With the recent promotion of Texas’ top hitting prospect Justin Smoak, the 2010 MLB prospect call-up watch is in full effect. There’s a lot of speculation that Indians catcher Carlos Santana may be the next big-named prospect to make his major league debut, but there should be some eyes on Pittsburgh, too.

Third baseman Pedro Alvarez, the second overall pick of the ’08 draft out of Vanderbilt University, put himself on the must-watch list after a solid ’09 performance that included a .333/.419/.590 line in half a season at double-A. Overall, he managed 27 homers and 95 RBI in 126 games.

Alvarez is not currently tearing up triple-A like Smoak was, but the Pirates prospect is still hitting a respectable .258/.343/.484 in 16 games. After slugging three homers in the first week of the ’10 season, Alvarez has managed just one (and three extra base hits) in the last 10 games.

A left-handed hitter, Alvarez is struggling against southpaws with a .458 OPS in a small sample size. However, it’s been a career trend so far as his splits last season were: .714 OPS vs LHPs, 1.028 vs RHPs). Clearly he has work to do, but the Pirates big league club needs help.

In truth, the pitching is really what’s been bad – okay, terrible – for the big league club. It’s a huge reason why the club has lost six straight and has a 7-11 record. The Pirates club is also last in the NL in batting average at .224, which is even worse than the lowly Astros. It also has the second-lowest team wOBA at .301 and ISO rate at .122.

The club currently employs Andy LaRoche at third base. He was hitting .258/.378/.355 in 37 at-bats going into Sunday’s game when he went 4-for-4, and he’s coming off of a .324 wOBA season in ’09. If you’re not ready to move LaRoche, maybe we need to look at first base, where former top prospect (of the Mariners) Jeff Clement is currently hitting a paltry .174/.220/.326 in 46 at-bats. His career wOBA in 88 games is .291.

Most scouts feel Alvarez is destined to move across to first base, where his value would take a small hit. Even so, now may be the time, given the club’s needs and bleak outlook at the position. The time to call up Alvarez is probably not quite upon us, but it’s getting close.

SCOUTING SIDEBAR: I had a chance to watch Alvarez on April 23 against Louisville. Criticized for carrying extra weight in the past, the prospect is still thick around the middle but he moves pretty well. He made a nice play on a slow grounder to third base, although the throw had to be scooped out of the dirt by first baseman Steve Pearce. Alvarez also showed a pretty good eye at the plate and walked in the first. He also shocked me with pretty good form on an attempted sacrifice bunt out in front of home plate that just bounced foul.

Jose Tabata looks like he’s trimmed down a bit, which explains the league-leading eight steals. He was aggressive during the first at-bat of the game, swinging at the first three pitches. It wasn’t a great approach for the lead-off hitter. He was much better in his second at-bat. He took a few pitches and then got into a hitter’s count, saw a poorly-placed fastball and singled on it. His base running needs work. Tabata was picked off second base by the catcher on a missed bunt attempt.

With some teams struggling with injuries to catchers (Rangers, Angels), someone really needs to look at Erik Kratz (yes, I’m pimping him again). He’s a big target behind the plate, but he moves well for his size and is a quiet receiver. He also showed good pull power with a two-run home run on an inside fastball. He does have an upper-cut swing and probably won’t hit for a great average.

Former No. 1 prospect Neil Walker was playing second base in an attempt to increase his versatility and value. He actually looked pretty good at the plate – with some opposite-field power on display on a deep fly ball to the track – but I didn’t get much of a look at him in the field.

The AL East had a pretty tidy storyline heading into the season. The Yanks, Sox, and Rays are perhaps the three best teams in the AL, and they were set to do battle and eliminate at least one from playoff qualification. The other two teams, the Orioles and Blue Jays, didn’t factor much into anyone’s accounting of the division, and for good reason. Even outside the AL East neither figured to field a contending team.

While the Blue Jays went into full-blown rebuilding mode this winter when they traded Roy Halladay, the Orioles have been busy acquiring young players for almost three years now. While there was little chance they’d pull an 08 Rays and surprise everyone, they still presented a compelling story. Savvy franchise builder Andy MacPhail took the reigns from over-involved owner Peter Angelos and gave O’s fans hope. It’s only a matter of time before the AL East features four powerhouses.

