Okay, not "bad," necessarily. But I'm going for symmetry, here.
On Thursday, we looked at the good hitters who’ve been rather lousy. Conclusion: They’re probably okay unless they aren’t. Hey, you’re the one reading baseball commentary in April.
Instead of good hitters gone lousy, let’s look at lousy hitters gone good. Well, "lousy" is a strong term. These players are better at hitting than any of us will be at anything we attempt in our nasty, short, and brutish lives. Within their own elite group, though, they’ve historically been a step or two behind their peers. This year they’ve been fantastic. What gives?
Dee Gordon
The raw stats
.317/.352/.436, 15 SB
Prognosis
It was okay to chuckle smugly at the Dodgers spending six billion on a roster and starting the season with Dee Gordon at second base. It was like Terrence Malick tacking a "Featuring Fred Savage" to the front of his Thin Red Line credits. They couldn’t be serious, right?
They were serious, and Gordon has been one of their very best players. The 26-year-old is hitting for average, and he even has a home run to keep pitchers honest! Pitchers will not stay honest. If you’re wondering if Gordon’s batting average on balls in play is out of whack, it’s at .360, which is certainly high, but not out of the question for one of the fastest players in the game.
It’s easy to dismiss the hot April — just watch me! — but it’s worth noting that Gordon was the #26 prospect in baseball before the 2011 season. He was supposed to field enough to stick at short, and he was supposed to be a high-average, pesky feller. Since then, he’s had stretches where he looked like a retired track star trying baseball on a whim — Herb Washington without the natural baseball instincts — so he’s been mostly forgotten and/or dismissed.
He got an RBI on this swing. Photo: Jesse Johnson-USA TODAY Sports
Random month like this that no one paid attention to because it wasn’t April
September, 2011, when he hit .372/.398/.451 with 12 steals. Yowza. Then he was abysmal the following season.
Scouting the breakout tool (20-to-80 scale)
50. Decent chance of this being somewhat sustainable.
Here’s where you were expecting a note about how this is a fluke, and how this is going to fade away. Instead, I’m going to prepare for eight to 10 years of Gordon alternating pesky with pungent, similar to Juan Pierre. Average-dependent players with elite speed are at the blackjack table, forever hitting on 17, and every second or third year, they’ll get a three or a four. Pierre spent his career being a stathead punchline, except he had a pretty danged solid career in retrospect, with several valuable high points. Gordon would be lucky to do the same, but he’s certainly capable.
Dayan Viciedo
The raw stats
.348/.410/.528, 11 2B, one HR
Prognosis
Really, you could pick anyone on the White Sox. Adam Dunn looks like his old self, Alexei Ramirez has been one of the best players in baseball, and Tyler Flowers is leading the American League in hitting. But Viciedo sticks out because he’s just 25, which makes him one of those non-prospects that you give a hard time because you’re used to him performing at a certain level, as if he were a finished product.
He’s also intriguing because he might set a career-best mark for walks by the end of May.
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BB percentage
2012: 5.2%
2013: 5.1
2014: 10.0
Instead of writing "small sample" 500 times, I’ll just point out once that this is an article about the first month of the baseball season, and that month is always, always, always a chronic liar. Still, Viciedo is swinging at fewer pitches out of the strike zone and making more contact. He’s hitting more balls in the air, too, which is probably good for someone with his skill set, even if the dingers aren’t showing up.
Random month like this that no one paid attention to because it wasn’t April
Well, he had similar walk rates last May before resuming his hacking ways, and he hit .303/.364/.517 last July.
Scouting the breakout tool (20-to-80 scale)
65. He’s the same age as Michael Choice and Travis d’Arnaud, prospects of moderate promise who are still expected to do good things. It’s easy to forget because we’re used to the idea of Viciedo as a Delmon-like limited slugger, but he’s still rather green.
