=== Mike Carp ===
Reminds me of Bruce Bochte, a player whose jersey I used to have:
1) Left hand, line-drive swing
2) Excellent poise in the box
3) Very "alert," busy, quick hands
4) Takes a long look at the pitch
5) Good eye and HIT ability ... 60/60 type EYE, not 90/140 type
6) Questionable power for a 1B despite good size
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My one quibble about Carp is that he doesn't seem to have 1B power. It doesn't look particularly projectable to me, either. I mean, he gets his pitch, he squares it up, he follows through ... and then it's a medium single or maybe a 340-footer into a gap.
You know the saying "the ball jumps off his bat." Carp is kind of the opposite of that early. The ball "clonks" off a guy's bat? Hm. Maybe he'll snuff me on this.
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But that's the one quibble. Carp takes such a good long look at the pitch, and his makeup is so good, that I could see him hitting RIGHT NOW. Not all AAA hotshots take two years to learn. Just Mariners hitters do.
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Can a 1B be an impact player if he hits 13 home runs and plays okay defense?
Bochte did it with sky-high OBP's and a good number of doubles. Those .380 OBP's were top-10 in the league in context, so Bochte ran 130 OPS+ in his prime. He did it by hitting .300 with walks.
If Carp winds up not hitting many HR's, it will put a lot of pressure on him to score .400 OBP's. He might.
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=== Adam Moore ===
Winning me over real quick. If the M's could find a home for Johjima, he'd probably win the starting catcher job next March.
Is a throwback in comparing himself to an NFL quarterback. Johnny Bench used to do that.
The defense is a given, the makeup is a big plus, the swing is lightning-quick.
He's had a full year at AA and then a full year at AAA. He's 26. He's the man.
Ceiling? Well, in his first year at AA he hit .319/.396/.506 in 429 AB's. He did better than that, the year before, when he arrived at A+.
Just for fun, here's Jason Varitek's career path for comparison. In case you've forgotten that catchers can develop late and still develop tall. Varitek developed less impressively than Moore, and SLG'd .500 several times in the bigs.
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I think Rob Johnson has a (good) chance to be Dan Wilson, but judging by his swing and by his career path, Moore could be a #5 hitter or something.
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=== Adrian Beltre ===
Showing NL teams a late flash. Great to see.
Went what, 428 feet the other way on Thursday, which really rolled back the clock to 2004. ... and had a hot-shot single and a double on Friday. That kind of thing might very well catch peoples' eye.
Blowers said, on TV, that Beltre wants to come back but that it's a question as to what the M's want to do.
Tell you this much, I'll give Adrian Beltre $8-10M a year a long time before I'll give it to the shortstop. :- )
Cheers,
Dr D
Adam Moore doesn't remind me of Bench...but he does remind me a bit of Thurmon Munson...in terms of his size and projectable power. I didn't realize he was so BIG when people were talking about him two years ago...
Beltre...I would be in favor of signing Beltre if we traded Jose Lopez for something else we needed (a SS, for instance) but if Lopez is at 2nd and Tui at 3rd...I don't see where Beltre fits...I'm not signing Beltre if it means blocking Tui.
Munson had a similar take-charge personality, similar 2B + HR we're guessing, .300 hitter with an average amount of pop...
Thurman Munson is a great suggestion, just in terms of archetype, of course...
No, Moore doesn't remind me of Johnny Bench in any way. I can't think of anyone who, as an overall player, reminds me much of Bench at all, though Tui's swing reminds me of Bench's swing.
Several of the 1970's Reds had a sheer casual dominance, a justified arrogance, that you don't see much these days. Roger Clemens is kind of like that, but Roger has a mean tinge to it. Manny is kind of that way, but his casual dominance has a goofy tinge to it. The Big Unit was, but him in a sinister way.
The Reds honestly thought they were lowering themselves to even play baseball with other teams, and among all of them, Bench had the physical presence that suggested he was right. Can't think of a player like that these days.
Pedro, probably. Pedro had a Big Red Machine personality.
You kiddies shoulda seen Bench. Shaquille O'Neal didn't radiate dominance like Bench did.
To be fair, Varitek was a unique situation. He was one of Boras's first draft loophole guinea pigs and didn't play a game in the minors until he was 23, when the mariners inexplicably dumped him straight into Double-A. His path to stardom isn't an indicator of a typical catcher development path.
I like Moore, but the fact that Varitek didn't make the majors until 25 doesn't mean many catchers who do the same have legitimate star potential.
And Moore is apples-to-oranges here. Perfectly valid point.
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The broad idea we're getting at ... you'd be surprised, though, the catchers who developed as hitters 2-to-4 years later than they would have if they'd been playing 1B.
Take Mickey Tettleton as an example. In the majors at 23, still running a 68 OPS+ at age 26, broke out only at age 28 with a long string of 135-150 OPS+.
