Royals Believe Myers’ Bat Forced A Move To Outfield
Posted Jan. 28, 2011 5:05 pm by J.J. Cooper
Filed under: News
When the Royals drafted Wil Myers in 2009, they did so largely on the basis of his bat. But even they didn’t realize he’d be this good this quickly.
The expectation was that Myers would move up to low Class A Burlington in 2010 and probably hit pretty well while learning the difficult task of handling a minor league pitching staff in his first full season as a catcher.
Myers pretty much tore that timetable to shreds. By midseason, the Royals realized that the 19-year-old had learned everything he needed to learn at the plate in the Midwest League. So they promoted him to high Class A Wilmington. The jump may have given Myers a bigger challenge, but he responded by hitting .346/.453/.512 in 205 at-bats.
And that, in a nutshell, explains why Myers will be moving to the outfield for the Royals in 2011. His bat simply proved too advanced for Kansas City to keep him behind the plate.
“His bat is more advanced than we had anticipated it would be,” Royals farm director J.J. Picollo said. “Because the bat is advanced and his catching still needs work we felt (staying at catcher) would slow his path to the big leagues. We feel like it would take another 300-350 games caught in the minors to be ready to be a major league catcher.”
The Royals do not believe that Myers will need nearly that many games to be ready to hit in the majors. By moving Myers to the outfield, he will almost assuredly begin the 2011 season at Double-A Northwest Arkansas.
If he had stayed at catcher, the Royals would have faced a decision of either putting him in Double-A, where his bat was ready but his glove wasn’t, or sending him back to high Class A to work on his catching, even though his bat was too advanced for the league.
“Now if he has a good year in Double-A, we’re projecting him to big leagues by 2012 or 2013," Picollo said. "It cuts time off his minor league career. And he’ll be able to join up with a pretty good group of prospects in Double-A."
Myers began taking fly balls in the outfield during instructional league, and his future position was a constant topic of discussion during the team’s offseason organizational meetings. But a final decision to move him to the outfield was made two weeks ago. General manager Dayton Moore announced it during the team’s FanFest activities.
“He’s ahead of the curve (as far as the move to the outfield),” Picollo said. “It’s a natural thing for him. He’ll have to learn angles to balls in the gap, and the spin move on balls down the right field line to throw to second. But his natural reactions to the ball is ahead of where we thought he would be. He’s a good athlete. It’s a good fit.”
The decision will speed up Myers’ path to the big leagues, but the Royals also believe it will keep him in the lineup more once he gets there.
“We compared Wil many times to Joe Mauer. Can he be Joe Mauer? We’ve studied that. And one of the downsides is Mauer has missed playing time through his career,” Picollo said. “If Wil had went out to the Midwest League last year and performed average, if he had not had a great first year, if he was ticketed to Wilmington this year, we might have given it another year. But the bat just jumped so far ahead. He has to be challenged.”
With Myers moving to right field, Salvador Perez, a teammate of Myers’ in Wilmington last year, becomes the team’s top catching prospect. Perez will likely be the team’s everyday catcher for Double-A Northwest Arkansas in 2011. Perez, 19, hit .290/.322/.411 while throwing out 42 percent of potential basestealers last year.
“Salvador really developed in our minds into a top prospect at a premium position,” Picollo said. “He’s an outstanding catcher. Pitchers love throwing to him, and he has a good bat. To jump him past the Midwest League like he did last year, he exceeded our expectations offensively. He shortened his swing, and his body is starting to get stronger. He puts the ball in play. With him being further along than expected it made this move a little bit easier.”
In other Royals notes, Picollo said that lefthander Noel Arguelles’ recovery from his shoulder surgery has gone well and he is throwing on the side, but he will likely not be ready to pitch competitively until after spring training.
Shortstop Jeff Bianchi is nearly 100 percent recovered from last year’s Tommy John surgery and will be fully ready to go when spring training begins.