Michael Morse
The raw stats
.302/.351/.581, 6 HR
Prognosis
Maybe there’s a method to Brian Sabean’s madness; when playing in a park that swallows home runs, get players who are strong enough to hit the ball out of the Astrodome on a check swing. Morse isn’t just hitting dingers, he’s hitting them faaaaaar.
I can think of maybe two or three right-handers who have hit a homer there at AT&T Park over the last 14 seasons. He already has more home runs than Giants left fielders combined for last year, and he’s becoming something of a cult hero for dinger-fetishists.
Random month like this that no one paid attention to because it wasn’t April
That’s easy. And sobering. Morse had eight home runs last April, and after every one a Mariners fan would tweet something snotty at me because I ripped Jack Zduriencik for the trade before the season. The tweets stopped.
Scouting the breakout tool (20-to-80 scale)
40. He’s still Cerrano-like with breaking balls, and he’s still swinging and missing at the same rate. He’s had one truly outstanding year at the plate in his 10-year career, and he’s 32, so the odds are against him keeping this up. Still, it’s fun to ride the dinger dragon while it’s still in the air.
Charlie Blackmon
The raw stats
.369/.412/.602, 5 HR
Prognosis
The most valuable position players in baseball, according to Baseball-Reference.com:
1. Troy Tulowitzki
2. Mike Trout
3. Charlie Blackmon
4. Josh Donaldson
5. Andrew McCutchen
Annotated: Yep, of course, whaaat, sure, of course. Blackmon was hitting .500 for the first two weeks of the year, so you might think he’s been a dud since then, but the hot start is still buoying his April numbers. Since that high-water mark of .500/.512/.737, though, he’s hit .292/.356/.523, with almost half of those games coming in San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. He has a decent shot of playing in the All Good In the First Half Game at Target Field in July.
He was never a top prospect, but he was always an interesting prospect, with an intriguing blend of contact, speed, and doubles power. He’s also never really had a clean shot at an outfield spot because the Rockies had two spots locked down with Carlos Gonzalez and Dexter Fowler for years, and they blocked Blackmon with Michael Cuddyer two years ago. It’s hard to dismiss a player when his last two seasons basically get "incomplete" grades.
Random month like this that no one paid attention to because it wasn’t April
Blackmon hit .343/.366/.500 last September, which ostensibly put him in consideration for the starting job this year. He did it with a wonky strikeout-to-walk ration of 4/21, though, so it was easier to dismiss. He’s at seven walks to eight strikeouts in 116 plate appearances this year. That’s much better.
Scouting the breakout tool (20-to-80 scale)
60. Good chance that he’ll be valuable, though not a star. Like Vicideo and Gordon, Blackmon is young enough to believe he’s not necessarily the player we’ve seen (or not seen) the past few years. He always had solid contact numbers in the high minors, and that seems like a skill that would play especially well at Coors Field.
Yangervis Solarte
The raw stats
.304/.402/.456, nine doubles, one HR. Dammit, Yankees.
Prognosis
Dammit, Yankees.
Random month like this that no one paid attention to because it wasn’t April
Solarte does not have another month to look at because the Yankees just made him up.
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Scouting the breakout tool (20-to-80 scale)
80. Because dammit, Yankees.
The Yankees were supposed to be old and broken and broke, and then they spent the offseason spending money on last-ditch semi-stars to keep the team alive. It made sense, except there were still problems with the lineup. The team had a little extra money because Alex Rodriguez was suspended, sure, but who was going to play third for them?
A create-a-player, that’s who. Auto-generated by the computer, with attributes that were futzed with using a Game Genie. Do you know what Solarte hit in the PCL last year? .276/.323/.403. Do you know what the entire PCL hit last year? .270/.342/.414. Solarte was 25 and completely average in Triple-A. Now he’s an OBP monster. You may cry "sample size" because we’re talking about 92 plate appearances, but the Yankees are in first, and crap like this is how they’ll stay there.
Dammit, Yankees.
(He’s actually a solid 20 because there’s no way. There’s just no way. Dammit, Yankees.)