Seattle Sports Insider

O'Neill's Bat

but who needs information, when you have a captive baseball audience?

Posted by

11/5/16

Supposing we actually got a ROOT-quality look at ten pitches to Tyler O'Neill ... well, that wouldn't be much, but it would be ten more than we had. So, here is the video . Tragically, when O'Neill stepped up in the first there were no smoke machines, pyrotechnics, or dry ice under his cleats. But here are the impressions anyway:

1) The gentle reader can organize his thoughts with a comparison to the 2016, reduced-swing, Mike Zunino

2) Gets the front foot down nice and quick. By "front foot down" we're referring to the entire loading process

3) Holds the hands high, angles the bat vertically a lot (also a trait of Boomstick, to a lesser extent)

4) Gasp-inducing torque -- NOT shown on this particular swing, torquey though it was. Gets the belt buckle pointed at the LF upper deck, and in a real hurry. Bat THROUGHSPEED is to bat LAUNCH as top running velocity is to first step. O'Neill's throughspeed is > Mike Zunino's and Dae-Ho Lee's, actually >>, and may wind up rivalling Boomstick's

5) Hand-eye coordination? No way to tell. esPECially not in mid-winter. esPECially not in a few swings. esPECially since I'm not a baseball player. But he swung through a 91 MPH center-cut pitch and kicked himself, for what that's worth

6) Pitch recog? It's still mid-winter, as it was in 5) above. He had several nice takes, holding up nice and early (but a checked-swing K on a 91 fastball slightly away)

7) Didn't see much ML-quality bendy stuff, if any, so can't say

8) He does have a quick bat launch, end of story

9) The vid is pretty cool, as is Tank O'Neill

BABVA,

Dr D

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Comments

Kind of....

1. I kind of like the Buhner-On

'Neill linkage. Not in form, but in function. Buhner K'ed in 23% of his AAA PA's at age 22. He then K'ed 30% of the time as a big league rookie at age 23. Even in his bashingly good years, Buhner was still K'ing 20% of the time. But I like the Houston approach (and, to a lesser extend, the Cubby way, too), let's not get too bent out of shape about young mashers K'ing some. Let's let them figure it out AND still help us. Keep it below 25% and BB a bit and go hit 33 HR's kid.

I think Edgar is the guy for O'Neill. He's not a "tweak this and tweak that and open your stance and hold your hands lower" type of guy. I'll bet his mantra is dead simple: Be picky: Hit your pitch. Drive it where it is. It is not out of the question that O'Neill is in RF sometime about June 1. I love easy natural power.

2. Through speed vs. launch speed: Watch Dustin Johnson hit a golf ball. A smooth start, like a soccer mom with an SUV full of kiddos; then his through speed looks just a bit like a Saturn 5 moon shot. Oh...and he hits moon shots. Have you guys chased down that vid of O'Neill clearinig the R-CF fence OFF OF A TEE?? Uh...moon shot.

3. We had Zunino-Ackley-Seager about to arrive on the scene at exactly the same time a while back (and it's easy to forget how good Ackley was as a rook, before his head fell apart). Now we have Vogs-Gamel-O'Neill striding into Safeco as BMOC. I think we're going to go 3 fer 3 on this draw.

Buhner comp from an output perspective works for me

That's basically what I'm expecting from him. Just stay patient - Buhner didn't hit the ground running. Took him a couple years of spot duty to get revved up and be the Bone at age 24. I agree about the Houston approach too though: the kid will strike out. As long as he's striking out and still being productive, don't jerk him around. He needs to play.

Disagree on 3. I don't think Gamel is anything (and we gave up two of my top 10ish system pitchers to get him). Unless Gamel is playing CF, anyway, and then I don't see him as an improvement on Martin. That could be enough, though, given the right circumstances. He just reminds me of Jeremy Reed. Fingers crossed we finally got one of these guys right.

I like Vogelbach, and I really like O'Neill, but both guys will require patience. And once they graduate the system, our hitting depth is non-existent. We have Kyle Lewis, who if his recovery from knee surgery is quality I still like as a terrific prospect. After him? Rizzo and Brayan Hernandez are several years away from being another year away. Deej had a decent-but-not-great half season (making next year a very big year for him in the hitter-friendly PCL). Alex Jackon still looks like he couldn't pick a baseball out of a lineup of assorted balls, especially if it's spinning, so that pitch recognition will be a big deal for him.

And then we have all the light-hitting college kids I'm not a huge fan of (Drew Jackson, Braden Bishop, Donnie Walton). I like Donnie best of those guys, and Donnie and Drew will probably play in the bigs, but it's like rooting for Willie Bloomquist for me: being a major leaguer and being a player I want to count on are two VERY different things. If you want a glove guy I like a little more I'd go with Luis Liberato down in Clinton, who should make some waves in high-A this year in CF and has all sorts of interesting tools. Really, though, I don't think we have a difference maker up the middle down on the farm who is anywhere near logging time in Safeco. Here's hoping I'm wrong and one of the college kids puts it together.

The system was a winning one this year, but not by using a bunch of players I expect to be plus major leaguers. I still view our farm as being very thin. The expected starting arms other than maybe Moore are still 2+ years away at best, and if something goes wrong with Kyle Lewis's recovery I would count our system blue-chip bats as zero (assuming Vogelbach and O'Neill are graduating in June).

Vogelbach and O'Neill are it for a minute, so they'd better work out moe. If they are Billy Butler and Jermaine Dye, that helps us a whole lot. I'm still hoping for that.

Patience...

We've got that going on with the youth that already graduated from Paxton, Walker (Miranda&Karns mostly not developed here, but still), Zunino, Marte and Heredia as well. The 3 hitters there, Zunino has some shot at being a MOTO presence. Marte and Heredia have multiple tools that, if we're patient, may see them have some decent years atop the order. Marte and Heredia could both work on some things in AAA but they're off the prospect map. They're still youth that we need to show some patience with and still represent a couple blips on the "cheap but with potential impact" that there isn't much else of that's close. Zunino is presumably on the team but has somewhere between a bit and a lot of growth still possible. Blue chip wise, I guess you're only talking Zunino, Paxton, Walker and Paxton is one that's definitely worth more than a blue chip at this point.

The depth is still definitely a problem but I don't know how much more youth you'd want to bring up this year to supplement and then have to be patient with. It'd be nice to finally have a hitting prospect here hit the ground running and never look back. I would like to get youth that's proven in a spot or 2 with the idea that in 2 years you have them and Seager as a core. Hopefully Paxton, Walker, O'Neill, 'Bach and Zunino as well. That's where I don't get the idea of a year or 2 window with this roster and all the young talent already assembled. There's no guarantees, including that you couldn't replace Cruz, Felix, Cano and Kumas production with the production of players who are already here.

I forgot about the Dye comp idea but I see that better than most comps suggested lately. The peak 'Bach comp of Ortiz makes me think of an interesting idea. If the Red Sox were interested in a Bradley Jr. for Vogue swap to replace Ortiz do you do it? I'm sure we'd get less years of Bradley and have to add more to get him so I don't know if I would.