PROSPECT BEAT 46.9: Center Field (or, Arvin Duggan isn’t walking through those doors)
Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2021 3:07 pm
Off Topic
Travelblog of Thom S. Hunter
Editor’s Note: This is a running blog that will cover minor league players in the Yellow Springs organization. We initiated it because this kid reporter was hired without my knowledge and we needed to do something with him. He seems flaky to me. Seems like a waste of good cash. But what do I know? Good luck.
September, 2046: Whereabouts Unknown – The plan, if there is one, looks to me like Arvin Duggan is going to be a very rich man. You could do worse, I suppose. After spending a season getting acclimated to baseball among the adults, he’s been nothing but stellar, dropping a 4.3 WAR season last year and following it up with another this year—and that’s without platooning. One assumes there may be a Zimmer glove award in his future. And even better, he’s only 25 so there are a few seasons left before the wear and tear of roaming center field should pile up.
Like I said, there are worse plans.
This is good because right now the club’s approach to the future is to essentially stand at the side of the craps table, have their very beautiful spouse blow on some dice, and then throw caution into the wind. It could work, of course. There are a few examples of people who leave the casino rich, right? But it also has a tendency to leave me drunk and sobbing in the gutter.
Anyway. Let’s take a look at the dice the Nine are tossing, shall we?
(#1)
First out of the shoot we have Cole Wagner, who was drafted as a shortstop/CF combo and pushed to CF when Duran and Masuki showed up. I think it’s a better fit for him, anyway. He’s an “attractive” bet in this game of fake-dice because the glove is Duggan Light. To me this means that as long as you haven’t seen Arvin Duggan perform magic in center, you’d think Cole was pretty damned good.
The beef, of course, is with the bat—but even there he’s got a few scouts’ eyes popping. The 22-year-old RHB hit seven homers in Silver Springs this year, but everyone looks at his swing and sees 25 homers. If he can get there, that would go a long way toward making him Plan B. The problem is that he hit only .153, and last I saw the list of guys who hit .153 in A-ball and then went on to make an impact in the BBA is … well … let’s just say it’s gotta be goddamned short list.
While sitting alone in this jail cell, I’m forced to wonder if Wagner would have grown a bit more rapidly if the team had left their A-ball affiliate in Fort Worth, which is Wagner’s home city.
Who knows.
It’s a thought, though.
(#2)
Bob Carpenter is one of those tweeners. His numbers coming up through the ranks look solid enough to make him good in center, but not solid enough to play a corner, but his glove is good enough to make him a star in the corners, but come last quartile in center. What to do, what to do.
That said, he’s a lefty bat, and since he comes from Texas like Wagner does it would make for an interesting marketing campaign to put the two together in a CF platoon that tries to squeeze the most possible out of each of their strengths. Then Nine have done that before, but one worries that the cactus juice cocktail that would result might be more raw and prickly than is really desired. I can see the group pitched as “The Texas Tornadoes,” or something. Not sure how well it would play in Ohio, but National interest might brew up some bucks.
The bigger problem with Carpenter, though, is that it seems his teammate don’t tend to like him. He’s pushy, they say. Sullen at times, then goes off at others.
The kid is only 21, though, so we’ll see what kind of growth he gets. See what happens when he hits adversity, as he did in a short stint in Indy AAA that didn’t go quite so well.
(#3)
Alberto Perez may be the most likely of the three ranked options to make the bigs, but I’m not sure it’ll be in center field. He’s still in Short A, so the truth is that no one knows what he is, yet, but my eyeballs say his range is weak for center right now, but that despite a set of pretty ugly numbers with the stick so far my eyeball says that he’s going to hit—eventually—and if he hits even a little, then that defensive package looks pretty elite in left field.
I’m not the only one kind of flummoxed. Talk to any scout and they’ll look at you cross-eyed and maybe talk about some tools or the fact that he runs okay. Someone might mention they were impressed with his ability to coax a walk one day after getting behind in the count. The problem, maybe, is that he’s one of those guy to whom it looks too easy. I hate those guys. That said, I met Alberto last June and he was really a good guy. Damnit.
What I’m saying is that I think he might wind up being better than anyone thinks, but we’re going to have to wait a year or two to see what happens. That’s the thing about rolling dice, right? You don’t know if you hit or miss until after the fact.
Alberto comes from Puerto Rico, and was born to an American mother and Puerto Rican mother. I don’t know how that plays in the question at hand, but now you know.
# Like all the other positions, the Nine have a bunch of other interesting guys, the only one I’ll name drop being Antonio Fernandez, who once hit a ball so far out of the Cat Island park that it struck a plantain tree and shook loose enough fruit to feed a family of four for a week.
