It's a good call - his vaunted eye has definitely fallen way off.
Ackley vs. RHP:
AA: .280/.395/.435/.830, 38BB:23K
AAA: .300/.358/.494/.852, 14BB:28K
That's a huge swing in eye ratio, no doubt. Now, most of his walks in AA came in a one month stretch, but he was a 1:1 ratio the rest of the time too.
Ackley's power #s in AA: 36% extra-base-hits, 2.7% HR rate
Ackley's power #s in AAA: 36% extra-base-hits, 8.7% HR rate
I don't know if he's sacrificing walks to try to hit the ball further, but that'd be my guess. That's only the difference of a couple of balls over the fence instead of off of it, however, and Ackley's AA numbers are depressed by his atrocious first month of adjustment.
I was surprised Ackley was sent to the Fall League again this year instead of being allowed to rest after playing baseball non-stop for a year, but apparently they want him to log as much time at 2B as he can. In my mind that means they're thinking of him winning the job in March rather than next September. I think Ackley needs a lot of work against lefties and needs to walk more than he has in AAA. Power can come a little later, but this is not the Grade-A season of a guy just clamoring to be promoted. He's done well - it just hasn't been spectacular.
But the guy he's trying to replace at 2B has a 14% XBH and 0.8% HR rate. The other guy at 3B has a 25% XBH rate and a 5.6% HR rate. Both guys have atrocious batting averages. Just replacing Jose or Chone with Ackley saves us millions and will likely net better performance to boot - and that's with Ackley still having areas of improvement. Jack has to make the call on whether he can make those improvements at the big league level next year.
I hope the Ms are patient enough with him (and with Smoak). Justin seems to be doing much better as of late - I'm looking forward to seeing that performance in the bigs instead of the 1:22 eye he had for us before being sent back down to get his bearings.
But whether they start with the big club in April or get more minor league time, we need those two guys to work out. More Pedroia and Konerko than Figgins and Overbay, if you please.
~G