Even though no one expected the Orioles to finish even third in the division, it was a pretty reasonable projection for them to place fourth, ahead of the Blue Jays. Yet in the early goings the Orioles have been, by far, the worst team in the majors. They picked up just their third win of the season yesterday, and even that took them 10 innings, and a nearly blown lead, to accomplish. On Monday morning the team found itself at 3-16, 4.5 games behind the next worst teams in the league, the Royals and the Pirates, both at 7-11.

When examining what Baltimore has done so far, a few things stand out as aberrant. First, the production they’ve gotten from first base. When MLB Trade Rumors asked front office executives about the worst off-season signings, many answered Garrett Atkins. He’s proven them right, posting a .239 wOBA in 61 PA. He should start to see reduced playing time now that John Rhyne Hughes has joined the team. While he might not rank among the league’s best first baseman, he’ll present a significant upgrade over Atkins’s production. It’s difficult not to.

The middle infield has also caused Baltimore offensive issues this season. Brian Roberts remains on the DL, which hurts right off the bat. His first replacement, Julio Lugo, has been worse than Atkins, though in fewer than half the number of plate appearances. Still, his .137 wOBA will keep him on the bench while manager Dave Trembley runs with Ty Wigginton’s hot bat. It’s an offense for defense sacrifice, but the sacrifice works the other way for shortstop. Cesar Izturis is there for his glovework, but his bat has been below even the low standard he’s set for himself.

In the outfield and at DH the Orioles also have a few underperformers. Adam Jones tops the list. He’s clearly better than his current .263 wOBA indicates, and many of his woes stem from a .242 BABIP, perhaps further due to his drawing only one walk in 87 PA. He’s been swinging and missing at many pitches out of the zone while laying off pitches inside it, so it sounds like something that should even out in the next few weeks. He’s shown that he’s an excellent hitter, but even good hitters can find themselves in nasty slumps.

After off-season surgery to repair his Achilles’ tendon, Nolan Reimold has spent plenty of time at DH to start the season. But with Felix Pie out for at least a couple of months Reimold has a chance to step up and be the every day left fielder. He’s started slowly, just a .287 wOBA to this point, but he’s another guy who has shown that he can hit better than that. Maybe his recent move to the leadoff spot will help. That means Luke Scott continues taking the majority of his at-bats at DH. He continues the theme of slow offensive starts, just a .293 wOBA at this point.

While Wigginton will certainly fall a bit from his lofty numbers, the Orioles can expect rebounds from a number of their offensive contributors. In addition to increased production all-around from Jones, Scott, and Reimold, the Orioles could further benefit when Matt Wieters finds his power stroke. While he’s hit well so far it has been mostly singles. His ISO sits at .074, a number he’s probably capable of doubling this season. Add to that the return of Brian Roberts, and the Orioles offense could be in decent shape at this point next month.

On the pitching side they’ve posted a few crooked numbers, and once they start to even out things should be just fine. Brad Bergesen will try to find his rhythm in AAA, and in the meantime his replacement will almost certainly allow fewer than 14 earned runs (20 in total) in his first 10.1 innings. Mike Gonzalez is through blowing saves for the time being, leaving a hole in the bullpen. Matt Albers has been pretty bad in his 8.2 innings so far, and got absolutely trashed over the weekend against Boston. The bullpen just isn’t going to be a strength on this team.

Will the Orioles make a huge turnaround and flirt with a .500 season? At this point it’s out of the question. It’s still early, but even a very good team will find it difficult to emerge from a 3-16 hole. Their Pythag record bodes a bit better, but even then that’s 6-13, about 51 wins in a full season. I still don’t think that their true talent is this bad. Once their better offensive players star to hit to their potentials they’ll close that run differential. Maybe they’ll even go on a run after they fire Trembley. For now, though, it’s just another rebuilding season in Baltimore.

The lessons from week three.

Jason Heyward isn’t the only rookie outfielder impressing people.

