[siberian khatru]

Just gonna leave this here and back away:

Rebuilding Teams Should Call the Royals on Raul Mondesi

by Eric Longenhagen - January 26, 2018

I elicited opinions from several scouts and executives this morning regarding Mondesi, and their responses have made the picture a little more complex, one of a talented but erratic performer with makeup issues. They agree Mondesi has premium physical ability. He’s a 70-grade runner who goes from base to base with breathtaking explosion and has the range to play in the middle of the diamond. He also has plus bat speed and puts a surprising charge into the ball despite his size.

But Mondesi is an aggressive free-swinger who doesn’t take great at-bats, and scouts have mixed opinions about his bat control and the way he incorporates the rest of his body into his swing. There’s concern about his bat translating to the majors at all, let alone in a way that compares to what Mondesi has done at Triple-A.

The term “makeup” might have different meanings from scout to scout. In Mondesi’s case, evaluators are concerned about his defensive consistency, especially as it pertains to throwing accuracy, and have seen him fail to execute routine plays. Others were not thrilled with what they saw from Mondesi as he worked back into playing shape following his PED suspension in Arizona, citing poor effort and on-field focus which they particularly disliked in an environment laden with young, impressionable teenagers./QUOTE]

Kansas City’s Mondesi situation is further complicated by the emergence of SS Nicky Lopez, who, after a strong showing in the Arizona Fall League, many scouts have projected as an eventual everyday shortstop. He’s probably two years away from reaching the majors, and it looks to me like the Escobar deal is a bridge to Lopez rather than Mondesi. Perhaps the solution here is a move to center field for Mondesi. His speed is more than sufficient there, but that would require a crash course in the minors, and Mondesi’s infield play doesn’t inspire confidence in his ability to learn and execute that quickly.

As a change-of-scenery reclamation project — which is an odd sentence fragment to write about a 22-year old — I think Mondesi is pretty interesting. ...

But if I’m running a team in that situation, I’m calling the Royals today to find out what it might take to acquire a rare talent who seems to have fallen out of favor with his parent org, even if that talent has some clear issues.