A supposed sure thing when acquired from the Cubs as a prospect in the 2016 Aroldis Chapman trade, Torres has had an erratic tenure in pinstripes. He was an All-Star in each of his first two seasons in 2018-19 before posting a combined OPS+ below league average while struggling defensively at shortstop in 2020-21. A full-time shift to second base was part of a better 2022 in which Torres slashed a more respectable .257/.310/.451. Torres is entering his age-26 season and had above-average hard-hit and barrel percentages last season. So unlike fellow Yankees trade candidates Josh Donaldson and Aaron Hicks, an acquiring team could speculate that his best days are still ahead of him.
RoyalsRetro (AG#1F)
Posted: December 01, 2022 at 05:21 PM | 8 comment(s)
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Tags:
gleyber torres,
jarred kelenic,
javy baez,
jesse winker,
jo adell,
keston hiura,
madison bumgarner,
nicholas castellanos,
paul dejong,
victor robles
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1. The Duke Posted: December 01, 2022 at 08:00 PM (#6107545)Well, that seems very unlikely but he should still have plenty of good as days ahead of him. I'm not sure he needs a change of scenery though and I'm doubtful the Yanks have much interest in giving him one.
Gotta believe someone can find a way to bring Robles and Adell back to a good place offensively.
Adell was never in a good place offensively. At 18-19, he was hitting very well for a guy his age but was racking up 25% K-rates in the low minors. He might have been disadvantaged by the 2020 minors shutdown but as soon as he hit AAA, the K-rate jumped to 30%. He needs to drop his K-rate by at least 5%, bump up his walk rate and bump his EV up 2-3 MPH -- that's a tough trifecta to pull off. His upside at this point is probably to add the EV and some launch angle and hope he can hang on at something like 210/290/430.
I've mentioned before that bbc hipped us to those Trevor Bauer chat over dinner things (back before we knew just how big an ####### he is) which had Kenny Lofton, Adell and a pitching prospect (Hunter Greene I think). Probably still out there on youtube. Find the bit where Lofton is talking about picking up pitches, guessing, etc. At the end of that segment you won't be the least surprised that Adell hasn't hit.
Robles is kinda similar. Especially in hindsight, his age 22 season was clearly a fluke, especially those 17 HRs. He had a nice age 20 season but there's nothing special in the rest of his minors numbers. Just look at his EVs in the majors -- he hasn't hit with any authority at any point in time. Somewhat like Billy Hamilton before him, he's been needing to hit the ball on the ground a lot more and use his speed. For us Cub fans, he's a better version of Almora or a worse (baseball) version of Addison Russell.
Baez -- he's obviously always going to be streaky and any season will come down to whether he has 2, 3 or 4 hot streaks. For 23-28, he hit 271/312/490 with a 108 OPS+. In 2022, he was atrocious for his first 30 games with a 553 OPS. From that point he hit 247/287/416 with a 25% K-rate -- that's not great by any stretch but it's within expectations for a guy who hits 271/312/490, especially with offense down overall. What's alarming was the -5 DRS -- Javy's bat was more than fine for a +10 SS, acceptable for a +5 SS but not good enough for a below-average SS. Still, according to bWAR, he was a bit above-average last year -- not $23 M per year above-average but it might just be an off year. Anyway, sure, they're paying him to put up a consistent 3-4 WAR per year and he came up short in year 1, not a good sign ... just not the end of the world yet. Maybe a return to 2B would spark a desfensive resurgence.
We have not yet adjusted our expectations -- and hopefully 2023 offense will bounce back so we don't have to -- but lgOBP and lgSLG for Javy's context was just 304/385. That 287 OBP isn't a disaster in a 304 context, it's below-average and not shockingly so. A 416 SLG is decidely above average. Even including the horrible start, his BA was league average and the SLG was a smidgen above, making him a SS with a low OBP, not a crisis.
Still, can't really disagree with #2. For most of these guys, teams would need to eat money to move them.
He needs to hit the ball harder, or cut down on the K's, or walk more than never, or even just a little bit of two of those.
Hunter Renfroe is actually the model here: high K, low BB, plus power, solid defense. Adell is still young, there's plenty of time to get to the Renfroe level. Renfroe didn't debut until a September cup of coffee the age that Adell will be next season, and wasn't a regular until the following year.
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