To piggy-back my irritation at Smoak's ABs last night onto Doc’s great post of collected thoughts here…

Justin Smoak let go another SICKENING!! procession of center-cut 89 MPH fastballs today.  You watch the game for 40 years and you still can't begin to comprehend it... Smoak tenses his muscles so epically as he gathers himself to launch the bat.  Then, getting the 89 MPH pitch bisecting the plate and 8 inches above the knees, he reacts precisely like Jay Buhner did when he got a Pedro Martinez overhand curve ball.  "Ahhhh, man.  That pitch is so sick.  Maybe I'll get 'im tomorrow."

So. Very. Frustrating. He got the pitch.  He KEEPS GETTING the pitch to drive, he just isn't driving it.  And the more it happens, the more of a burr in my saddle it becomes.  With Seager, I figure he'll climb out of that tailspin.  Smoak has given zero indications he knows how to fly that plane, let alone recover it.

JDDub mentions in that thread that Smoak is a HUGE, Vin-Baker-level disappointment to the home team, and I can't argue at all.

We talked a lot about the net drill this offseason, and about whether Smoak could get less greedy – take the double into the gap and give up waving at a theoretical HR ball that will never come.  Through the first two weeks, I have to say it started off promisingly... but it looks like Same Ol’ Smoak at this point.

Smoak swinging through those high-80s meatballs on hitter’s counts that are sitting DEAD IN THE CENTER OF THE PLATE is driving me crazy.  Crazy.  I don’t know why he swings like he wants a home run off of all of those pitches – he doesn’t have 40 HR power.  He hasn’t shown 30 HR power. He didn’t have HR power in the minors.  He’s a big guy but whatever power he had in his rookie season is gone.  I remember him going the other way in Safeco in the cold months and hitting it WAY over the wall.  Wherever that guy went, Smoak can’t seem to find him.  Maybe everything has to be perfect for that to happen, but the guy has forgotten too many of the Qualities Of A Good Hitter for me to ever be comfortable with him regaining that early glimpse of glory.

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I was okay with last year’s Smoak. Not great or even good, but way better than the 2nd-half 2011 through 2012 version and a useful step on the growth path.  He doesn't seem to be taking any more steps in the early going and his current level is nothing like his first-half of his rookie season, before they put the book out on him.  That's sort of the problem though –he’s never adjusted back to the league.  He may simply not have the skillset as a hitter to improve once the league took away his bread-n-butter.

Minors career:
Choi, age 19-22: .312/.414/.513, 39.4% XBH rate .80 batting eye
Smoak, age 21-23ish: .278/.397/.445, 35.4% XBH rate, .90 batting eye

Smoak was rushed through the minors, but so was Choi believe me and without the benefit of college ball – and Choi CLEARLY has outperformed Smoak in basically everything.  Justin took a couple more walks, but as we’ve seen that’s because he was passive and waited for the pitcher to screw up. That kind of walk rate stops working as well in the bigs – pitchers will throw strikes if they know you can’t square them up.

Smoak in the bigs: .228/.314/.388, 36.0% XBH rate, .50 batting eye

Smoak’s minor league ISO was .167. His big-league one? .160.  That’s just his power curve with wood bats, apparently.  His ISOw dropped from .119 (outrageously great) to .086 (very good).  Walking is the one decent skill that Smoak absolutely possesses, but his inability to square up a centered fastball – or changeup, or hung curve, or underhand pitch – is killing him, and us.  And it’s not getting better. He’s a 20-doubles / 20-homer man on a team that could use 60 XBHs from its power infielder, not 40. 

Not to mention that walking a bunch doesn’t help enough when you can’t hit either HRs or singles and you run like the basepaths were placed over quicksand.  The inability to hit even .250 is a crusher.

Smoak is not a booming first baseman, and at this point looks like he never will be.  He can’t hit for average. His first base comps with lines like those are the likes of Boog Powell (in a different era), John Mayberry (senior, not the one we drafted along with Texas who also had terrible power), the dying gasps of Carlos Pena and Troy Glaus…

It’s the sort of line you ignominiously end your career with as a power hitter at a bat position, not what you put up in your prime. Four guys have had a 1500+ PA career with those kinds of average / walks / power ratios since 1970:  Smoak, Daric Barton, Dan Johnson and Greg Brock (who hit in the 80s when everyone was worthless for power). Not a glorious list, or a long one - it's hard to have a long career where you hit few singles and fewer power shots, and build your whole career around a devalued OBP because you are incapable of hitting the ball the other way (or bunting against the shift, but let's not go there, I'm already angry).

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When we traded for Smoak, the guy whose career I didn’t want him to emulate was Daric Barton. I fondly remember conversations where Lyle Overbay was referenced as Smoak's floor.  Hence the Vin-Baker-level disappointment. At the time we HAD to trade for a first baseman because we didn't have a soul in the minors worth his salt at the position, but at least now we do.  Choi is a bonafide hitter, and even if he "just" hits like Country Breakfast (aka Billy Butler) that's still a world better than what Smoak is doing. 

Peterson and Kivlehan are both on the horizon as well with a nice showing this season. None of them are traditional 6'5 blocks of wood at the position who smash 40 bombs... but neither is Smoak.  And honestly, those kinds of first basemen are getting harder to find; the number of future-40-HR first basemen currently in the minors approximates zero. If Choi can do a decent Joey Votto Lite impression that'll be more than enough for me.

So my question: we have Smoak on a contract with a vesting option for next season ($3.6 mil in 2015). If he keeps hitting like his mediocre .240/.320/.410 self, do you wanna:

a) Keep him through that vesting option for his defense and OBP
b) Trade him at the deadline for SOMEthing, a la the Angels with Kotchman, before the league figures out he’s a meatball
c) Work something out in the offseason with a team that values an Oakland-style, post-Giambi first baseman?

And does your answer change if Choi continues to go bonkers on the PCL for the next few months? Choi can always come up and replace LoMo or Hart at DH if they struggle, after all. We don’t HAVE to jettison Smoak to make room, and he’s not worthless.  His D at first base is less valuable now that we don’t have Franklin AND Miller trying to transition to the bigs as bat-first men at glove positions, but first base defense is still useful.

But my aggravation levels with Smoak keep rising...