Gamel Time

by
May 15, 2009

Yesterday, Brewers top hitting prospect Mat Gamel made his season debut as a pinch hitter. Milwaukee summoned him from Triple-A, where he was tearing the cover off the ball, hitting .336/.428/.647 with 20 extra base hits in 145 plate appearances. As a 23-year-old with serious thump in his bat, the Brewers realized that he had little left to learn in the Pacific Coast League, and have brought him up to help them contend for the NL Central title this year.

No one questions Gamel’s bat. Everyone questions his glove, however. His lack of range and stiff hands are a significant problem at third base, and even at first base, the reviews aren’t good. More than once, it’s been suggested that Gamel’s best position is probably designated hitter, which doesn’t exist in the National League. A significantly improved defense was one of the main keys to the Brewers run last year, and they are understandably cautious about weakening their defense by giving Gamel significant playing time.

However, they should give him a shot at third base against right handed pitchers. Bill Hall is having a nice rebound season from his miserable 2008 campaign, but he’s the quintessential platoon player. In 2007, he hit .247/.305/.408 against right-handers. Last year, that fell to .174/.242/.316. This year, he’s at .212/.316/.333. Hall can hit lefties (career .862 OPS versus southpaws), but he’s vulnerable against right-handed pitching.

The Brewers line-up has enough lefty mashers. Seven of their eight position players are right-handed, with only Prince Fielder swinging a lefty bat in their regular line-up. Gamel, even with his fielding issues, would offer a little bit more balance and give them a significant offensive upgrade at the hot corner against RHPs. Hall could still sub in as a defensive replacement and play against lefties, so the time share would be something along the lines of 70-30 in favor of Gamel.

His defense is bad, but the opportunity to get a real hitter against right-handed pitching in the line-up at third base is one the Brewers shouldn’t turn down.

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.




 

Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.

27 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
JoeHova
16 years ago

nice look at Gamel/Hall. Two quibbles though- Gamel made his major league debut last season (he got 2 ABs (1 hit) in September) and Nashville is in the PCL, not the IL.

0