OK...I have no life! This post proves it.....or maybe it is just that I took a morning off from swinging flies for steelhead (after 8 straight days) and had nothing better to do! So, I looked at every AL team, except us. I was looking for LH bat COF types. Basically I found 18 guys. Some of them are speedy CF types, as well, but have played the corners: Jackie Bradley, Adam Eaton, Michael Brantley, Ben Revere, Brett Gardner, etc. I was looking for guys who had + Eyes in their MiLB years, and those guys were Revere, Gardner, David DeJesus, Mike Brantley, J.B. Schuck. Why + Eyes? Well, our Pizzano has one of those (178-159). Then I tried to narrow it to guys who had MiLB lines like Pizzano has had (and I'm assuming he does basically as well at AAA): .296-.383-.462.
Revere was .326-.383-.404, not quite a good fit. Better Avg. and less ISO. Revere also didn't quite actually have the plus Eye, 122-143.
Gardner was .290-.390-.385 with a 240/293 Eye. Not a bad fit.
DeJesus is really a nice fit! .300-.399-.459 with 127/129!
Brantley was .303-.388-.377 with a 292-218 Eye!! He had a better Eye than our guy has, bith a bit less pop!
Shuck was quite similar to Brantley: 303-.381-.391 with 300/242.
How are they doing in the bigs? Well, all are decent or show promise. Revere is at a Career 88 OPS+ and Shuck is at 85 (in the 2 seasons where he had the most extensive MLB time he was at 98 and 95). The other guys are over 100. DeJesus is the most comparable to Pizzano, based on MiLB numbers, and he's a fine pro hitter, .275-.345-.412. Of all the LHB, COF's I looked at, the one with neary identical MiLB numbers (minus the + Eye) to PIzzano is Shin-soo Choo. He was a .297-.385-.453 farmhand. That's almost a perfect match.
What's it all about, Alfie? Well, there aren't many existing AA guys with Pizzano's Eye. There are far fewer at AAA, and Pizzano would have been there early last summer, minus the injury. When you look at current AL COF's who hit from the left side, you find a few guys who have MiLB numbers that compare favorably to Pizzano. Of those AL COF's, mind you, only 2 had more walks than K's in their MiLB PA's: Shuck and Brantley, although DeJesus was basically there. Revere, Gardner and Brantley have all played considerable amounts of CF, so speed is part of their game. But DeJesus and Shuck fit the template nicely. In his 2 most extensive MLB years, Shuck was basically a .285-.333-.360 bat. Make that 96 OPS+ Remember that Pizzano has considerably more MiLB pop than J.B. had. DJesus is a .275-.345-.412 MLB bat. He's been over .300 twice and over .290 2 more times.
There's our Pizzano projection (maybe): Somewhere from a Shuck with more pop up to a DeJesus. Outside chance of looking like a Choo. Well, maybe well outside.
Of course, the killer question is how many AA guys with a LHB AND a plus Eye wash out and don't become a MLB-level hitter? Don't know.
But when I do a very quick look at the AA leagues in 2010, I find 18 guys who had 1/1 Eyes that season. Of those 18, 12 have played in the bigs. Of those 12, 6 were LH bats. Of those 6, 3 don't really fit Pizzano, as they don't have career + Eyes in the minors. They just got hot in '10. Those would be guys like Lucas Duda, Ryan Kalish, and Cedric Hunter (with 4 MLB PA's). One of the 6 waa a 35-year old Timo Perez, so let's chuck him out.
You wan't to know who the remaining two guys are? Well, hold your hat! We're left with Steve Clevenger and Dustin Ackley!! Clevenger clearly isn't a COF type, but his MiLB line of .310-.373-.423 with 260/289 matches Pizzano fairly well. He's a .228-.280-.327 guy in the bigs, but we're not expecting C's to hit much. BTW, I seem to remember Doc liking this guy as a late bloomer!
And we're left with Dustin Ackley. An Ackley who most of of agree will eventually hit again. An Ackley who has a .293-.399-.451 150/134 MiLB line that neatly matches our Pizzano. An Ackley who is a career 94 OPS guy, despite the fact he drove us nuts. An Ackley who topped out at 120. DeJesus only exceeded that once.
I picked 2010 at random, assuming some of those AA whackers would be in the bigs by now, and I end up with Clevenger and Ackley. Weird. I may have missed some 2010 guys, but it was inadvertent if I did.
And BTW, the 18 AA '10 guys who walked more than they K'ed follows nicely along with the 16 guys who did it in '15. Doing it in a single AA season is no guarantee of MLB success, as Mike Nickeas, Che-Hsuan Lin and Blake Lalli will tell you, among others. But doing it in AA AND over a MiLB career ups the chances that you'll be a useable to better MLB guy. If you're a lefty bat, it seems to increase it even more.
Well, crud! I was going to do this in about 30 minutes....that was 90 minutes ago. But I'm left with Pizzano that looks something like an Ackley-DeJesus-Shuck combination, with a bit of Choo thrown in.
Make him a 100-ish OPS+ bat.
Or make him Ryan Kalish, in which case you can have him.
I need to get a life!
Chasing fish tomorrow morning....so I won't bore you guys. YOu can look forward to that.
Go Team....and Go Ducks!
Moe