That's who the Ms want him to grow into. Ryan Zimmerman was a SS who moved to 3B in college even though he'd never played there before and people doubted he had the power for the position. He had good hands and was a baseball rat, too.
He didn't take walks and couldn't hit for power as a freshman (no HRs that year at all, only ONE as a sophomore). And then his junior year came around, and he blossomed into a velvet-gloved one-man wrecking crew at 3B who needed a cup-of-coffee in the minors before being ready for full-time big league work.
If Zimmerman had come out straight out of HS he'd get a lot of the same writeups that Littlewood did. He needed a couple of years to put it together, even after playing on teams with David Wright and BJ Upton.
I think drafting Littlewood, a big teenager with a high baseball IQ and a great swing who "might not hit enough" for the hot corner is great, especially where we drafted him.
I'm really interested to see his debut and to get him on the workout program. Asking him to be Zimmerman is pie-in-the-sky crazy talk, but I think he's absolutely another shot at getting a surprising Franklin-like performance. We were on him early in the draft, passed him up and got him back later. We're the only team that thinks that highly of him, obviously.
That's how it was with Franklin too. I'm definitely eager to see if lightning can strike twice.
~G
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