Harvesting Opinion: Oakland Athletics – Choice, Green, and Future Bats
By Aaron Somers
Harvesting Opinion is a regular feature on Seedlings to Stars. Each week, a handful of FanSided’s MLB sites send S2S a question relating to their team’s minor league system, and we answer them in this space–each question gets one article devoted to answering it. In this way, we make sure we regularly get to discuss hot-button issues relating to the systems of every team, as we cover the teams in a regular, recurring cycle.
Please note that any statistics used may be a day or two out of date, as we prepare our answers over the course of a week.
In this edition, we tackle a question sent to us from our Oakland Athletics blog Swingin’ A’s:
The Athletics haven’t had much success this season, and many fans are growing upset about the team’s poor level of play. Many are calling Billy Beane’s youth movement, which dates back to the end of the 2007 season, a failure. Poor offensive support has doomed the A’s in recent years, and it’s been a real obstacle for the cash-strapped A’s to strike a balance between strong pitching and a consistent offensive attack. The A’s, however, have made an effort to upgrade their offense in recent years, as evidenced by their recent draft picks. Players like Michael Choice and Grant Green are young talented hitters, and Oakland figures to get a boost offensively when some of their young hitters make it to the big leagues. So, I guess the only question is a matter of when will these young hitters make it to the majors?
Nathaniel says:
Well, it certainly depends on what hitters you’re talking about. Oakland’s system is problematic at the moment, as there isn’t a whole lot of impact talent beyond Choice. He’s the only prospect I gave any consideration to for my top 100 this year, and as an A’s fan, I’m quite familiar with their system.
Choice is an intriguing player, but he epitomizes the “one level per year” prospect. He’s always had huge strikeout problems and is going to need a full year to adjust to each new level of pitching and figure out how to make contact at a reasonable rate. That puts his Oakland ETA as 2014.
Grant Green is no longer a top prospect. He’s moved from shortstop to center field, his power didn’t come with him from the Cal League, and he still has serious issues with the strike zone (119/39 K/BB). He’s not going to steal bases, either. That basically makes him a righthanded version of Ryan Sweeney—a guy who hits a bunch of singles and a few doubles while playing solid outfield defense, but contributes little else. Soon to be 24, he’s not a player that is going to be a centerpiece for the A’s, as he’s perhaps best cast as a super-utility guy in the majors.
The brighter news is that there are some guys who can help immediately. At some point, Oakland simply has to give Chris Carter and Michael Taylor half a season to sink or swim, because they’re as ready as they’re ever going to be. Anthony Recker’s ready to be a solid offensive catcher, Jermaine Mitchell is probably a better option in center than Green’s ever going to be, and Adrian Cardenas, like Green, can help in a utility role. And Carter, Taylor, Recker, and Cardenas are all ready to play right now. Factor in current starting first baseman Brandon Allen, second baseman Jemile Weeks, shortstop Cliff Pennington, and infielders Eric Sogard, Scott Sizemore, and Wes Timmons, and you have most of a team put together. They’ll need a few years to grow, but could ultimately become an average offense, once you factor in how tough of a park they play in.
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Wally says:
I spent much of the last several months trying to work in an article about Michael Choice. When he hit 5 HR in 5 games from July 2nd to July 6th, I was really motivated to write it, but that was a busy weekend for me with several family functions.
So this is finally my chance to state publicly that I am a Michael Choice fan and believer. It helps that he was one of my successfully predicted picks in my 2010 mock draft [https://calltothepen.com/2010/05/21/draft-currents-2010-mlb-mock-draft-2/], but he augmented that by signing with the A’s on July 28th, 2010 – a good two and a half weeks before the deadline. As a result, he was able to get 30 games as a professional under his belt that season, and thus could come into his first full minor league season more prepared and aware of what to expect.
Naturally, the disclaimers about the California League and offensive numbers apply to his season, but it’s hard to regard it as anything but a success. He hit 0.285/.376/.542 with 28 2B and 30 HR in 542 PA for Stockton this season. He did strike out 134 times in 116 games, which, as Nathaniel mentioned, is a bit of a concern. However, he did walk 61 times, which is not an insignificant number and shows progress over his 45-17 SO-to-BB (30 G) from 2010. It may not seem like much, but striking out 1.16 times per game is better than 1.5 times per game. And his ratio improved from 2.65 SO/BB to 2.20 SO/BB. For a raw, athletic 21-year old playing his first full season in high-A, that’s encouraging progress.
He’s assuredly ticketed for AA in 2012, and while he may move at a methodical 1 level per season pace, I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets a taste of Triple-A next season and debuts during the summer of 2013. It will all depend on how his “unorthodox” swing works outside of the Cal League and against more advanced pitching in the upper minors.
Grant Green represents the opposite of Choice for me. I’ve never been a fan and was disgusted by Royals fans who felt Dayton Moore should have drafted Green 12th overall in 2009 – one spot before the A’s selected him – and had him tabbed Kansas City’s SS of the future. The Royals wound up taking RHP Aaron Crow instead, which was better, but I was on record before the draft that RHP Shelby Miller (who went 19th to St Louis) should have been their pick.
Getting back to Green, there was a large camp of folks that didn’t believe he would be a SS in the major leagues, and I was solidly in that group. As Nathaniel mentioned above, he started the transition to CF this season, so it appears his days in the middle-infield are behind him. Beyond losing value due to the unavoidable position shift, I was never really sold on Green’s bat.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it will be good enough to get him to the majors, but I don’t believe it’s going to be enough to make him a franchise cornerstone that some very optimistic people were claiming he could be, especially if he’s not manning short. He performed better than I thought he would in Double-A this season, hitting 0.291/.343/.408, but the 112 point decline in SLG is a bit curious even if you factor the Cal League environment into his 0.520 SLG in 2010. As Nathaniel mentioned, the SO-to-BB numbers are also a bit of a concern given his reputation and the fact that they showed essentially zero improvement from the previous season. I’m a little more optimistic than Nathaniel on his future, which is odd since I’m not a Grant Green fan. I think he has a chance to be an everyday player in the majors if he finds his way to 2B, but for the A’s, that would put him up against Jemile Weeks for playing time, and I don’t see Green winning that battle. If he remains in the OF he will have some value and get some regular playing time, but he will be one of those guys you look to upgrade every offseason.
As far as the other guys who are ready to contribute as early as Opening Day 2012, I think Nathaniel summed up the options quite well. If Michael Taylor and Chris Carter pan out and Choice joins them in 2013, they could have a nice middle of the order core to build around. If not, fans will likely wind up watching an offensively challenged team for some time.
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For more on the Athletics, check out Swingin’ A’s
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