And Picollo said that shortstop Christian Colon's assignment for 2011 will not be affected by the recent trade that brought in shortstop Alcides Escobar. Many scouts believe that Colon, the team's first-round pick in 2010, will fit better at second base long-term because of concerns about his range. But the Royals say for now he'll stay at shortstop.
"Christian will play shortstop with this being his first full year," Picollo said.
"It doesn't mean we won't expose him to second base in pregame or maybe for a game or two, maybe in the back half of the season.
"There aren't enough shortstops in the game. We want to give Christian a chance to prove he can be a shortstop at the major league level. And we feel very confident of Christian's ability to move to second base without it being an issue if needed."
John Manuel’s Personal Top 20 Prospects: A Look Back
Alcides Escobar, ss
WHY HE’S HERE: The Brewers brought up Escobar in August but he didn’t surpass 130 at-bats, leaving him prospect-eligible. Then Milwaukee traded J.J. Hardy to the Twins, handing the job to the best defensive player among prospects.
WHAT HE’LL BE: Escobar has the arm, infield actions, hands and range to win Gold Gloves at shortstop. He makes the routine plays and the tough ones, too. Plus, he has speed that impacts the game offensively, and his swing’s not so bad either.
WHEN HE ARRIVES: Escobar is more prepared than Rangers shortstop Elvis Adrus was last year and should have a bigger impact in 2010.
Escobar has been answering doubts about his hitting for three years now, beginning with when he hit .325 in 63 games for high Class A Brevard County and earned a promotion to Double-A as a 19-year-old in 2007. He returned to Hunstville last year and was even better, leading the Southern League in hits (179) and finishing third in the batting race with a .328/.363/.434 line in 546 at-bats.
However, the jump to Triple-A didn’t go quite as smoothly for Escobar, a shortstop signed out of Venezuela for $33,000 in 2003. He hit .276 in April, but his average has been climbing ever since. He batted .306 in May and is hitting a scorching .340 so far in 53 June at-bats, bringing his line for the year to .303/.342/.432.
"He came into his own last year on the offensive side," Nashville manager Don Money said. "He’s always been a well-oriented defensive player. Last year, he hit well over .300 and played very well. This year, he got off to a little bit of a rough start, offensively, but he’s picked it up and he’s hitting over .300 now and playing solid in the field. He’s just a good player. He’s maturing into a major league player.
"Going to Triple-A, you’ve had some pitchers that were pitchers, not throwers. They would throw breaking balls when they were behind in the count or in 3-2 counts and you can’t sit back and look at fastballs all the time. It takes a while for a young player to pick that up."
Power isn’t Escobar’s calling card offensively. He has only three home runs all season and 18 for his career in 2,409 at-bats. Of course, there are other ways to contribute to a big league offense, and that’s where the focus has been for Escobar and his coaches in Nashville. He’s maintained his gap-to-gap approach, as evidenced by his being tied for the Sounds team leads in both doubles (17) and triples (4), and continued using his plus speed.
Escobar improved his base stealing aptitude last year, going 34-for-42, an 81 percent success rate that easily bested his previous career high of 70 percent, and he’s picked up where he left off with Nashville, going 25-for-31 to rank third in the Pacific Coast League. Escobar has also worked hard on his bunting, as he leads the PCL in sacrifices with 13 and has beaten out a number of bunt singles.
Defensively, Escobar has come as advertised. He’s made nine errors on the season, but four of those came in a four-game span, when the Sounds had him play second base just let him get a look at the position in case he’s asked to play there at the next level.
"(Second base) is a little different with how the ball comes off the bat," Money said. "He can play it though. He played about seven games there and had about four or five errors. Most of them were throwing just because it’s a different kind of a throw, that’s all. Defensively, he’s the real deal."
Playing for Cardenales de Lara this winter in his native Venezuela, Escobar batted just .224/.289/.302 in 128 plate appearances, though he maintained a solid 11-13 BB-K mark. Even though the hits weren’t falling for Escobar, that didn’t stop scouts who watched him from gushing over his defense at shortstop.
