Prospect Previews: Corner Infielders 1-5

5)   Johan Yan --  19 YO 3b  (RH)  (2005 International FA)

Yan began his professional career in the AZL at age 17 in 2006 and got off to a white hot start, hitting .309 through his first 17 games, but then the wheels came off and he finished the season hitting .218 in 39 games.   Nonetheless, the Rangers promoted him to Spokane to begin the 2007 season and he struggled terribly, hitting .156 and fanning in 46% of his at-bats.   Sent back to the AZL, he fared little better (.200 / .258 / .317).

He's not learning yet and is on the verge of turning into a bust.   But the 6'4",  190 lb. Yan ranks among the more gifted athletes in the system, is regarded as a hard worker who cares, and has the sort of tools that would allow him to ascend quickly if and when everything clicks.

Yan has a huge arm and my friend Jamey Newberg likes the idea of moving him to the mound if the hitting doesn't come around.

4)   Emmanuel Solis --  18 YO  3b  (RH)   (2006 International FA)

(Solis, aka Baby Meat Hook, with Carlos Pimentel, photo courtesy of Scott Lucas):

The big strong kid signed for more than half a million as a 16 year old in 2006 and made his debut with the DSL Rangers that summer, hitting .210 / .301 / .330 and moved on to the AZL in 2007 where he hit .205 / .264 / .269, but people remain high on him nonetheless.    Solis has a pull-happy approach that prevents him from staying square and makes him vulnerable to breaking balls.

Though it hasn't shown up in games yet, he projects to have plus power and he's regarded as a strong fielder.   

3)  Travis Metcalf --  25 YO  3b  (RH)   (2004  11th Round)

I remember the first time I saw Metcalf.   I was in Surprise,  March of 2005, standing with C.J. Wilson watching a game between the Rangers and Royals Double-A squads.  After a couple of innings, Wilson turns to me and says something along these lines: "I don't know who that guy at third is, but if he can hit at all, he's going to win a gold glove someday."

The guy at third was Metcalf, and this past summer those of you who don't make your way to the kiddie pool (i.e. minor league games) on a regular basis finally got to see for yourselves why scouts said he could have stepped onto a big league field and delivered plus defense at the hot corner from the day he was drafted.

Metcalf led the NWL in dingers the summer he was drafted, hitting .269 / .351 / .503 and then made the two-level jump to the Cal League in 2005 where he lit up that circuit, hitting .291 / .358 / .513 with 22 bombs and 94 RBIs.

It was all smooth sailing for the free-swinging the former Kansas Jayhawk.  But because his statistical profile suggested poor plate discipline some (including me) weren't sold on Metcalf's bat yet.   Prior to the 2006 season, I wrote:

  If those who question his offensive upside are right, the jump to Frisco will be very difficult. His ability to learn and adjust will certainly be tested this year.

And then just before opening day that year, I talked to Metcalf at Dr. Pepper Ballpark and asked him whether he thought he needed to change his approach against the much more advanced pitching he'd see in the Texas League.   His response?   "No.  I'm going to swing from the heels.  That's what got me here."   And at that point, I became very worried.

Just as I feared, Metcalf tanked badly in 2006, hitting .221 / .298 / .325 as Texas League pitchers used his over-aggressiveness against him.   Like many midwesterners, the Wamego, Kansas native is proud and stubborn, but not he's stupid.    Eventually, he changed.  But it took awhile.

After five miserable months, there were signs in August of 2006 that Metcalf was starting to rethink his hacking approach.   He drew 11 walks while fanning just 14 times that month after having walked half as often and striking out twice as frequently in each of the previous two months.     He also hit .257 / .354 / .357 that month.  Not great, but a lot better than the .165 / .221 / .183 he assembled in June or the .222 / .260 / .354 he posted in July.

Metcalf began the 2007 season with a .265 / .326 / .410 April and then exploded with a .299 / .374 / .575 May before finding himself in a Rangers uniform in mid-June.

His tremendous defense will always keep him in the hunt for a big league job, and it now appears that he's a good candidate to hit as well as Dean Palmer.    If he tears  it up at Oklahoma this year, I would not be surprised if we're looking at an infield that includes Metcalf at third base on opening day, 2009.

2)   Johnny Whittleman  --  21 YO   3b  (LH)   (2005 2nd Round)

After struggling through a woeful 2006 season for Clinton (.227 / .313 / .343), Whittleman returned to the MWL and lit it up in near-Kinsleresque fashion for two months (.343 / .447 / .586 in April and .343 / .437 / .657 in May).  Off-season lasik eye surgery was said to have  been the key to his dramatic turnaround.

But then, MWL pitchers started pitching around the league's hottest hitter.   In June, Whittleman remained true to himself in spite of a falling batting average and simply took the walks, putting up a .236 /  .369 / .449  / .819 while drawing 20 freebies.   By July, however, he caved in and went .154 / .264 / .179 posting a BB/K ratio of 0.34 (when he'd consistely posted BB/K ratios of 0.80 or better almost every month of his pro career, including a 1.00 in August of 2006 when he hit just barely over .200).

