Great stroke from the LH side....Smoooth, then "Boom!" It's funny you mention Stan Musial because it reminded me of the compact LH swings of my youth. Ron Fairly came to mind...but I couldn't find a video of Fairly to compare it to, so I might have a faulty memory there. Fairly was a fine MLB hitter. Doc will surely remember.
From the RH side he clearly doesn't have that bat burst, clearly. But I don't see a guy who would be incapable on that side of the plate. Looks like he would hit everything the other way from the right side....
But, all in all...he should swing always as a leftie.
AS to his "mechanical" movements in the field, I'm not so sure. Clearly he isn't the artist/predator like a Vizquel or OZZIE but I still see a 60's guy like Belanger or Harrelson. Those guys just got to every ball, and then the ball beat everybody to 1B.
That video is of an 18 year old. He can play. I think he can play SS. He certainly could play 2B...at worst he might project to be a valuable utility guy. Can you say Mark McLemore?
SSI CRUNCH: SSI has preached, for many years, that the draft is a crapshoot. And that's when you're talking about the college players... what are you going to say about an 18-year-old shortstop?
But check out this hitting video. Littlewood gets great acceleration from the left side, real great. From the right side he's static, just like Nick Franklin. But from the left, he's starting to remind of the U.S.S. Franklin tonnage on the torque and load. It's so prett-ay!
The bat launch is glassy-smooth, like a PGA golfer drawing a putter back, and there's just 18 kinds of oooomph that spring that bat forward into full extension. The ball's like a rifle shot off his bat and for all you can tell looking at the swing, he could be a teenaged Stan Musial.
This is how teenaged shortstops get big suitcases of money, friends....
Well, okay. I didn't just compare him to Nick Franklin. But that's a swing and a half.
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The right side? That's another subject. I wish coaches could recognize a special swing when they saw one. Don't tell me that they did; I notice that the kid is spending 25% of his swings on the wrong hand...
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Defensively, the vids look oddly stiff and mechanical to me. He muscles throws with a tight finish, rather than launching them with a zinging finish, and he's not as light on his feet as a Jack Wilson type. I know my opinion will wreck his day...
Is it okay to say he looks 'white' out there? It's not a racial term, just a stylistic one... crazy to talk about stiffness when you've got arms as long as his. But watch the videos.
The only thing he does gracefully is swing left-handed, and oh baby.
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SSI Sez: The wild-eyed guess here, complete with Young Frankenstein hair, is that the Mariners' tools scouts think that they are getting another Nick Franklin.
Which is kind of bemusing, because once you buy into Marcus Littlewood as Nick Franklin II, how in the world do you pass him with your first (supp) pick?
Oh yeah. Taijuan Walker, who you'd have taken with the #20 overall if you'd had it, fell way down to you in the 40's...
The Mariners must have been in dreamland after day one of the 2010 draft. Take me for a ride on the teacups, Jack...
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Dr's Prognosis: I'm not saying that *I* buy into Littlewood as Nick Franklin II.
Just saying that, reviewing the vid and the reports, it's pretty clear what happened. My question is how the swing translates to square contact. A swing's one thing, a plus HIT skill another.
If SSI had thought that Littlewood was gifted for hand-eye, then sure, #60-odd is a no-brainer...
No opinion on Mr. Littlewood until we have a sense of his ability to cover a pitch. But you can sympathize with the hype.
Comments
That's who the Ms want him to grow into. Ryan Zimmerman was a SS who moved to 3B in college even though he'd never played there before and people doubted he had the power for the position. He had good hands and was a baseball rat, too.
He didn't take walks and couldn't hit for power as a freshman (no HRs that year at all, only ONE as a sophomore). And then his junior year came around, and he blossomed into a velvet-gloved one-man wrecking crew at 3B who needed a cup-of-coffee in the minors before being ready for full-time big league work.
If Zimmerman had come out straight out of HS he'd get a lot of the same writeups that Littlewood did. He needed a couple of years to put it together, even after playing on teams with David Wright and BJ Upton.
I think drafting Littlewood, a big teenager with a high baseball IQ and a great swing who "might not hit enough" for the hot corner is great, especially where we drafted him.
I'm really interested to see his debut and to get him on the workout program. Asking him to be Zimmerman is pie-in-the-sky crazy talk, but I think he's absolutely another shot at getting a surprising Franklin-like performance. We were on him early in the draft, passed him up and got him back later. We're the only team that thinks that highly of him, obviously.
That's how it was with Franklin too. I'm definitely eager to see if lightning can strike twice.
~G
Along those lines exactly, one scout compared him to an Evan Longoria with fewer HR's.
You read that or you deduced the same as the scout? :- )
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Runnin' out the door amigos... catcha tonight, same bat-time, same bat-channel...
Hes interesting for the fact that we still don't really know what he is. I guess we'll find out this season.