"He can do it all in the field," said one scout. "He could play in the major leagues right now at shortstop if given the chance. He’s got that looseness where everything comes easy for him at shortstop."
Any way you measure it, Escobar’s defense is impressive, be it seeing him make acrobatic plays firsthand or laying it out on paper. Among shortstop prospects who appear in the 2009 Prospect Handbook and spent 2008 in a full-season league, Escobar ranked No. 1 in range factor, which measures how many plays a fielder successfully converts into outs, calculated as (assists + putouts) / innings played x 9.
<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=2 width=533><TBODY><TR vAlign=top bgColor=#282898><TD colSpan=10>RANGE FACTOR BY SHORTSTOP PROSPECTS
</TD></TR><TR vAlign=top bgColor=#cccccc><TD style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">PLAYER</TD><TD style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">PCT</TD><TD style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">G</TD><TD style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">IP</TD><TD style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">PO</TD><TD style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">A</TD><TD style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">E</TD><TD style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">TC</TD><TD style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">DP</TD><TD style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">RF</TD></TR><TR vAlign=top bgColor=#ebebeb><TD>1. Alcides Escobar (MIL)</TD><TD>.971</TD><TD>125</TD><TD>1091.2</TD><TD>231</TD><TD>429</TD><TD>20</TD><TD>680</TD><TD>94</TD><TD>5.44</TD></TR><TR vAlign=top><TD>2. Brian Friday (PIT)</TD><TD>.962</TD><TD>80</TD><TD>687.2</TD><TD>120</TD><TD>288</TD><TD>16</TD><TD>424</TD><TD>54</TD><TD>5.34</TD></TR><TR vAlign=top bgColor=#ebebeb><TD>3. Danny Worth (DET)</TD><TD>.955</TD><TD>79</TD><TD>664.1</TD><TD>141</TD><TD>241</TD><TD>18</TD><TD>400</TD><TD>65</TD><TD>5.18</TD></TR><TR vAlign=top><TD>4. Hainley Statia (LAA)</TD><TD>.976</TD><TD>59</TD><TD>507.1</TD><TD>99</TD><TD>189</TD><TD>7</TD><TD>295</TD><TD>38</TD><TD>5.11</TD></TR><TR vAlign=top bgColor=#ebebeb><TD>5. Elvis Andrus (TEX)</TD><TD>.947</TD><TD>108</TD><TD>951.1</TD><TD>179</TD><TD>359</TD><TD>30</TD><TD>568</TD><TD>79</TD><TD>5.09</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
That’s a relatively crude way to measure defense, but Escobar has the glowing scouting reports back it up. The Brewers’ top prospect, Escobar should immediately become one of the game’s best defensive shortstops in baseball once he establishes himself as a starter in Milwaukee. His hands, range, anticipation, instincts, first-step and arm are all outstanding, and there are few in the game who can match his defensive tools.
Escobar hit .328/.363/.438 in 131 games with Hunstville. His offensive performance in 2008 was heavily driven by his batting average, which ranked third in the Southern League thanks to his speed, his ability to cover the plate and, perhaps, a bit of good fortune. Escobar is an aggressive hitter and, though he added some strength, his power is still below-average.
That combination could lead to some initial offensive struggles in the big leagues, but if he can merely tread water offensively, his fielding could save enough runs to provide substantial value at shortstop, even with an OBP in the low .300s.
"I don’t know how he’s going to react hitting, but guys can struggle in their first year and then come around," said the scout. "He’s going to be a .250-.260 hitter and, as he matures and understands the strike zone, he’ll get better. He’s not going to have any power to start, but he’s going to put the barrel of the bat on the ball. Most of the Latin ballplayers have to go through this process. They learn, they understand what their strengths are and they become better hitters afterwards."
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