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No argument at all. We really needed him to take the bull by the horns and lead this offense this year and neither he nor Ackley have shown the growth signs we needed them to show for our offense to work this season.
But I don't understand using his AAA batting line to say anything. He didn't even have 400 at bats in all his AAA stints with multiple teams combined. Smoak was rushed to the bigs and has suffered for it.
I'm normally very leery of power-hitting switch hitters, because it's a RARE gift. I was hoping Smoak was gonna be more like Teix (who still isn't a world beater like Chipper or Berkman, but is very good) but he's now hoping to be more Howard Johnson - have him reel off a few good power years and then get away from him before he ages back to uselessness.
We don't have any first basemen in the minors worth looking at for the next couple of years at least. All the great first basemen around the league are locked up (does getting Prince Fielder look like a stupid redundancy with Smoak now?) - no Prince, no Votto....and honestly play drops off after that, especially with Trumbo and Miggy not playing the position currently.
The "great crop" of first basemen from the 2008 draft looks pretty withered right now.
#3 Hosmer - played well last year, has struggled this year, still young
#7 Alonso - blah minors #s, traded, blah big league numbers so far
#11 Smoak - rushed through minors, flopped around in bigs
#13 Wallace - weak first 500 ABs, doubles power only
#17 Cooper - college bat but can't get more than coffee so far
#18 Ike Davis - out of the gate fast, bad this year
Now maybe all those guys are gonna fail, but I'd guess that's a long shot. Our only internal options are Liddi (still strikes out every 3 at-bats) or Carp (separated shoulder causing year long problems).
Smoak's got until a healthy Carp comes back to show something, IMO, but if he doesn't...what? Demote him? Can't trade him, he's gotta hit first.
Smoak is our Alex Gordon, except Gordon demolished the minors. I'm still holding out for that Pena / HoJo career crest, because we don't have a lot of choices. I agree with some other folks that Smoak would look better in a place where his warning track outs cleared the fence.
This is not that place - and his road splits aren't exactly astounding either. Justin simply hasn't hit the way I would have expected him to. I thought his low point was a .230/.330/.450 hitter, but he was likely to do significantly better than that.
.230/.310/.380 is killing us. He's finally walking again this month and at some point, for someone, I do think Smoak will hit for a few years. But while I can live with Ackley's growing pains because he plays a glove position, Smoak's lack of anything resembling corner production is destroying us, especially with Ichiro on another corner.
But he plays because we need him to get better, and we have no one else. It's always been our system weakness and one Jack still hasn't managed to fix. Pray Carp comes back healthy and crushing, or that a lightbulb goes on for Smoak in the next 6 weeks and these fitful spurts of production followed by backfires turn into ignition at last.
~G