Article: Teaching Patience (At The Plate)

[tobi0040]

I'm sorry, those second stint numbers don't show me he's ready.  That K rate is way too high and the slash line is, to put it mildly, ugly.  He's still not walking where he should either.  Others have pointed out that he's having issues recognizing breaking pitches, and I'd add that the few weeks in AAA that he had hardly proves anything.  He needs to establish good habits, and I don't think those habits get established in MLB nearly as easily as they do in AAA, and his problem goes beyond recognizing an AAA breaking ball vs. an MLB breaking ball.  It's that he has trouble with both. 

 

There's something to be said about learning how to play in lower pressure environments, and Buxton is going to be dealing with a very real options problem in the not so distant future.  They've already burned that option this year, so they may as well make use of it.  I'm glad he's doing a bit better during his second stint, but when a bit better is still well below league average... well let's just say let him keep working on his game in Rochester.  He might be the best CF on this team right now (which is another issue for another day), but if they want him to realize his potential as an all star CF sooner than later, it is probably in his best interest to be doing that in Rochester.

Buxton has been back here 20 games. Through the first 15 he had a .259/.281/.444/.725 slash line with 6 XBH and a wRC+ of 88. His k rate was 31%. Then he had four games in a row where he was hitless and struck out a ton. At some point we have to let these guys struggle a little bit. I think it is a dangerous message we are sending prospects that the margin for error is basically zero. Meyer got one start. Chargois got an inning. Berrios a hand full of starts. Then after 15 pretty solid games, then four bad one’s we send him back down?

 

Also, even with his disastrous first stint, his numbers are not that terrible against righties. He has a .639 OPS but a horrid .401 OPS against lefties. He seems to really struggle against breaking balls down and in against lefties. Yesterday he saw a steady diet of them from a lefty with a pretty good breaking ball. I question how many really good breaking balls from lefties he would see in AAA. In the at bat where he flew out to RF he must have seen about 8 pitches and fouled off several good breaking balls down and in. That is exactly what he needs to do and how he is going to improve.

Edited June 23, 2016 by tobi0040

[Otto von Ballpark]

Buxton is going to be dealing with a very real options problem in the not so distant future.

Buxton won't be out of options until the spring of 2019, at the earliest. I think that is fairly distant, at this point.