We get excited about Saunders, I've been waiting. I almost wrote a similar article last night, but it got round to 3am and I called it quits with the idea of finishing it this morning, oh irony.
Anyway, my idea was finding a decent comparable player to what we hoped for in Saunders. I figure there are 3 groups:
The talented scrubs that made good:
Brady Anderson (.619 OPS over first 1273 PA)
Mike Cameron (.691 OPS over first 945 PA)
The big platoon guys that strike out a lot
Grady Sizemore (Career R/L OPS: .891/.693)
Curtis Granderson (Career R/L OPS: .892/.695)
But all those guys lack something that Michael Saunders has, and that is that he's a giant (6'-4"/225lbs) of a center fielder. Only 5 of the 328 players to play at least 200 games and at least half those in Center are (listed) A) 6'-3"+ and B) 215lbs+, and they're all current players.
Josh Hamilton
Matt Kemp
Adam Jones
Cameron Maybin
Carlos Gomez
Which is kind of a perfect illustration of the confusion that Saunders leaves us with, that's a quite a range of accomplishment. But of those guys, and this is obviously very pie in the sky (sorry Sandy), but I feel like there are some significant similarities in swing between Saunders and Hamilton. If anybody else that can read swings better wants to double check that, please do.
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