John Mirabelli and company hasn't given us a lot of winners in his years here and they ask us to buy into a guy who is clearly much lower rated than his draft slot being a good value at 29?
You know, if Mirabelli was a new scouting director or if our farm system was stocked or if he had given us a bunch of winners over the years this would be easy to justify with "Well, he does this for a living he has to know more than us fans".
Unfortunately you have to build that trust with fans and, folks, this is the classic overdraft.
Not that Chisenhall won't hit. It's just that he is unlikely to perform like a first round pick. He would have to (a) Develop big power (he doesn't have a lot of speed) to be a corner infielder or outfielder or (b) be able to play second base at the pro level and you should NOT be drafting guys in the first round whose success is predicated on them being able to be successful at a middle of the infield position they haven't been trained at and questionably even have the ability to play.
People who support this pick will give you the old axioms about a draft is only evaluated years later, etc. Unfortunately, we have seen this before (Trevor Crowe) and it didn't work out and we were left with a guy who didn't profile as a major leaguer because, though he had skills, he couldn't perform as needed at the higher levels of play.
To me Chisenhall is the hitter's version of Jensen Lewis. Someone with some upside but more like a second or third round guy who you project to be, AT BEST, a solid major league starter. he is NOT a first round talent and, for that matter, neither was Beau Mills last year, everything (including his injured shoulder and who else was available) considered.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
More Chisenhall thoughts
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2 comments:
I will give them this, for once they took a high risk reward type player I felt this team needed to take for a while to hope and stock pile upper lvl talent, he was the top freshman in the country. There are make up issues, but we can hope this one works
dennis, i love the analysis cuz it's impossible to find anything like this for indians fans, but you're over-analyzing. by all accounts, including Baseball America, Lonnie would be rated much higher if not for the burglary incident. i know you're working your tail off here and i love the background, but unless you've got a pro scouting background and have seen this kid play, it's difficult to accept your criticisms.
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