SSI CRUNCH, 3B: Dr. D does not take seriously the concept that Mangini could play 140 games at third base. SSI's cross-check from Cheney immediately doused Mangini's 3B glove with lighter fluid and touched a match to it.
There is value in having a 1B who can back up 3B for you. There are games where you want to stack lefties. My man Earl would put a major thumb on the scale for 1B Mangini as a guy who can play multiple positions.
Russ Branyan used to play third. Doesn't mean a lot. Well, if you play in a 5-game qualification fantasy league...
.
SSI CRUNCH, OFFENSE: If you went to Cheney last year, you saw Matt Mangini get 96-mph fastballs letter high ... and just effortlessly rope them back up the middle.
I mean, there was one (1) player with the 2010 Mariners who could get on top of a high, plus fastball and that was Ichiro. I'm here to tell you that Matt Mangini does that routinely.
So his HIT ability is genuinely unusual.
.....................
Countering that, you have the fact that Mangini is not selective -- and that he takes a long time to adjust.
Coming out of college, it took him fully two years to adjust to wooden bats. (Note carefully that he DID adjust, and he adjusted completely.)
Given some time with the M's late last year, playing in meaningless games, he slugged .211. You've got to plan on him needing 500+ AB's to get rolling in the majors, if he ever does.
And that's a question mark, because you've got to take seriously HQ's concern that ML pitchers will toy with Mangini hack-tastic approach. ... we're not just saying that Mangini has a poor EYE ratio, which he does. Mangini legitimately looks to (and does) hit pitches that are over the top of the strike zone.
.
SSI Sez: So you've got a guy with remarkable HIT talent, but a collection of various semi-liabilities... what do you do with him?
The take here is that --- > the day will probably come when Mangini is a solid 100, 110, 120 OPS+ hitter in the bigs, at least platoon-wise .... but that it will be playing 1B/DH ... and that it might not be until a fair amount of investment time, anyway. Could easily be three, four years before Mangini is driving in runs against All-Star ML pitchers.
I dunno what Mangini's Rule 5 situation is. Here's a guy I'd give as much AAA time as possible. What I do with him, is circle the airport as long as possible. That's not the same thing as forgetting about him.
Fun to watch this guy turn around a heater. Check it out this year.
That doesn't change the fact that he's probably never going to be that good a defender. I saw him botch a grounder that really didn't take all that much to make a play on. But any serious analyses of his defense in the second half ought to keep that in mind. It was serious enough to keep him out of winter ball entirely, when the game plan had been to get him down to either Arizona or Venezuela.
Can make you reach instead of getting down to the ball. In the abstract that's a massive consideration.
As it applies to Mangini, not sure how much it would change about what we saw, his covering his chin with his shoulder on a backhand, taking throws and two-hoppers without any give in his glove, etc.
If anybody has seen him dip the knees and get the CG to the ball, when healthy, would be interested to hear about it... can't even visualize that, though, any more than can do with a Branyan type... Mangini's a blocky guy into the bargain...
................
And there's the 35-40 errors per 160 games...
Important factoid though.
A few things.
- Last year Mangini played almost the entire second half with a Level-2 quad strain. Level 2 means that the muscle was almost ripped from the bone. "Strain" is a misnomer because what the injury was is a tear of the muscle tissue. I don't know how he did it, but I've talked so some people close to Mangini that state that he is one of the toughest SOB's around.
- Mangini was drafted just about solely on his performance in 2006 in the Cap Cod League where he won the Thurman Munson Batting Title and landed a spot on the CCBBL All-Star team as the starting third baseman. Keep in mind that the Cap Cod League is a wooden bat league.
- In his first year of college, Mangini's natural swing was nearly demolished by coaches who thought that they knew better. It has taken all this time and the help of a few batting coaches in the M's system to straighten him out. Most notably was Phil Plantier down in West Tenn.
- While still in HS Mangini worked with local NC baseball legend Clay Council. Council has worked with just about every kid coming out of the Tar Heel State who has gone on to MLB. During the off-season of 2009/2010, Mangini reconnected with Council, who helped him get his swing back to what it once was.
The results are obvious. I went over all of this over at my site in one of my "Hitting Evolution" pieces.