While Heyward has had the big play moments, Tyler Colvin has been tearing the cover off the ball up in Chicago. Since he had never played above Double-A and showed an aggressive approach in the minors last year, many assumed that major league pitchers would eat him alive. So far, though, he’s been crushing every fastball he sees, hitting .333/.405/.697 in 38 trips to the plate. Six of his 11 hits have gone for extra bases, and he’s already drawn four walks, 25 percent of his Double-A total from last year.

In fact, Colvin’s wFB/C (runs above average per 100 fastballs seen) is second highest in baseball, behind only Ryan Braun. He’s been below average against soft stuff, so don’t be surprised if pitchers start feeding him a steady diet of breaking balls in the near future. His minor league track record suggests that he’ll have trouble making the adjustment when they do, but there are few doubts left that Colvin can hit a big league fastball.

The entire Cubs outfield is on fire.

Colvin isn’t the only one who is swinging a hot bat in Chicago right now. In the last seven days, the Cubs got a .627 wOBA from Colvin, a .579 wOBA from Kosuke Fukudome, a .490 wOBA from Marlon Byrd, and a .457 wOBA from Alfonso Soriano. As a whole, their outfield hit .402/.455/.701 in the past week. If you’re wondering how they managed to win four of their last five games, look no further than those four.

Lyle Overbay is not dead.

In his first 55 trips to the plate in 2010, Overbay went 4 for 50, racking up a horrific .080/.145/.140 line. The calls for Brett Wallace began to get louder, as Overbay was the worst hitter in baseball for a couple of weeks. He’s revived himself in the last week, though, hitting .375/.524/.750, racking up four extra base hits and five walks in 22 trips to the plate.

It’s still unlikely that Overbay finishes the final year of his contract in Toronto, but the Blue Jays will have a much easier time trading him if he is actually hitting the baseball. After a rough start to the season, Blue Jays fans have been reminded that he can actually still do that.

The Astros realized the 2010 season has begun.

Houston lost their first eight game of the season, and were the butt of jokes all around the league. Since then, they’ve won eight of ten, and are actually within spitting distance of .500 again. Last week, they ranked 3rd in team wOBA at .363 and first in team xFIP at 3.31.

Michael Bourn led the charge, getting on base 52 percent of the time last week and giving the rest of their order a chance to drive him in. Wandy Rodriguez and Brett Myers gave the team’s rotation a boost behind Roy Oswalt, and the bullpen was lights out, running a 1/15 BB/K ratio in 16 innings of work, in which they only allowed two runs.

Their roster still has all kinds of problems, but after a beginning to the season that made them look like the worst team in baseball, the Astros have played really good baseball the last week.

As part of a critical five-run rally in the bottom of the fifth inning of yesterday’s Phillies-Diamondbacks game, Arizona second baseman Kelly Johnson slugged his NL-leading seventh home run. That leaves him only one home run behind his 2009 total of 8, a career low and a likely factor in the Braves’ decision to non-tender Johnson at the end of the 2009 season.

There are a couple of tools readily available to us with which we can evaluate a player’s home run hitting ability. First, HR/FB%. Simply put, hitters with home run power will hit more of their fly balls out of the park – that’s why Emilio Bonifacio and David Eckstein are at the bottom of the leaderboard and Mark Reynolds and Ryan Howard are at the top.

In prior years, Johnson’s HR/FB ranged from 7.5% to 13.8%. In 2010, however, Johnson’s HR/FB is a staggering 36.8% – 10% higher than Reynolds’s 26.0% league-leading rate from last season. Even though this almost certainly represents some luck, it also suggests that Johnson is hitting the ball extraordinarily hard right now.

We can also look at the sheer distance of the home runs that are hit, thanks to the excellent resource HitTracker Online. Again, we see sluggers like Reynolds, Joey Votto, Howard, Nelson Cruz, and Carlos Pena near the top of the farthest home runs hit in 2009.

So far, Johnson’s seven 2010 homers have traveled an average of 411 feet, well above the league average of 398.8 and his personal average of 400.4 last season. His 431 foot blast off of Nelson Figueroa on Saturday was the longest of his career. The “True Distance” supplied by HitTracker adjusts for wind, altitude, and temperature, so the move from Atlanta to Arizona shouldn’t be affecting these numbers.

