He's done all right. Mark Teixeira, the guy Smoak is called the second coming of, has holes in his swing.
Pull up some hot and cold zones on big-time hitters and you'll see some interesting blue areas. Yes, Beltre had a cold zone like Siberia on the slider off the plate, but most players have a hole somewhere.
Is Smoak gonna get tested and have pitchers find out where those are? Sure. I saw Justin for the wrong handful of games in ST to criticize him, though. He crushed balls from both the LH and the RH side of the plate, slapped singles with authority, and walked whenever he wasn't putting wood on the ball. All his power numbers and a good percentage of his walks came in the 3 games I was there, basically, so all I experienced was Good Justin.
Where the specific holes in his swing are currently I can't say. It used to be inside, IIRC, but then he fixed his hand-load so he could catch up to fastballs better and that led to his HR romp in the last few games of last season.
Justin's a bit of a pitch stalker, so he's gonna get some called and swinging strike 3s. He's also gonna crush some balls in the Safe. Why isn't he doing that in the desert? I dunno. I do remember Bret Boone's key to a good year was to have a sucky Spring Training. ST is not the normal routine, and it tends to be for working on aspects of your game instead of locking in at the plate.
I don't really have any worries about him. Maybe I should be worried, but Justin Smoak being a decent 1B is one of the few things I feel confident about with this Mariners team.
Anybody ask the scouts if they were the ones so high on Montero that they couldn't believe we wouldn't give up Cliff Lee for him and genuflect in the process? Montero's got a .222 average and a .25 eye with no power in his tiny ST sample size.
The scouts should go whine to the Yankees about his swing holes too while they're at it. Smoak hasn't had the greatest spring training, but there are worse things.
We'll see what happens when the games count - and I'm still looking forward to his at-bats with great anticipation. :)
~G
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