I also wonder if the umpires are in Ackley's head. Command of the strike zone seems to be so integral to Ackley's comfort zone and the umpires don't seem to appreciate his pickiness at the plate.
I also happen to agree with Jason Churchill's assessment of Ackley's swing mechanics -- he tends to float or drift forward, doesn't always lock the front leg, and does have a Longer than average path to the ball. Ackley has great hands and wrists and I'm not saying it can't work -- Ichiro had a heck of a career with some similarly peculiar swing mechanics -- but it is certainly not a classical swing archetype. Churchill also said that Ackley is working on shortening his stride, but doesn't yet own the change. Anyway, I encourage people to read the Prospect Insider article about Ackley.
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Q. Dustin Ackley has been up to the plate 69 times in AAA, and has reached base 37 times. That's an OBP of .537. What do you make of that?
A. Classic post-hype syndrome. Ron Shandler gives the classic sequence, the one that has occurred many 100's of times, as "the ARod 10-Step Path to Stardom":
- Prospect puts up awesome minors stats.
- Media gets riled up.
- Prospect gets called up! ... struggles, year 1.
- Prospect gets demoted back to AAA.
- Prospects tears minors up, year 2.
- Prospect gets called up! ... struggles, year 2.
- Prospect gets demoted back to AAA.
- Media turns their backs on prospect. Even fantasy experts reduce expectations.
- Prospect rips minors to shreds, year 3.
- Public shrugs, does not care. AAAA prospect label attached.
- Prospect promoted, year 3. Explodes. Many fantasy owners of prospect win their leagues.
This follows HQ's axiom, "Young players rarely lose their inherent skills. Pitchers may uncover weaknesses, and the players may have difficulty adjusting. These are bumps along the growth curve, but they do not reflect a lack of skill."
Bear in mind that true roto diehards scour "Post-Hype" recycle bins for players up to age 27. What age is Ackley? Just turned 25 this last winter. The John Benson idea is to look for "Age 26 With Experience" -- he would get interested in Ackley next spring training.
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- SSI's physical observation has always been that Ackley has been confused, that the pitchers are in his head.
- He debuted, as a rookie, with a 117 OPS+ ... started the year with 25 straight swings-and-contacts, etc.
- His college hitting was extra, extra class.
- Physically speaking his HIT tool looks exceptional.
- Jack Zduriencik's observation was emphatically that Ackley has been confused, that the pitchers are in his head. (Does anybody know why the blog-o-sphere takes Z's word so lightly on these things?! Seriously, let me in on the joke.)
- etc.
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It's certainly possible for a minors player to be overrated -- Justin Smoak looks like he's in that category. But were his credentials ever equal to Ackley's? ... even if they were, nobody is saying that 100% of 0% of players in ANY template are going to pan out...
Does anybody remember the concept of "Major League Equivalency"? That's the little notion that MLE predicts future MLB results as well as do prior MLB stats. True, a player with a .300 MLE might not hit .300 in the AL. But it is also true that an AL player with a .300 AVG last year might not hit .300 in the AL this year.
Dustin Ackley has gone down to AAA and, so far, hit for an MLE of .369/.458/.506 with a crazy BB/K ratio. He's practically been Nick Franklin down there (well, I realize I get carried away with my hyperbole at times).
Ackley ripping up AAA means what? It's not a guarantee; which player IS a guarantee? Kyle Seager isn't. But Ackley's rampage is a pleasant re-confirmation of the fact that he's a world-class talent.
BABVA,
Dr D
Comments
I would love to see Ryan hit the phantom DL for a month and slide Franklin to SS and bring Ackley back up to play 2B. Not that I'm sure it would work, but would love to give it a crack.
Ask my man Jason whether he has ever slo-mo'ed Nick Franklin's weight travel, or Ichiro's, or Ted Williams', or Babe Ruth's ... ;- ) Centrifugality is not an absolute, the way some scouts seem to speak about it. From your standpoint Dr. K, if you believe that it's the right prescription for Ackley specifically, then I may have to go take a peek...
Used to be that he wound the bat around his ear quite a ways. Is doing so less now. And none of this addresses the fact that he is tearing AAA pitching to shreds. AAA pitchers throw as hard as ML pitchers do.
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Funny you mention, though... have you seen how short Franklin is to the ball now? You don' have to ask HIM twice... some guys, they're just wayyyyy ahead o' yer.
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My take on it, FWIW ... Ackley, about 4 times in 5, casts his "ki" *up* and *over* into the RF stands in an NCAA bid for glory. Very similar to what Michael Saunders used to do, and similar to what Ken Griffey Jr. wound up doing in his twilight years... trying to YANK the pitch down the line for a lazy 360-foot homer.
Ackley had about a 3-week stretch there where, off-and-on! now, was driving his ki up the middle and at SS. That was when he hit .400 for three weeks. Dizzy with success, he reverted to the greed.
Or not...
D Ack is coming back up soon and Zuninno's is here, has the young core changed for good? Are Smoak and Montero after thoughts when the others star strutting their game?
More changes to come?
