Jose Abreu
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Cool Papa Bell stays true to his namesake, and glorifies the mysterious slugger who comes out of the mysterious Cuban League.
Cubans were out of fashion for a while. After Billy Beane bid $200M, in Oakland A's dollars, for Yoenis Cespedes, and after Yasiel Puig hit .400-and-plenty for the Dodgers, we're guessing that Abreu will be a hot commodity this season. Estimates are that he'll cost around $60M, setting the record for an international signing -- but still costing much less than an MLB All-Star who is on the open market.
It's possible that 10% or 20% of our readers hadn't noticed that Kendrys Morales is a Cuban. We recommend that you sort this b-ref.com list by runs scored.
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Jose Abreu is a Cuban who has like 300 at-bats in international play, meaning that he's less mysterious than most Cubans. In the 2013 WBC, for example, Abreu hit .360/.385/.760. It's 25 at-bats, but it's a typical 25 at-bats for Abreu, internationally.
His batting lines on the island are hilarious -- in 2010-11 he hit .453/.597/.986 and per 162 games, he racked up 81 home runs and 229 RBI. HEH! ... after that, the stats essentially distort; if Conan the Barbarian hits 20 homers in his first month next year, the game then changes around him.
Suffice it to say that Abreu was much, much too good for Cuba; if you put David Wright in Cuba, and on Cuba's national teams, his track record would look about like Abreu's. It's not proof, which is why Abreu won't cost $200M.
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Like Grizzle says, there is discussion about whether Abreu has a "slider-speed" bat. This is one thing that the scouts will have to answer for us. They've had a good, long look at him. If they can't answer that one for us, what are they doing there?
If Abreu ever became an M, we'd have to scurry over to YouTube and tear apart the vids there. I can certainly see what people are talking about; Abreu sits back on the pitches and takes a loooooong look at them. Whether that's a Manny Ramirez syndrome or a Quad-A player syndrome, I dunno.
Whichever team bids for Abreu, its scouts will have signed off on the issue. We'll see.
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As usual, the Marlins are presumed to be the front-runners for a "sexy" Cuban, with the New York Mets not far behind. Nobody knows whether Abreu can play a decent 1B, though, so some scouts have him pegged as a DH/1B type. Know any AL teams that could use a 100-RBI DH/1B type?
This is about 10 degrees off subject, but Peyton Manning is reminding us all about --- > UPSIDE with risky players. Lots of teams wrung their hands and worried, "What if he's not healthy?" The Denver Broncos wondered, "What if we wind up so good that the Team Visualization Charts don't plot our helmet on them any more?"
Yasiel Puig came over and OPS+'ed 160, as a 22-year-old (?) rookie for the Dodgers. It's feasible that Jose Abreu is better than Giancarlo Stanton. It's not fashionable to mention that fact, we know. What's fashionable is to gravely nod over the downside, to be More Objective Than Thou. ... when Peyton Manning was a free agent, we didn't see many fans even talking about the possibility of his bringing 40 points a game with him. They were too busy being objective.
Going into 2013, Abreu was not on BaseballHQ's list of top international prospects, presumably because nobody expected him to succeed in defecting. (How come no Americans ever defect to Cuba?)
We do notice Luiz Gohara on their list, though...