Todd Hundley terrible in the bigs for 5 full years, then became a virtual MVP candidate in years 6-8.
Darren Daulton with a career OPS+ of 90, tracked about like we'd expect Rob Johnson to do, then at age 30 jelled as an MVP candidate.
You could find 50 catchers like that -
Agree Matt ... and as popular as Beltre is ... the M's don't have the payroll to lock in expensive 82-OPS+ players at the positions where they have their franchise pheenoms champing at the bit...
I could understand Jack Wilson a lot faster than I could understand Beltre, because the next SS is nowhere on the horizon...
The thing is: those guys exist at every position. I think a lot of the reason that so many catchers develop that way is that teams put a premium on major league experience at the position in a way they don't for any other spot on the diamond. Teams will live with a Rob Johnson if they don't have an obviously better option because he keeps the pitching staff happy. Call it the Crash Davis syndrome, but for whatever reason fans and teams love blue-collar nice guys behind the plate, whether or not they can hit. You see this happen all the time. Pat Borders swung a candy cane at the plate and had a job into his 40's.
Catchers keep getting repeat shots while similar players at 1B get continually overlooked, and some of those guys figure out the whole offense thing in their late 20's/early 30's. Teams are finally starting to take a more serious second look at the David Ortiz's, Carlos Penas, Russ Branyans, and Jack Custs of the world, but in previous decades those players only got one shot.
If teams valued intangibles from first basemen the way they do from catchers, the list of guys who could have taken the same development path and put up multiple monster seasons from 1B would be at least as long as the list at catcher (Roberto Petagine and Cal Pickering immediately come to mind as guys who would have put up star-type numbers for a few seasons if they'd gotten a shot in addition to the guys I mentioned who actually made the leap).
I don't think there's anything specific about the catcher position that makes it take longer for players to develop offensively, but I'm open to an argument that there is.
Another reason I think you see more catchers break out later in their career is that teams give significant playing time to more people at the position. Because of the demands of catching every day, a starting catcher gets maybe a maximum of 500 ABs, and more commonly around 400, so teams have to give a few hundred at-bats to a backup. That expands the universe of available breakout candidates dramatically.
The Catching-22 is this ... catchers only play 80% (or less), of the time. The beating the body takes behind the plate wears on them, so typically they see their offensive contributions swoon as the season goes on. They (more than any other position), have to play thru the bruises from foul tips, or catching 95 mph fastball all night.
So ... if you get a catcher EARLY, who shows major hitting chops, you MOVE him. History is rife with guys that began as catchers, showed they could really, really hit, and were summarily moved to 1B or more demanding positions, (moving them BEFORE the rigors of catching start destroying the body). Dale Murphy began his career as a catcher. But, it is rare in the extreme to ALLOW your 1000 OPS threat to only play 80% of the time, (while increasing injury risk, and likely causing production swoons).
Guys like Piazza are incredibly rare, because most clubs won't even consider leaving a truly great hitter at catcher. Typically, you have to be almost overwhelmed with talent elsewhere to leave a good hitting catcher catching.
But ... you've gotta have a catcher, (actually, you've gotta have two). So, you can't move EVERY good hitting catcher prospect elsewhere. So, typically, your catcher hitter types tend to be one-dimensional. They bring EITHER average, (Jason Kendall), or power, but typically are 2nd tier hitters --- 25 HR power, not 40. Oddly, very few catchers seem to have exceptional eye ratios. Most are loathe to take a walk, (maybe they think taking walks on offense will hurt their pitcher on the other side - who knows?)
Anyway, even in the minors, you've gotta carry extra catchers. So, to a degree, you've got a minor overload in the minors. More bodies ALL attempting to improve enough to get the call. Additionally, the catcher position, more prone to injuries, affords more emergency call-ups than other positions. If you've got a couple of OFs on the bench, and an OF hits the DL for two weeks, you might call up an extra bullpen arm. If a catcher hits the DL, you WILL bring up another catcher, (unless you're already carrying three).
You also have the added issue that catchers burn out faster than other position players, (shorter careers), meaning AGAIN, you've got more opportunities. Basically, the opportunity and supply trees for catchers vs. other positions just don't match up. So, lots of time, it's a case of forced adaptation. You've got a decent catcher, then wham, he breaks a shin, and you have to bring up the 31-year-old journeyman to backup your backup. But, your backup isn't any good, and the guy who has been sitting in AAA for most of a decade finally gets a chance, and works his buns off to make the most of it.
Of course, there is the case that the defensive demands make catcher a much more COMPLEX position to play competently. So, lots of your young phenoms spend much more time EARLY working on the refining of the defensive stuff. So, compared to simpler positions, they also don't get as much early hitting instruction. So, AFTER the defense is solid, (after all, their primary value is as emergency backup), suddenly the get taught that one thing that was preventing them from being a really good hitter -- and wham, you're Paul Lo Duca.