Now there’s a marketing scheme for you, am I right?
ORGANIZATIONAL PROSPECT DEPTH CHART
September, 2046: Whereabouts Unknown – The plan, if there is one, looks to me like Arvin Duggan is going to be a very rich man. You could do worse, I suppose. After spending a season getting acclimated to baseball among the adults, he’s been nothing but stellar, dropping a 4.3 WAR season last year and following it up with another this year—and that’s without platooning. One assumes there may be a Zimmer glove award in his future. And even better, he’s only 25 so there are a few seasons left before the wear and tear of roaming center field should pile up.
Like I said, there are worse plans.
This is good because right now the club’s approach to the future is to essentially stand at the side of the craps table, have their very beautiful spouse blow on some dice, and then throw caution into the wind. It could work, of course. There are a few examples of people who leave the casino rich, right? But it also has a tendency to leave me drunk and sobbing in the gutter.
Anyway. Let’s take a look at the dice the Nine are tossing, shall we?
(#1)
First out of the shoot we have Cole Wagner, who was drafted as a shortstop/CF combo and pushed to CF when Duran and Masuki showed up. I think it’s a better fit for him, anyway. He’s an “attractive” bet in this game of fake-dice because the glove is Duggan Light. To me this means that as long as you haven’t seen Arvin Duggan perform magic in center, you’d think Cole was pretty damned good.
While sitting alone in this jail cell, I’m forced to wonder if Wagner would have grown a bit more rapidly if the team had left their A-ball affiliate in Fort Worth, which is Wagner’s home city.
Who knows.
It’s a thought, though.
(#2)
Bob Carpenter is one of those tweeners. His numbers coming up through the ranks look solid enough to make him good in center, but not solid enough to play a corner, but his glove is good enough to make him a star in the corners, but come last quartile in center. What to do, what to do.
The bigger problem with Carpenter, though, is that it seems his teammate don’t tend to like him. He’s pushy, they say. Sullen at times, then goes off at others.
The kid is only 21, though, so we’ll see what kind of growth he gets. See what happens when he hits adversity, as he did in a short stint in Indy AAA that didn’t go quite so well.
(#3)
Alberto Perez may be the most likely of the three ranked options to make the bigs, but I’m not sure it’ll be in center field. He’s still in Short A, so the truth is that no one knows what he is, yet, but my eyeballs say his range is weak for center right now, but that despite a set of pretty ugly numbers with the stick so far my eyeball says that he’s going to hit—eventually—and if he hits even a little, then that defensive package looks pretty elite in left field.
What I’m saying is that I think he might wind up being better than anyone thinks, but we’re going to have to wait a year or two to see what happens. That’s the thing about rolling dice, right? You don’t know if you hit or miss until after the fact.
Alberto comes from Puerto Rico, and was born to an American mother and Puerto Rican mother. I don’t know how that plays in the question at hand, but now you know.
# Like all the other positions, the Nine have a bunch of other interesting guys, the only one I’ll name drop being Antonio Fernandez, who once hit a ball so far out of the Cat Island park that it struck a plantain tree and shook loose enough fruit to feed a family of four for a week.
Now there’s a marketing scheme for you, am I right?
ORGANIZATIONAL PROSPECT DEPTH CHART
| Level | Player | Age | B | OVR | HITTING | DEFENSE | Ceiling | Arrival | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | Cole Wagner | 22 | R | 30/45 | 4/6/8/5/4 | 10/9/10 - | Starter/Plat | 2049 | POW/Def |
| AA | Bob Carpenter | 21 | L | 40 | 7/7/6/3/9 | 8/10/9/ - | Starter/Plat | 2048 | |
| SA | Alberto Perez | 20 | R | 20/50 | 6/6/8/7/4 | 8/11/6 - | 2049/50 | LF? | |
| AAA | Walt Neal | 25 | R | 45 | 6/6/2/6/5 | 9/10/11 - | Def Rep | 2047 | Def |
| SA | Antonio Fernandez | 19 | L | 20/45 | 4/5/9/6/3 | 8/8/9 - | POW Projection | ||
| AA | Luis Martinez | 21 | L | 30/45 | 6/7/1/2/9 | 9/7/6 - | 4th OF | ||
| R | Zach White | 19 | R | 20/35 | 5/5/3/4/5 | 9/11/6 - | |||
| A | Antonio Lucero | 21 | S | 35/40 | 4/6/5/6/5 | 9/11/8 - | |||
| AAA | Owen Furlong | 23 | L | 45 | 5/8/3/5/6 | 9/5/9 - | |||
| AA | Don McKinney | 20 | R | 40/45 | 6/7/6/5/6 | 8/6/10 - | 4th OF | LF/RF |