There’s no chance that Johnson keeps slugging at the rate that he is now, but projection systems have been predicting a breakout for a couple of years now. Johnson is really driving the ball at this point in the season, and the distance of his home runs this year suggest that his latent power may have increased. The addition of Johnson has made the Diamondbacks lineup one of the best in the National League so far, and he will surely be a key to any run the Diamondbacks make in 2010 or 2011.

In the most recent edition of One Night Only, I previewed a Fresno/Portland Triple-A game that was due to feature, among others, the two most highly rated prospects in the San Francisco Giants system: 23-year-old catcher Buster Posey and 20-year-old lefty Madison Bumgarner.

For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, Bumgarner’s start — which originally seemed set to take place on Saturday — was pushed back to Sunday. (The same thing happened to Portland’s Josh Geer, so let’s not call the Conspiracy Police quite yet.) As such, I ended up attending both the Saturday night game (i.e. the one I’d previewed) and the Sunday day game (i.e. the one that Bumgarner started).

Posey caught both games and, in nine plate appearances, went 2-for-8 with a walk. Two of those outs were strikeouts. Of his six balls in play, three of them were line drives. In general, he resembled a very good baseball player.

My observations on Bumgarner require more attention, I think — and, as it turns out, attending both games allowed for an interesting portrait of the young prospect.

Below, I’ve broken my analysis of Bumgarner into the two days I saw him, and the two sides of his story — performance and personality — that seem to demand attention.

Sunday
The main concern about Bumgarner, both during the second half of last season and the beginning of this one, has been his velocity. After throwing in the mid-90s as a prep star and in the low minors, Bumgarner — according to Baseball America’s Prospect Handbook — pitched in the 88-90 mph range at Double-A and, per BIS and Pitchf/x data, averaged about 89 mph on his fastball in his 10 Major League innings (one start, three relief appearances).

Having been armed Sunday with a Jugs-brand radar gun — thanks to Bubblegum Baron/Hefty Lefty Rob Nelson and his “connections” — I’m able to announce with some certainty that Bumgarner was a tick or two higher in terms of fastball velocity, pitching in the 89-92 mph range for most of the game.

That’s not to say, however, that his outing was fantastic. Yes, he only allowed a single run on only four hits, but walked as many as he struck out (three of each) and conceded a couple of fly balls that, were they struck by anyone besides Sean Kazmar, might have been more damaging. Moreover, his fastball showed little in terms of movement, nor did his secondary pitches pose much of a challenge to the Portland batting order.

All of this conspired to net Bumgarner a mere five swing-and-misses on the day out of his 99 total pitches. (By comparison, Major League average for starters is somewhere around 8.0 – 8.5%.).

Physically, Bumgarner looks like a talented pitcher. He’s 6-foot-4 with a fluid motion. Also, there are signs from today’s performance that hint at the sort of general athleticism he possesses: not only did Bumgarner pick off two (two!) runners at first, he also fielded at least one bunt with what can only be described as “aplomb,” and even jacked a donger off Portland starter Josh Geer.

Saturday
No, I didn’t see Bumgarner pitch today, but here’s something I did do: sit mere feet away from the young prospect as he charted pitches for teammate Kevin Pucetas, Fresno’s starting pitcher.

And here’s another person who was there, too, sitting right behind Bumgarner: a young lady whom I’m presuming to be Bumgarner’s wife, Ali. (In fact, even if the young woman wasn’t his wife, the following points remain salient.)

Typically, I’d feel absolutely zero compulsion to discuss a player’s personal life. And the reader can rest assured: I’m not about to TMZ the frig outta this. I have no pictures of the couple going to Make Out City or freaking “all up” on each other, nor any reports to file about a domestic “incident” between the two.

Nor would it be necessary at all to invoke the newly wedded couple if it weren’t for the first three paragraphs of a recent article by Andrew Baggarly of the Mercury News — three paragraphs that read exactly like this:

SAN DIEGO — Conspiracy theories abound as to why left-hander Madison Bumgarner suddenly became so hittable at Triple-A Fresno.