Ya, I know my Mangini lore :)
Lonnie
With the soup we make off of tiny oysters here, it would keep us in bidness forever...
You da man dude...
In his first year of college, Mangini's natural swing was nearly demolished by coaches who thought that they knew better. It has taken all this time and the help of a few batting coaches in the M's system to straighten him out. Most notably was Phil Plantier down in West Tenn.
Any specifics as to what mechanics they addressed?
That's been my comp for Mangini for a while: A 3B/1B kid who looks like a blown pick for several minor league seasons with a terrible eye ratio, finally gets his swing right in AAA and starts hitting like he should hit.
Cantu came flying outta the gate in the majors as well (OPS+ over 110 his first partial couple of seasons) and his eye is perfectly acceptable now. Some guys just need a little time to get all the various parts of their swing right.
Jorge was a 40 2B/ 20 HR guy per 162 up until this year. I would take that for the ML minimum that Mangini would be making. Cantu was also the same sort of poor-fielding-3B that Mangini has been so far.
As a corner-IF guy? Cantu's made it hard to keep him outta the lineup most years. Mangini needs to be finally healthy with that leg and show the juice in the bat again this season, but he really might finally be a guy who makes it out of the minors and lives up to his potential.
I'm curious to see. Of course, the Ms would have to give ABs to a guy who isn't exactly the greatest defender. I'm kinda gonna wait and see on that one.
~G
Cantu is posting league-average numbers, 1.5 or 1.8 "WAR" for the minimum,* which would have the Fangraphs crowd pitching him as more valuable than Johann Santana.
Neither I nor Jack Zduriencik have nearly that kind of enthusiasm for a guy who posts 1.0 to 1.9 WAR at a cheap salary, because there are always four guys in line ready to do the same thing... yes, we know about the 2010 M's offense; that's a special case...
That said, the point is that Matt Mangini could very well get 2500 AB's in the major leagues, and he (along with Carp) is one of the few guys ready to do so inmediatemente... so, he's a factor when the games start in a week or two...
... has not been set, the way that Mike Carp's seems to be...
There is some outside shot that Mangini could become an impact hitter, so don't get me wrong here, that he's unworthy of attention...
Am bearish on his role *in Seattle,*, with Smoak and the reams of minors hitters coming up, but not so as to dismiss the guy...
Age 24 is not too old to breakout in AAA. Mangini's .873 OPS in that league isn't shabby, and was comparable to what Smoak did. Mangini's 1 year older than Smoak. If his swing is indeed corrected to allow him to drive the ball now, he's got big-league potential. But here?
With Smoak at first, and Figgins at 3rd, I don't really know how Mangini cracks the lineup. We have 87 guys vying for LF and DH in the next coupla years (Saunders, Chavez, Tenbrink, Poythress potentially, C. Peguero, Halman, Mike Wilson I guess, Carp, etc).
That's not a shuffle Mangini wants to try to win with the game he's shown so far. If you want to play LF or 1B long-term and you don't plan to take walks you need to hit like Kendry Morales not Howie Kendrick.
Or even like Jorge Cantu. The Marlins played him mostly at 3B. They're not big on fielding there in Florida. Of the 153 players Fangraphs lists as having spend ANY time fielding at 3B in 2010 to get a UZR, Cantu ranks 147th. He posted a -8.9 UZR. At his career for 3B he's an amazing -31.4. His fielding % for his career is an abysmal .923.
He should NOT be playing third. However, his bat is average-to-terrible at the other positions he could play. He's at least mostly-neutral with a plus-bat at 3B and the worst glove in the league.
David Wright can screw up some plays at 3B because he clubs like a maniac there. Alex Freaking Gordon got moved off the hot corner because he couldn't field and wasn't hitting enough in the pros to keep him there.
So IMO Mangini needs to improve on last year both offensively and defensively to get his shot here and force Figgins out. He could be an adequate LF bat among the shuffle of possibilities, or a bad 1B one behind Smoak, but I'd rather he be a good 3B bat. Smoak is a pretty big target at 1B - try not to miss him.
If he can't do that, then the odds of him staying aren't good, and his pro ABs are gonna come somewhere else.
~G