In his swing, in himself...I hate seeing the deer-in-the-headlight looks when he comes up with runners on. Nothing good can come of it. We know it and worse, he knows it.
A reporter asked Smoak if he was comfortable in the heart of the lineup, if there was pressure from it. Smoak looked at him like he had grown another head. "I've hit in the heart of the lineup MY WHOLE LIFE, so I'm comfortable there. It would be strange NOT to be there. Pressure comes with batting there. We have to score more runs and we should..." and went on to talk about how disappointed he was to have only come up with a sac fly with 2 runners on instead of getting both of em home.
Michael Saunders does not have that reaction. He came from Canada, with its sparse history of major league batters. There have been a few great ones, Like Larry Walker and Matt Stairs. Jason Bay and Russell Martin. Joey Votto is a canuck, right?
After that, the well gets dry pretty quickly. Saunders was always a raw talent that we were trying to mold into a great batter, but he's a slow learner. It always takes him a little bit to get his feet under him. But he's scared at the plate, unable to unleash even when he knows what the pitch is, and can't drive anything. And in pressure situations, he's cracking.
Matt and I had an argument about his potential a couple of years ago, with me thinking he'd be okay if he was playing CF and Matt thinking he wasn't a major league bat at all. Right now Matt looks to have called it.
Maybe he IS Jeremy Reed all over again, and the bat won't play in the bigs. With Michael's slow learning curve, I'm more of the opinion that he'll be an okay bat if someone will let him play CF...in about 2014.
He's about to wash out here for the 2nd time. If Guti comes back for good I don't see Saunders being kept as more than that 4th outfielder you mention.
I don't know how many more chances as an everyday player he's going to get with us to prove otherwise, because right now it's pretty ugly at the plate.
~G
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