A First Look at White Sox Outfielder Trayce Thompson

by
August 6, 2015

With the end of the minor league drawing near, teams are starting to call up some of their more promising Triple-A players to the big leagues. Just this week, we’ve had the pleasure of seeing Richie Shaffer, Jon Gray, Henry Owens and Luis Severino take the field for the first time. Also called up, but somewhat lost in the shuffle, was 24-year-old White Sox outfielder Trayce Thompson, who struck out in his one trip to the plate so far.

The White Sox called up Thompson to replace J.B. Shuck, who’s set to miss at least the next couple of weeks with a hamstring strain. A former second round pick, Thompson has always been a premium athlete. In fact, he’s the son of former NBA center Mychal Thompson, and the brother of Klay Thompson of the Golden State Warriors. Athleticism clearly runs in the family.

Yet despite his tremendous athletic ability, Thompson’s unrefined baseball skills have rendered him a fringe prospect over the course of his minor league stay. With a .180 Isolated Power and 11 steals, he demonstrated an enticing combination of power and speed in Triple-A this year. However, his 5% walk rate and 19% strikeout rate speak to his unrefined approach at the plate.

KATOH forecasts 1.9 WAR for Thompson through age-28, up from 1.3 in the preseason. Not very impressive. Let’s see if the comps tell a similar story. Using league-adjusted, regressed stats, along with age, I calculated the Mahalanobis Distance between Thompson’s performance and every Triple-A season since 1990 in which a batter recorded at least 400 plate appearances. Below, you’ll find a list of historical players whose performances were nearest and dearest to Thompson’s, ranked from most to least similar.

Rank Mah Dist Age PA through 28 WAR through 28
1 0.38 Matt Mieske 1,061 1.1
2 0.80 Damon Buford 1,103 1.7
3 0.88 Zack Cozart 1,799 5.9
4 0.92 Scott Lydy 111 0.0
5 1.06 Josh Kroeger 55 0.0
6 1.06 Jason Lane 824 2.6
7 1.30 Jerry Brooks 9 0.1
8 1.31 Logan Schafer* 547 0.3
9 1.44 Jared Hoying* 0 0.0
10 1.47 Rich Aude 158 0.0
11 1.59 Derrick Gibson 52 0.2
12 1.60 Casey Close† 0 0.0
13 1.68 Luis Jimenez* 168 0.3
14 1.69 Vance Wilson 66 0.3
15 1.70 Zoilo Almonte* 149 0.0
16 1.70 Darrell Whitmore 357 0.0
17 1.72 Scott Thorman 440 0.0
18 1.80 Scott Cousins 193 0.0
19 1.80 Danny Richar 252 0.0
20 1.82 Harvey Pulliam 130 0.1

*Pitchers who have yet to play their age-28 season

†Better known as Derek Jeter’s agent

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Unlike some of the other players who have debuted this week, Thompson is far from a blue chip prospect. The big league outlook just isn’t great for players who have merely good seasons as 24-year-olds in Triple-A. But if Thompson’s able to get on base at a decent clip, he might be able to carve out a niche as an part-time player, potentially along the lines of Matt Mieske, Damon Buford or Jason Lane. That’s not particularly exciting, but it’s not useless, either.





 

Chris works in economic development by day, but spends most of his nights thinking about baseball. He writes for Pinstripe Pundits, FanGraphs and The Hardball Times. He's also on the twitter machine: @_chris_mitchell None of the views expressed in his articles reflect those of his daytime employer.

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cornflake5000
10 years ago

I’m sure if Thompson finds his niche a part-time player, it won’t be long until Hawk starts referring to him as the most athletic part-time player he’s ever seen… since Yaz, of course.

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