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Originally Posted by O.city
Man, I thought Allen Craig was gonna be Paul Goldschmidt before he was Paul Goldschmidt. That injury sucked. And the obvious Taveras thing just ****ed up a lot of shit.
But they're gonna have to do something to compete with the higher ups in the future.
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Poor Craig - dude's legs just never came back and you can't hit without a lower half.
Taveras would've been a hell of a Mabry measuring stick. He came to the bigs and showed a much longer swing than I expected and was a lot more susceptible to hard stuff than I had been led to believe. That long, loopy swing had a lot of casting in it and combined being slow with not generating a lot of authority.
But when you looked at his minor league numbers, you know there's a hitter there somewhere with the right adjustments. He knew how to approach at-bats and it wouldn't have taken a complete overhaul, just some changes in his how his hands went to the dish, IMO.
If Mabry could've have gotten him on the right track, it would've been a feather in his cap. Had he continued to struggle...well shit, Mabry's probably gone by now in an attempt to save the golden prospect.
Sadly, we'll never know. I don't believe he was the no-questions asked superstar that many others did, but I think there was a lot of good clay to work with there and we'd have had a pretty good test of Mabry's ability.