Seattle Sports Insider

The Austin Wilson dilemma

inanimate soccer ball or best friend?

Posted by

6/7/13

A few years ago, Wilson was a raw 18 year old who had every athletic gift there is. He turned down millions to go to college, but where has that gotten him?

Three years older and in the same place.

He has a cannon for an arm, can play some spot CF, swipe 15+ bags, has good batspeed and tremendous power in the cage. He’ll even take some walks, and a few pitches to the ribs if that’s what’ll get him on base.

Austin Wilson is also a genius. Stanford doesn’t take academic inepts, and as the son of geniuses (the MIT and Harvard kind) he’s got a massive brain to go with that huge body and athletic talent. If there was ever a player who should have everything, it’s Austin Wilson.

So why am I lukewarm about the pick?

OBF describes it perfectly in the shouts: “I have gotten to watch Wilson up close and personal for the last few years, and every game with the Cardinal, literally since he was a freshman every announcer has drooled over him and marked him as the one batter in the Stanford lineup that the beaver pitcher has to be wary of and game after game it was always just strikeouts and feeble grounders. CLASSIC looks like Tarzan hits like Jane player. If he couldn't figure out college hitters in three years why do we think he will every figure out MLB pitchers?”

This is also known as Gabe Kapler disease. I’ve also comped him to Ruben Sierra (who was shorter but similarly LOOKED like he should be a power hitter, lost it early in his career and never got it back) but the guy that sticks in my mind is John Mayberry Jr. That was also the comp that flashed on the screen last night during the draft (aside: who is doing those comps? Peterson was comped to Jed Gyorko and some other guys were being comped to players like Jeff Freaking Kent?? Were they just messing with people?). Mayberry is not a complimentary comp.

He too was a huge guy who could play OF or DH, passed up big bucks (from us, as it happens) to go to Stanford, promptly lost all his power upside, and had this line in the minors through age 27: .260/.330/.455. He’s hit .257/.315/.450 in the bigs over partial seasons in his prime. That’s his peak.

And without changes, that’s what I see from Austin Wilson: not a Carlos Peguero K catastrophe, perhaps, but a guy whose swing is too long for a high average but not leveraged enough for impressive corner power.

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Why is his swing like it is? Thank Stanford. A very concise explanation from a great post on thegoodphight.com (Phillies board):

The biggest red flag with Wilson is that he is a hitter at Stanford. Let me explain a bit. Stanford stresses contact and line drive hitting, while stressing to their players not to pull the ball. Many Stanford players end up with long swings and struggle tapping into their power by driving balls away so frequently (to this end, Wilson, despite his size and power potential has only 20 HR's in 3 years over 500 AB). This means Wilson will likely need to do a good bit of work on his mechanics after he's drafted to get more lift and less length in his swing.

Can it be overcome? Sure. Carlos Quentin came from Stanford and tapped his power in that swing just fine. Everybody else?

Ryan Garko: .275/.347/.434

Jed Lowrie: .260/.336/.420

Jody Gerut: .262/.325/.433

Mayberry: .257/.315/.450

When Lowrie does it as a part-time infielder, it’s fine. When Garko does it over his prime years as a corner hitter, it’s less fine. That’s about all the pro hitting successes in the last decade or two with the Stanford Swing, btw. It’s a swing philosophy designed to maximize contact with aluminum. It has nothing to do with wood success.

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So the important question, literally the million dollar question: can Wilson defeat the dreaded Stanford curse the way Quentin has?

His K rate by year went from 27.7% to 16.7% to 13.1% in limited action this year. He hit .312 with a .623 SLG in the Cape Cod league using wood bats in his second tour. He is willing to take pitches in the ribs, as Quentin does, to up his OBP. He can get backspin on balls when he squares em up, and he has good hands and wrists that make you think he could make the needed changes.

And it seems that added exposure helps him. He likes to know what to do, what is expected. He's not intuitive, necessarily - his first go-round with wood in the Cape Cod league was unimpressive, but in his second he tore it up.

Some players are instinctive: see ball, hit ball. They're born with gorgeous swings and fall out of bed hitting. Wilson is not that guy, IMO. He'll have to be taught, instructed, coached up... and only when he's comfortable with what he's learned will his performance jump.

When he was injured, he sat in the bullpen just to watch the spin on pitches when he was unable to stand at the plate and get that info. He's an information sponge. That's not always good - sometimes there is too much information, too much thinking and not enough reacting - but if he can translate the information he's going to receive into expression via his enormous athletic gifts he might be the best player in this draft.

Do I think he will? Not to the level of being that ultimate player, no. We're trying to take a guy with middling plate performance and somehow teach him how to be Andre Dawson. That can't be easy.

But the Ms apparently think nothing worthwhile ever is, and are betting that they can pull it off. This is not just a scouting call, this is a player development call. If we can actually fix the anchors in Austin's game and free him to fly like the Hawk, this pick could be absoutely incredible. The talent is there, the will is there.

But the coaching has to be there for him to have any chance. Some team was going to get the opportunity to turn Wilson into a freak. In the first round, I didn't want it to be us. In the second round...

In the second round, I'm willing to see us place the bet and roll the dice.

Game on.

Blog:

Gordon

Comments

Agree

I didn't like him for a first-rounder for us - but for a second round pick at #49, I'm more than good with it. He's an incredible physical specimen attached to an extra-class mind. For a comp, I'm not sure who it is. Maybe Maris, so serious and maybe too serious about playing ball, but as complete a "ballplayer" and teammate as there ever was, or maybe Edgar, doing every little thing possible to fix his flaws and coming out better than anyone imagined. He's a dice roll. But get him into a new environment, get him with guys who'll challenge him (and both Peterson and O'Neill seem the type to goad and encourage their teammates), and (critically) get him Buhner or somebody else with real credibility to teach him how to stalk the wild hickory nut, er, hanging sliders and mediocre fastballs, and then see what happens. Zunino's seamless transition and Kivlehan's growth makes me think that not all is amiss in the Ms system, at least not at Everett. I say get Junior and Buhner to double-team him for a bit and see what we get. If his fielding skills are anything like what I've seen on video, a Stanton/Heyward/Brown class RF may be in our future. If he can hit as well as Buhner in a few years, I'll happily take it.

I wanted a Buhner

And I guess Z did too.
Power-mashing RF is one thing we're missing up and down the system (and, no, I don't really count Jabari Blash; as much as I like writing about him).
Wilson, The Tank and Corey Simpson all appear aimed at that hole, and it looks like those are the three they'll overpay for.
When you read the Lookout Landing report from April, treating Wilson as a serious option at No. 12 or even higher (by a guy with an ESPN gig; not that that necessarily means a whole lot), and mlb.com having him at No. 27, and Baseball America at No. 29, then I think they are assuming they will need to pay more than No. 49 money.
The Tank is committed to Oregon State, so he might need some extra funding to tear him away from the Beavs. BA had him at No. 69, Ms took him at 85.
Simpson is committed to Houston, which will be in the ex-pseudo-"Big" "East"-whatever conference (it's called The American Athletic Conference), and won't be all that great in baseball, so he probably won't cost as much. BA had him at 213, Ms took him at 177.

Signing Wilson

Coverage of the Phillies signing one of their picks reveals an interesting loophole - education funds paid as part of a bonus do NOT count against the slot amount! Maybe the Ms can set up a fund for Wilson to get a Stanford PhD after his playing career is over and pay him the slot amount and be good! That would leave a better chance to get the Tank.