But he's getting close with us.
You and I have argued long and hard over Tui :) but I really do think he's got a shot to be a major league player for several years.
He's just such an odd duck. Huge kid, very athletic, not a good fielder at a glove position so he likely moves to LF or 1B, but the bat doesn't play well in LF or at 1B. He's got a lot in common with Mangini and Liddi and Tenbrink and a host of other nominal 3B in the system.
If he can't play third, then he's got a long road ahead of him. His Ks are out of control. I was glad to see his eye come back - even improve - in Tacoma last year, but it didn't bring good results with it. Hopefully it's an improvement he can maintain and will allow him to use that huge body of his to good effect.
But I see him more as a Wily Mo Pena or Gabe Kapler sort. Gabe had many mediocre years where you never quite got the power you expected from that ripped of a guy, and Pena could supply power but fell off the bandwagon with his swing and then fell apart.
Tui did weird things to his swing in AAA a couple years ago to get far more power out of it at the expense of a K every 2.8 ABs.
The Ks have stayed horrible in the bigs, but he's lost the power he sacrificed in the process.
He's got time to work it out still. The kid's fairly young, can backup multiple (hopefully non-glove) positions, and by all accounts is a hard worker.
We'll see if it's enough. I'd love him to be Jeff Conine, but if it works out that way I think it's somewhere else - unless he can start it this year.
We'll see if his suddenly-even 2010 batting eye from Tacoma is signal noise or the start of something for his time as a Mariner.
~G
Spec sez:
Tui is essentially the same age as Carp and Mangini. Clearly, the experiment with 2b/SS is over (since they brought in about 8 dozen scrap heap middle infielders over the winter), but they don't seem to have ruled him out as corner IF/corner OF bench guy. They've had him at 1b in drills and in LF today (2-RBI single just a bit ago).
And out of those 3, he's the only RH bench option. Can he punch the reset button like Mangini did, or has he underwhelmed at the MLB level one too many times?
Maybe we should let G take this one :- ) but... I have not yet tired of his gleefully beating me about the head and shoulders on linebacker Tui ...
..........
Matt Tuiasosopo has underwhelmed at the MLB level one too many times for fans, that's for sure... whether he has underwhelmed one too many times for major league GM's? ... nada, with a capital N...
Matt Tuiasosopo was quite good at AAA Tacoma at ages 22 and 23:
- Age 22 - 281/364/453, with flashes of Manny-type dominance
- Age 23 - 261/368/473 (this is in Cheney)
That's not Grade A prospect, but it's within shouting distance, especially when you're talking about a Jeff Conine type, an athlete-not-ballplayer who is naturally a late bloomer.
Remember the rule of thumb: you hit cleanup in AAA at age 22, that's on track to be an impact player in the bigs at 25, 26, or 27.
Compare Tui's age-arc with a fairly similar cludgy, "physical" infielder, Mike Morse:
- Age 22 - .326 OBP in AA ball
- Age 23 - 253/317/407 at Cheney
- Age 24 - 248/300/403 repeating Cheney
- Age 25 - 309/368/460 in the three-peat at Cheney
So we notice right off, that Morse was 25, making his third attempt, when he equalled what Tuiasosopo (a very similar player) did at age 22.
As you might have noticed, Mike Morse put up a 133 OPS+ line for the major league Nationals last year, and is vaguely threatening to become the next Shin-Soo Choo. (The next ex-Mariner to hit #5 for somebody while we're scoring 513 runs, not the next ex-Mariner to become a star.)
At age 28, Morse jelled and slugged .500-and-plenty in a park that held Adam Dunn (!) to a .536 SLG. In fact, Mike Morse's SLG was about equal to Dunn's!
............
I'm not declaring victory on Morse; I was never especially in his corner. But a picture's worth 1,000 words, and Morse gives us a very colorful picture of the Tuiasosopo situation..
Morse, like Tui, is a big, slightly awkward, "of course I belong to be here" ex-shortstop who is more athlete than ballplayer. After Morse's "failures" in short trials at Seattle, fans couldn't have been happier to see him go. But objectively speaking? Was it time to pull the plug on Morse?
And don't forget, Tuiasosopo is a good three years ahead of Morse on the talent-arc meter.
............
Tuiasosopo might still flop, no doubts there, and echo through the centuries as one that G-Money bludgeoned SSI with. :- ) That will be fine with me.
193 AB's in Seattle, do those bury him in baseball? Not with the shot-callers.
Out of chances in baseball? Not for another three or four years. Let's hope that if he does go hit his 30 homers in the infield, it's in the NL East.
Cheerio,
Dr D
Comments
I liked Morse...Thought the M's just gave up on him too early. The shoulder injury doomed him...because he had to sit and people forgot he could hit. He was kind of a weird duck, I thought. 6'5, 230...but didn't hit (until last year) like a masher. Swing didn't seem to have "boom"in it. But it did have some ropes. Last year "boom" turned up. He had 6 homers in 392 PA's up until last year.....then had 15 in 293. And it may have been a simple "Carp-like" transition to a guy who learned to stalk a pitch. Perhaps.
Anyway....I still think Tui has a season like that coming up. Maybe even better. But Tui finds himself in basically a slugfest with Milton. Looks like they basically fit the same role. I didn't think Tui was totally terrible in the IF last year, as a utility type guy. Tui won't be kept as the 4th OF. Won't happen. I'm rooting for Mike Wilson, on that one, really. He has an upside I would like to see have a chance. That role will probably go to Langerhans, which is a complete waste in the sense that he does nothing for the M's team that might compete in '12/'13.
But as the 24th/25th guy...1B/COF/DH/guy who allows you to do some switching late in games in the IF. He makes great sense.
Tui will hit. I hope it is in Seattle.
moe
Looked like 30 homers standin' still, but for hard-to-identify reasons did not get the horsepower to the back wheels... 'twas lost somewhere in the linkage...
Tui is about to find himself run by fire ants also, those fire ants being the hordes of fringy M's hitters (Carp, Mangini, Saunders, Wilson et al) vying for his corner bench bat position... and most of the fire ants hit lefty...
The brass is partial to Tui and his game face, but the timer on the bomb is running down quick ... Tui has been first in line, but that line's going to queue around the block REAL quick here...