According to Brian Sabean, there is nothing physically the matter with the 20-year-old. But the Giants’ general manager provided a frank assessment of where things went off track for the heralded prospect.

“It’s this simple: He was preoccupied this winter and it cost him,” Sabean said. “He had personal stuff to straighten out, getting married, and he was ill-prepared to come into spring training. I don’t know how much he threw to get ready.”

It’s peculiar to me — to any reader, I’d imagine — that getting married would be one of the personal things Madison Bumgarner had to “straighten out” this offseason. In the interest of full disclosure, allow me to say that I, myself, got married just this past August. Though my wife despises me and scowls visibly whenever I enter her line of sight, this is almost exactly the way she behaved before we got married. This is indicative of other married couples I know — i.e., that, for whatever else happens after the wedding ceremony, “straightening out” isn’t so much a part of it.

So that’s one thing.

The other thing is this, from another article by Baggarly back on February 20th, discussing the pace at which Bumgarner had moved through the Giants system:

Bumgarner is on the fast track in other areas, too. He and his girlfriend of four years, Ali, got married on Valentine’s Day.

“Oh, yeah, we were ready,” Bumgarner said. “We were very sure.”

Among my peer group — and among my social class, in general — to marry before the age of 25 is akin to personal failure. It’s as if one were admitting, “I have nowhere else to go and realize it. Might as well hand it off to the next generation and hope they do better.” Of course, I say this less to make a blanket statement about marriage and more to suggest that I might not be the person to comment on this. Still, to declare, as a 20-year-old, that one is “very sure” about his marriage — that sounds strange to these ears.

Beyond that, there’s this final consideration: Bumgarner’s half-sister died during spring training. That’s different than getting married, I recognize, but inasmuch as it concerns something called “emotions,” it seems relevant.

This is all sort of speculative, I understand, in terms of guessing what’s “wrong” with Madison Bumgarner. But here’s a larger point that isn’t: no matter how bad Dave Allen wants baseball players to be replaced by human-looking robots, it hasn’t happened yet. The thing we call “make-up” may not matter a ton at the Major League level — if a player has gotten that far, he’s done something right. For prospects, it probably means a bunch more, though. And for 20-year-old prospects, it means more still, I bet.

How does this relate to a site (i.e. FanGraphs) that’s made its reputation on providing white hot statistical analysis? It’s this (I think): the stats are only outputs. They describe what’s happened — sometimes on a more, sometimes on a less, granular level. As for the inputs, those are harder to understand, even with a scouting perspective. Certainly things like arm speed, strength of rotator cuff, and ability to repeat one’s release point — those are all important. But something like choice of mate might be another — not just for Bumgarner, but for any player.

It hurts my brain to think about — that is, the million and one uncontrolled variables that make up a prospect — so I won’t dwell on it. Best, probably, to (a) acknowledge that in these matters, there are both known unknowns and also some unknown unknowns, (b) accept that this is the case, and (c) turn one’s attention to problems of a more solvable nature.

George Romero may have never considered the possibility of smiling zombies. The walking undead Andruw Jones is infectious with smiling, and he’s spreading the condition all around the Southside of Chicago. He’s burying the rough seasons spent with the Dodgers and Rangers and crunching into opposing pitchers to the tune of a .295/.415/.750 line, or a .499 wOBA.

Jones has hit six home runs while shifting between the outfield and designated hitting. About 30% of his balls in play are turning into hits, which is well above his career average of 27.6%. His ISO is an insane .455 thanks to a 37.5% HR/FB rate. Jones’ descent from one of the best players in baseball to one of the game’s biggest enigmas began with an increase in grounders hit. Right now, he’s hitting the ball on the ground a little under one-third of the time. That would be a career low if that mark somehow holds static through season’s end.

Jones is walking enough, striking out a lot, and hitting the ball in the air. Right now, that’s a successful formula, but heading forward I’m not so sure. He’s going to hit 20-25 homers playing within U.S. Cellular Field. He’s also not going to continue to hit near .300. It’s just not happening; he’s hit over .280 in a full season exactly once throughout his career.

