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Q. Can we call Peguero's spring "intriguing" yet?

A.  After today, I'm intrigued.  Bear in mind that Zduriencik and Wedge believe that Peguero could learn to hit.  They've had a good long look at him, and this is what they do for a living, and they can visualize a leap.

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Q.  Would there be any precedent for a guy with an EYE like THAT?

A.  Peguero's EYE so far in the majors is 0.11, which is gasp-inducing.  You saw the strikeouts.  

Also very important is the fact that Peguero's EYE in the minors was 0.22.  We are not talking about a good hitter who was called up too early.  We're talking about a guy who has never been able to cover the strike zone, or else has never been able to see pitches correctly.

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Q.  Still -- do players come back from EYES that are lower than 0.20?

A.  Lots of them.

Carlos Gonzalez, 2008, had an 13:81 EYE and an OPS+ of 71 ... Peguero's OPS+ in the bigs is 70.   Gonzalez' intro to the big leagues was comparable to Peguero's.

CarGo had a lousy minors EYE too, though not as lousy as Peguero's.  I doubt that the difference is fundamental; CarGo had serious issues in the minors.  Whether you can take a scalpel and find out why CarGo's minors EYE was real bad, vs Peguero's EYE terrible, I don't think you can make sense of that via stats.

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Q.  Maybe Peguero is NOT Carlos Gonzalez?

A.  If you take 20 rookies who debuted with an EYE under 0.20, you're going to find 17 or 18 or 19 who just wound up being lousy.  

There are a whale of a lot of Brandon Woods, Alfredo Amezagas, and Adam Moores who were on the

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Q.  Is CarGo the only precedent here?

A.  There are tons.  Guys do get blown away early, and come back to All-Star status.

Matt Kemp in 2006 had a 9:53 EYE with the Dodgers.  He had a little bit better result, 85 OPS+ ... not really because of the strike zone, but because nobody is as uncompromising in their attack as is Peguero.  You can't really say that Kemp had strike zone skills that exceeded Peguero's now; the variation in stats could be due to a hundred things.

Kemp was horrible in the minors, 109:325 and his ratios were pathetic even in the LOW minors.

Kemp's ratios have come up in the bigs, peaking at 74:159 at age 26.  Major league pitchers don't like to get jacked!

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Mark Trumbo, Delmon Young, Carl Crawford, Aaron Rowand, and Howie Kendrick are all interesting precedents to look at.  Maybe one of you guys want to look at those.

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Q.  Were these guys' stats AS bad as Peguero's?

A.  If you know what you mean by "as bad," yes.

Pudge Rodriguez, the HOF catcher, walked all of 16 times in a full season ... his fifth season.  He's not a great comp because he could hit that way.  

Still, Pudge had a 5:42 EYE as a rookie, a 75 OPS+, because he just wasn't ready.  This is why you can't split hairs on one terrible rookie season vs. another terrible rookie season.  Suppose the Mariners brought a 16-year-old up to the majors - what would his stats be?  If a guy's not ready, he's not ready, and his stats are going to blow chunks.

You'll see guys make the mistake of "analyzing" Peguero by comparing 0.12 EYES vs 0.18 EYE's, setting the bar at 0.15 EYEs and excluding those above, etc. etc.  You've got to group the players logically.  Logical here is simply "guys who were way overmatched."  Don't divide the major league player pool into 700 sections.

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Q.  Others?

A.  Get a load of Jermaine Dye.  The Braves gave him a real good shot at age 22 ... he had a 8:67 EYE. 

Granted, he hit a little bit at age 22, but he didn't hit at all at ages 23 and 24.  His OPS+ was 69 as a second-year player, and it fell all the way to 54 (!) as a third-year player.

But starting in year four, he was a legit cleanup hitter ... at age 32 he had an MVP-candidate season, a .622 SLG for the White Sox.  

His whole career, he ran 40:120 type EYEs and racked up his RBI's that way.  (In the minors?  Yes, he was a hacker, 119:271 EYE, not as bad as Peguero, but again not necessarily due to a plate-coverage issue.)

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Q.  Conclusion?

A.  It's a fair question to ask, does anybody EVER come back from whiff-a-matic displays like Peguero's shown to date.

But the basic answer is, Yeah.  There are a good number of super-aggressive ML All-Stars who overswung themselves back to the bench as young players.  Peguero's attack is dialed up to 11, and he looks a tad more extreme that way than other players.

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Q.  Would YOU stick with Peguero?

A.  I'd wait as long as possible, yes.  Pretty painful to let Mike Carp go ahead of him, but then again, the Mariners have other guys who are Mike Carp.  The idea with Peguero is that the upside is different from Carp, Wells, Saunders et al.

"I have devoted most of my life to forgetting what my teachers aid, and since doing that, I have acquired a certain ease and good cheer that I should never again like to be without" - Emanuel Lasker, world chess champion 1894-1921

Peguero strikes out and it doesn't bother him.  It's actually pretty smile-inducing to watch him do it.  Whiff, bemused look, confident stride back to the bench again.  He's got an unsinkable ease and good cheer.  His sheer buoyancy lifts your own spirits.

Does it affect a competitor's future, that he is not fazed by setbacks?  Axed and answered.  

As Jim Lefebvre told Jay Buhner, you wanna hang your head, kid, you can hang it at AAA.  Managers find sour dispositions to be annoying.  Peguero's sunny attitude (1) gets him extra time in the bigs, as well as (2) increasing his resiliency.

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That's one thing about Peguero that is VERY DIFFERENT.  Here's a second thing.  When Frank Howard used to play, the third baseman would back wayyyyy up because he could have been killed.  Richie Sexson, in his prime, caused almost this reaction.  David Ortiz has been sort of like that.  Those are really the only three guys where you thought, man, the infielders actually have to be careful not to be terminated out there.

Carlos Peguero is every inch of Frank Howard when it comes to freakish strength.  I've seen him hit line shots at 1B that had the defender literally scrambling out of the way.

The word "freak" is tossed around a lot.  If there are ten freaks in baseball right now, Peguero's one of them, and the only one I know of in the strength category.  You can see why the Mariners want to give him a Randy Johnson-type window of opportunity.

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Q.  Where does he play?

A.  You tell me.  He slugs .700 in ST and he keeps his SLG over .550 in the first two weeks of April.  What is the Mariners' lineup then?  

Bring it.

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