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=== Basestealing ===
Robinson singled, reached first base, and started studying Jered Weaver (!) as though he planned to steal. (This is the Jered Weaver who picked off the 37-year-old "clinic master" Ichiro earlier in the game.)
Cindy said, "He's going."
I laughed. "Um, no. He doesn't want to erase the base hit. Back in the dugout, a caught stealing would cancel his first-game catch and hit."
Robinson, next pitch, got a Rickey-style jump, took off for second, and had it stolen. Ichiro swung at an offspeed pitch (!) and fouled it back, exactly as Ichiro used to hate Beltre doing to him. sigh
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=== Overall Impression ===
Robinson's body language, throughout the game, was Rickey without the hot dog and mustard. Very urban, exaggeratedly unintimidated, yet with a studious intelligence and game awareness.
***
His bat was blindingly fast, his path to the ball very compact, his acceleration through the zone explosive.
Trayvon's self-control at the plate was massive, especially considering the debut. All of this, in the swing at least, reminded of Rickey. Of course, when Rickey swung at a pitch, he never missed. I think he missed one time in 1983.
On every pitch, fastball and offspeed, Robinson got a good read on the pitch and reacted only after he made sure to see it first. He guessed at nothing. He has a tendency to follow low pitches down with his whole body, like Pete Rose did.
There were two other players who made this impression in 2011: Dustin Ackley and Greg Halman.
Ackley also began his career with that visible ability to deciper the pitch mid-air, process it, and then decide. Halman came up in 2011 oddly relaxed at the plate, though it turned out that Halman had a strangely slider-speed bat in 2011. His results against fastballs were terrible and he consistently seemed behind the fastball, maybe due to his "relaxation."
Had I known nothing of Robinson's background, I'd have come away believing that he was a contact hitter -- albeit one who takes lots of pitches, works deep counts, and has high BB's as well as K's.
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=== Comparables ===
Having seen one game's worth of Trayvon Robinson, I'm about 300% more friendly to the Curtis Granderson comp than I was before.
Looks like a very talented young hitter, worth a long look -- unusually quick bat, unusually explosive power, an obvious 5-tool guy with a sort of Rickey's Big Brother frame to him.
Could be up and down several times, who knows. But a lot of the failures are liable to be due to his erring on the side of aggression.
Zduriencik's judgment is that Robinson's K's are due to that aggression, not due to a lack of hand-eye coordination. The M's will have to wait and see.
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My $0.02,
Jeff
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