ZiPS expects an above-average offensive output from the former defensive wunderkind. That seems about right. It’s not 2005. Jones is no longer the budding superstar, nor is he the notorious ball-hog of his younger days. He’s just an aging slugger using his bat to prop the casket lid open.

Comings and goings

It was a busy week for the disabled list. Last week there was a total 12 transaction (4 returning and 8 going) while this week there was a total of 30 (8 coming and 22 going).

Coming back ….

Aaron Hill – 2/12 with a homerun
Hong-Chih Kuo – 0.1 IP, 2 hits, 1 BB
J.C. Romero – .1 IP, 1 BB, 1 HR
Joe Thatcher – 0.1 IP, 1 SO
Brian Fuentes – 2 ER, 2 BB, 2 SO, 2 IP
Lance Berkman – 4/15 with a 2B
Russell Branyan – 3 for 9 with a double
Alex Gordon – He is still in Hillman’s dog house and not even getting to start every game at 3B.

… and Going to

Chan Ho Park – Strained right hamstring
Felix Pie – Strained upper back muscle – He is out 3 months while he waits for ruptured back muscle to heal
Jose Mijares – Strained left elbow
Chris Getz – Strained right oblique – Should be back after 15 days
Ross Ohlendorf – Back spasms – Looks to do one minor league rehab start and then rejoin team.
Aaron Rowand – Fractured cheekbones (video) – No surgery required to fix cheek bones and plans to be ready after 15 days.
Conor Jackson – Strained right hamstring – Should be back after require 15 days
Chris Johnson – Strained right intercostal muscle
Mike Cameron – Sports hernia – Should be read to come back after 15 days
Jacoby Ellsbury – Left chest contusion (broken ribs)
Jeff Mathis – Fractured right wrist – This one could be a while, but extent not known yet
Ryota Igarashi – Left hamstring strain – Injury caused when he squatted to field a bunt
Mark Ellis – Strained hamstring – He had already missed 7 days before going on DL
Jason Marquis – Loose bodies in right elbow – No surgery needed
Edwin Encarnacion – Sore right shoulder – Same arm that had broken wrist. He didn’t play much during Spring Training for it to rest and arm wasn’t ready according to team.
Brian Tallet – Left forearm injury – True extent on injury not know yet
Travis Buck – Strained right oblique – Injured during batting practice
J.A. Happ – Left forearm strain – Unknown return time
Jeff Weaver – Strained right lower back
Carlos Guillen – Strained left hamstring – Looks to be out just the 15 days and here is the video of him injuring himself trying to score.
Nick Punto – Strained right hip flexor (groin)
Manny Ramirez – Strained right calf – Only 3rd time on DL in his career. The injury has been nagging him since first week. Torre and him agreed to rest and get it healed correctly now.

Here are a few players that have some nagging injuries that could be heading to the DL

Bobby Crosby – Stiff left shoulder – He hasn’t played since 4/18

Andy LaRoche – Back spasms – He hasn’t played since 4/16 and can be used a PH if needed.

Pat Neshek – Sore tendon with middle finger of right hand – He has not pitched since 4/14, but the team is now reporting he is ready to go any time.

A couple injuries of concern

Prince Fielder – Sore wrist – He has been playing through the pain, but it may be sapping some of his power.

Brad Hawpe – Sat for the second time this season with a injured quadricep muscle.

Over the past two years, there’s been a couple thousand posts published on FanGraphs. Searching the archive has been difficult to say the least. In comes Google Custom Search which in my opinion allows for a simple and effective way to search the FanGraphs archives.

On the homepage and in the blog sections you can now search for any topic you like, including players and hopefully you’ll be able to find what you were looking for much more easily than in the past.

I’m sure at some point we’ll come up with a great way to do a unified article/player search on the site, but until then, I think this will do the trick.

The Kansas City Royals are somewhat of a sabermetric whipping boy. Anytime they make a move, people expect the tone to be sardonic. I’m not being sarcastic or snarky whatsoever when I question the release of Juan Cruz. I just don’t get it.

