Q. Anything else? How about upside?
A. The really exciting thing here...
The pure-LH Granderson advanced to "MVP candidate" after he overcame his problemos against LHP's. He used to hit like .218 with a woeful EYE against lefty pitchers. It suppressed his overall numbers.
Look at Granderson in 2007:
- .337/.393/.621 - vs RHP
- .160/.225/.269 - vs LHP
And it's easy to see this kind of batter, with pitch recog an issue, having huge problems LH-on-LH. If Trayvon Robinson had to deal with Erik Bedard from the left side.... yowch!
But Trayvon hits switch, so ... he's SLG'ing over .500 against LHP's already. Neat-o.
Granderson has progressed to the point where he crushes LHP's, and that's why he's now an MVP candidate.
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Q. What's the timeline for Robinson?
A. Well, his swing is already there, has been all along...
Here's a kid where you'd say, the more pitches he sees, the better. It's not like AAA has taught him everything it can teach him. He could use another 500 pitches there.
But with his quick swing, he can also learn in the bigs, if they're wanting to be patient with him. Gutierrez being around, that's politically a thorny issue. It's not like Trayvon is likely to come up and silence the Guti fans with an Ackley performance, now is it?
When they're ready to commit to Trayvon, throw him in there and spend the 1,000 AB's it's liable to take, before he tells you whether he's going to deliver the Granderson-level goods.
From my point of view, I'd rather the first 200 of those AB's come right now, when they don't hurt us.
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Q. Supposing the kid really is a top-50 prospect, a center fielder, and headed up with a bullet. Why would the Dodgers trade him?
A. We imagine it has something to do with Matt Kemp, CF and Colletti's, ah, creative way of looking at position scarcity. He tried to hold off the pitchforks and torches by saying that anybody can find an OF, but catchers are tough to come by.
Anybody can find an OF, yeah, but not so much the exciting bats playing CF. Thank you, Ned Colletti.
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