M's need to get competition at every position like the Seahawks! They are working on it. If talented players go by the wayside so be it. Best man wins the spot! Would love Ackley to come back up and claim one, we could really use good Ackley in this lineup getting on base at a 400 clip. If he could do that and Zunino can hit some bombs while batting 210 or 220 we might actually creep back within 5 or 6 games out by the end of July!
He'll come back up and play 1B. Makes the most sense.
His upside might be a Mark Grace-lite type, or Keith Hernandez in his first couple of years. A 1B like that can be just fine. Brandon Belt was .275-.360-.421 for the Giants last year. they did OK, I think. Ackley's .273-.348-.417 as a rookie almost mirrors '12 Belt. You can win with that type of 1B...if you have power elsewhere. A bonking 2B (Franklin) can help cover the difference, for example. If he finds himself and become a .290-.380 guy, play him at 1B and don't look back.
If Ackley really is changing something in his stance or swing mechanics, then I would definitely want to see the change ingrained into his muscle memory before he comes back up, else the stress of MLB will likely mess him up again.
I still like him in the outfield. He probably has more range than anybody in the system, plus outfield happens to be our area of greatest weakness throughout the organization.
It's not the transfer, or at least not as I see it. I would never presume to translate Jason's scouting. I agree entirely that Ryan Franklin has a violent weight transfer, but against a firm front side. Ackley often appears to float, he does not have a firm front side -- kind of like Ichiro's slap a grounder to short and beat out the throw to first swing.
I never played enough baseball to have much of an intuitive sense for 'scouting', so I could be totally off.
Totally agree about the late 90's Griffey. The number of times he got himself out by insisting he could yank a homer on any pitch at any location in, or out, of the strike zone... It drove me crazy. I always preferred Edgar for this reason.
Do you let him (hopefully) destroy AAA until rosters expand before bringing him up again? I would think ideally Ackley punishes AAA for another hundred at bats...but then I think it would be nice if the pitchers do something a bit different and he has to adjust away from the bright lights of the big leagues. I don't know if AAA pitchers are up to the task of beating him consistently though.
Is that what makes a AAAA player? Maybe they just don't get the opportunity to make the adjustments they need to. At AAA the pitchers aren't doing enough to challenge them, and in the big leagues the pitchers make the adjustment so quickly that a young player (like Ackley) can get lost and end up reversing everything they have spent a lifetime building.
Wedge has talked about "soft landings" for prospects. I wonder if anyone has ever tried an approach to break in new talent by only starting them against the bottom 2/3rd of the opposing starting pitchers. But even those pitchers are way better than the standard AAA pitcher.
I am really just grasping at straws to try to understand why so many of our prospects hit the wall and then can't climb over it. And then the frustration over Saunders climbing the wall...only to plummet into another brutal stretch. It is frustrating for me (and I imagine all-consuming for GMZ).
And in golf terms, Ackley could almost be said to have the "yips" ... couldn't agree more Grizzle ...
Ya, now I see what you're saying. There has definitely been a "looseness" to Ackley's weight slide, a deceleration factor that leads to wobble. Would undoubtedly be fixed with a "lead with the knees up the middle / to SS" thought ... Moe?
No doubt at all that ACKLEY's glide motion, COMBINED with his desire to yank the ball up into the air and down the line, creates a lunge effect. ::cpoints::
Remember Ackley's commercial, where he hit a light-tower shot right down the 1B line? :- )
They've got the huge investment in him, but man has he dug himself a hole now... with not only Zunino but also apparently Jesus Sucre now well-endeared to the org...
So you've got a 1B/DH who misses another year... on the bright side, now that he focuses on hitting, maybe we'll see some of that Pujols action...
Gordon has consistently been saying that when Ackley jells, if Nick the Stick is the real deal, that a trade is the way to go... bring on Stanton ..
Particularly 1B/DH/2B in an 11-to-make-9 scenario...
Always remembering that Beane keeps jobshares going all around the diamond ... Dustin Ackley's position versatility could be Zobrist-like in its value.
Like if they ever had 8 position players they settled on, Dustin Ackley as the 10th man (even getting 550 AB's if he had a .390 OBP) could play LF, RF, a little CF, a lot of 1B, a lot of 2B, and could also play 3B/SS (via Nick Franklin shifting over). With Franklin moving around, Seager playing 3B/2B, Ackley could literally sub in at any defensive spot.
James, now that he's inside the Sox org, has always boggled at the way ML players get it from all directions. Everybody wants their fingerprints on a player's success.
That seems to be what these outside coaches do ... not ADD coaching, but REDUCE it, by cutting through the cacophony to a single key idea.
And that single idea is usually to look at what they were doing when they were successful and get back to it, and ingrain it again.
Montero's position is "hitter", currently "injured hitter" or "injured hitter about to get suspended for PEDs". So he's got a long road back. But, if he makes it back and proves he can hit and maybe play a little 1B now and again, he'll have value and they can use him or trade him. It's up to him though. He'll have to put the work in and so we'll see if the rumors about his work ethic are unfounded.