When the Royals signed Cruz to a two-year deal worth six million in February 2009, it looked a heck of a lot smarter than their signing of Kyle Farnsworth. Cruz simply didn’t produce. His strikeout rates plummeted from double digits per nine to fewer than one per inning, and his walk rate remained above five. That combination is acceptable when Cruz is striking plenty of batters out, but now when the ratio drops to 1.31. Cruz wound up posting a 4.92 FIP in 50 innings.

So far this season, he’s appeared in five games, pitched five innings, and the strikeouts have been there. The walks have too, mind you, but his FIP to date is 2.66. Heck, even his ERA is a solid 3.38. Cruz’s velocity is slightly down – from 94 MPH to 93.2 – but I don’t see that as an issue. Ditto with his line drive rate is a ridiculously high 37.5% on a total of 16 batted balls.

Maybe he’s unhealthy, or maybe he’s a huge jerk. I don’t really know. It just seems like a very uncommon thing for a team to sour on a player this quickly when the team is known to make rash judgments on small sample sizes. If Cruz had an ERA of 10 I could see the Royals’ logic, even if I disagreed. This just comes across as odd.

On a related note: Bruce Chen and Brad Thompson are the two relievers the Royals chose to call up (Luis Mendoza was also designated for assignment). Carlos Rosa is confused.

Looking to fill the void of injured Designated Hitter Carlos Guillen, the Tigers called up one of the minor leagues’ hottest hitters, and their number 8 prospect (as ranked by Marc Hulet), Brennan Boesch. A third-round pick in the 2006 draft, Boesch was hitting .379/.455/.621 in his first season in Triple-A, and figures to be a regular against right-handed pitchers in the Tigers lineup.

This newfound role could be a sign of things to come, as Hulet wrote in his Tigers prospect rankings that, “[Boesch’s] career OPS of .654 against southpaws suggests that a platoon role is in Boesch’s MLB future.” This has continued to look true in Toledo, where Boesch is hitting an empty (no BB, no XBH) .294 against LHP’s. Since we haven’t evaluated a prospect in WAR terms in awhile, let’s unscientifically see what Boesch could become if relegated to platoon status in his team-controlled seasons. Going through the peripheral skills:

Playing Time: We’re going to just look at the platoon outcome for his career today, which would mean something between 500-550 plate appearances per season. We’ll middle it, and give Boesch +17.5 in replacement per season.

Position: Replacing Guillen and his big frame might make people think Boesch is a DH, but playing him as such would be a waste. To quote Baseball America’s summation of him before the 2006 draft, which still holds true today, “Boesch has significant athletic ability for a big man, allowing him to move well for his size, and could play either outfield corner thanks to a slightly above-average arm and average speed.” So let’s go with -6 for his corner outfield positional adjustment, and +2.5 for his defense.

Power: The strength of Boesch’s game. He led the Eastern League with 28 home runs in the hitter-friendly Erie park last season, but only hit 17 home runs in 1,000 plate appearances in pitcher-friendly environments in the Midwest and Florida State Leagues in the two years prior. Still, given his 7 extra base hits in 66 plate appearances in Triple-A prior to the call-up, I am going to assume that Boesch can hit the long ball.

Plate Discipline: And, the weakness of Boesch’s game. To quote Kevin Goldstein, who ranked Boesch as the Tigers #15 prospect, “He’s a massive outfielder with massive power and massive holes in his swing.” I can recall many scouts worried that Boesch had a metal bat swing when he came out of Cal, and while the Tigers scouts rejection of that notion has been validated to some degree, Boesch swings through a lot of pitches. He also doesn’t walk much, with a career BB% between 6-6.5 percent. In 525 PA’s, I’d expect something like 31.5 walks and 115.5 strikeouts.

Doing some behind-the-scenes math work to these evaluations, I have Boesch something like .280/.328/.439 in the Majors, although I admit that’s a pessimistic power projection. This works out to a .338 wOBA, which would be something like +3.5 with the bat.

So, adding up our WAR calculation, I think that the Tiger scould expect about 1.75 WAR from Boesch given 525 plate appearances in a corner outfield platoon role. Detroit fans would probably like to think they could do better, so the play for Dave Dombrowski and company might be to trade Boesch this July should he have much success in this forthcoming cup of coffee.