Nonetheless, the Rangers bumped him up to Bakersfield in August of 2007 and he more-or-less returned to form, drawing 23 walks in 29 games which allowed him to put up a .240 / .372 / .413 line.   

Whittleman's glaring weaknesses continue to be his lefty splits and his defense.   Most people aren't terribly worried about either at this point.

Whittleman is one of those guys who you can only fully appreciate if you watch him around the ballyard.   You see so much that you can't see on a stat sheet. 

The swing:  If you want to see a beautiful, fluid left-handed stroke, look no further than Whittleman who, though born right handed, instinctively turned himself around and stroked it southpaw from the time he was a toddler.   

The leadership:  When you watch Whittleman around the ballyard, you immediately note that he's a real leader and that his teammates are drawn to him.   He genuinely interested in the success of his teammates and he won't let a man go down without a fight.

The work ethic:   The kid plays hard.   Really really hard.   He loves being a baseball player.  He loves to think about the craftsmanship of the game.  He loves to talk about it.   He's a joy to watch, even when things aren't going his way.

I put Whittleman in that category of player who is a very strong bet to get everything there is out of his talent.   There's no doubt in my mind that this kid will do whatever he has to do to make himself the best player he can be.

I expect a big year in Bakersfield and look forward to seeing  him make his debut at the confluence of Highway 121 and the North Dallas Tollway in August.

1)   Christopher L. Davis -- 22 YO   3b  (LH)   (2006 5th Round)

Look to the left.  What you see is something that pitchers in the Cal League and Texas League saw all too often as the most powerful hitter in either of those leagues launches yet another tape-measure shot into the stratosphere.

Chris Davis is a bad man.

But I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't sold on Davis until August.   I was extremely skeptical, in fact.  I went so far as to tell a friend that Davis was almost certainly fools gold.   Yes, he had throttled Cal League pitchers to the tune of a .298 / .340 / .573 line;  yes, he jacked 24 offerings out of the yard in 99 games;  yes, he had a league-record 35-game hit streak; but, he also fanned 123 times and walked just 23 times in 386 at-bats.   

Having grown up a Dodgers fan, I'd seen this show before and remembered it all too well.   As I watched Davis put those numbers together in Bakersfield, one thought raced through my mind:  Billy Ashley .   

The numbers Davis put up in Bakersfield were eerily similar to those posted by the one-time overhyped Dodgers phenom who fanned 135 times and walked 25 times during his swim through Bakersfield in 1990 (and racked up 111K's against 16 BB's at Double-A San Antonio in 1992 and then 143 K's against 35 BB's at Albequerque in 1993).

I tried to rationalize Davis's apparent lack of discipline by telling myself that anyone as hot as he was sort of owed it to himself to whack away since there seemed to be about a 30% chance he'd drive something to or over a wall, but I received his arrival in Frisco with a healthy dose of reservation nonetheless.

What I saw, and what the numbers demonstrate, is that Davis immediately comprehended that he had to shrink his strike zone if he was going to compete against the superior pitching in the Texas League.   He made his adjustments so quickly, that he left the impression that he's the kind of kid who can do just about anything once he sets his mind to it.

As impossible as it seemed coming into the promotion, Davis improved over his Bakersfield performance in every single category.  He became more selective (0.48 BB/K ratio in Frisco  /  0.18 BB/K ratio in Bakersfield),  and he became more powerful (he homered more than twice as frequently in Frisco as he did in Bakersfield).

He ended his short but memorable reign of terror in the Texas League having hit .298 / .371 / .688  / 1.057.   

Davis is always going to rack up the K's, but so do Ryan Howard, Adam Dunn.   It's unlikely that Davis will ever walk quite as much as those two, but I can't rule it out.   He's proven to me that he has what it takes to make adjustments quickly and as fearful pitchers stay away from him more and more, let they find themselves rendered BP fodder, he may very well learn to wait them out.  If he learns to do so consistently, and gets himself into 2-0, 3-1 and 3-0 counts on a regular basis, he's capable of hitting 50 dingers as a Texas Ranger someday...relatively soon.

In spite of the fact that he is blessed with an absolute howitzer of an arm, Davis is not a plus defender, but he's making strides there as well.   As I wrote in August:

You know that Frisco third baseman Chris Davis is a powerful man, but his defense is dramatically underrated.    Davis made two nice plays last night that challenged both his glove and his arm.  Pitcher Michael Schlact told me that the big lefty's glove work was inconsistent through the first couple of months of the season but that he "worked his tail off every day.  I mean hard.  And he's gotten to the point where he's really strong.  He's made a lot of great plays behind me." Schlact is one of the more pronounced ground ball pitchers in the organization, and so good infield defense is certainly not something he takes lightly.

Davis may very well find himself on the other corner of the infield by the end of the 2008 season and it's even possible, given his cannon of an arm, that he'll end  up in right field.   I don't really care.   I just want that bat  in the Rangers' lineup for about 15 years.