The Swing:  Seeing HQ's skepticism, we were more than prepared to write Poythress up as a Bryan LaHair ... a big, productive minors hitter who (indeed) lacked the swing load to hit HR's against top-flight pitching, and who idled out at org level.

Not that the jury is yet out on LaHair, who is still whaling away and bashing AAA pitching waiting for his chance, but you know what we mean ...

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We went over and looked at Poythress' swing and --- > got very excited.  Rich Poythress has the following things in common with Mark McGwire and the way Mac swung the bat:

1. Wide stance, no step, clean Xfer of weight from inner thigh to inner thigh
2. Upright at setup, 'floated' weight
3. Brawny arms high, cleared to landing strip, nice clearance factor away from barrel chest
4. Sinks weight as 'trigger'
5. Very compact to ball
6. One-hand, high, followthrough
7. ... Poythress' frame is very similar to McGwire's and Dunn's:  huge, blocky, a comfortable % of fat
8. ... Poythress played some 3B in college, as McGwire did
9. ... Poythress looks, facially, like McGwire

I'm not saying that Rich Poythress is going to hit 500 homers and testify on C-Span, but hey.  At least from what little college vid we saw ... in the batter's box, this guy is the spitting image! of Mark McGwire.

So, of course, we sauntered over to check out Big Mac's career arc...

• #10 overall in first round
• Y1 out of college, very slow start in 16 games, much worse than Poythress - 200/302/309 with 21 K's in 55 AB's
• Y2 - 274/393/481 in A+ ball, good comp for Poythress last year, though with better EYE
• Y3 - (2011 for Poythress) - 300/400/500 in AA ... promoted to AAA, did the same thing
• Y4 - hit 49 homers as major leaguer, .618 SLG
• Y5 and Y8 - had very disappointing years in majors; didn't consolidate until age 28

Adam Dunn also.  Dunn, if I recall correctly, was a cleanup hitter in the big leagues while in his early 20's.

The implications from the Manny, Hurt, McGwire profiles are obvious:  if Poythress were going to beHall of Fame in this template, of course he would be preparing to trash AA and maybe even AAA baseball this year.

If he doesn't, he still has the fallback goals...

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SSI Crunch

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