Crazy thing is, the Royals have one of the best offensive catching prospects in the game not named Henry Davis, and he was completely blocked in AA until a couple week ago.IDK what has gotten into Salvador Perez since his elbow injury in 2019, but he is a completely different player. He has hit a HR in 4 straight games. He has 37 HRs for the year when his previous career high was 27. Last year he had 11 in 37 games.
The Royals have an interesting logjam in front of them. It makes a ton of sense to have Perez do more DHing as he gets older, so that may be a natural place to stick Melendez - let one catch and one DH every day.Crazy thing is, the Royals have one of the best offensive catching prospects in the game not named Henry Davis, and he was completely blocked in AA until a couple week ago.
MJ Melendez hit 28 home runs in AA this year as a 22 year old before finally moving up to AAA 2 weeks ago.... where he's gone on to hit 5 in his first 14 games. I got to see 5 of those home runs in one week when he was here playing our team, and not a single one of them was a cheap home run. He is a really, really consistent hitter, too. and has made absolute HUGE improvements since his 2019 season, cutting his K% in half and getting his BB% up almost into the teens. He appears to have gotten a bit pull happy this year, so that's something to watch on him, but I promise he still has that opposite field power.
He is vaulting up prospect lists right now (Rotowire moved him from unranked in their top 400 at the start of the season to around 70th, for fantasy purposes).
Keep an eye out on this guy, because he is going to be fun, and the Royal might need to trade him in the offseason.
Absolutely true. I got to watch Pratto earlier in the season (he got called up to AAA before their team came back down here) and he was the best of the Royals hitters that first week of the season (Bobby Witt has been on fire since then, but didn't look great that first week, color me disappointed). Pratto is patient (17% BB rate in AA!!!) and when he makes contact he absolutely crushes the ball. He also looked pretty good at 1B, as well.The Royals have an interesting logjam in front of them. It makes a ton of sense to have Perez do more DHing as he gets older, so that may be a natural place to stick Melendez - let one catch and one DH every day.
But they also have two 1B prospects in AAA and AA named Nick Pratto and Vinnie Pasquantino. Both are having really really tremendous seasons. But that's 4 guys for 3 lineup spots.
Not to nitpick, but it amounts to a month in any era.Sterling Marte has 20 steals since being traded to Oakland near the deadline. That's a high number for what amounts for a month in the modern era.
If it was just Baez that did it, you might have a point. Lindor and Pillar were also participating in the thumbs-down thing, and they don't have the excuse of having new in town. Baez is just the lightning rod here because he made the statements. The problem goes beyond him.Eh, like logically Baez really shouldn't, but I really don't feel like a player being upset that the fans are booing him at home after 66 PAs where he hasn't been dramatically worse than he normally is too unexpected, especially for Javy Baez. The Mets offense hasn't been any worse than it was in any other month of the year except July. and they had a particularly absurd run of 12 games against the two best teams in baseball with two cross country flights, it's the pitching that dropped from what they were doing (given the best pitcher in the league is out that makes some sense)
Baez isn't going to win this confrontation image wise but I get it, and maybe that's on the Mets for bringing in Baez to a pressure cooker environment and having a manager unaware of it.
View: https://twitter.com/chelsea_janes/status/1432818377354002437Amazing comeback by the Mets, sleeping through the whole game, down 5-1 in the 9th, they rally for 5 including Baez coming all the way around from 1st on a single to left plus a bobble to score the game-winning run. First time they have come from 4 down in the 9th to win the game in ten years.
140 wRC+ since the trade. He's also become one of the tougher strikeouts in baseball with a 13.9 K%.That’s been a good trade for the Mariners, despite the initial furor. Toro has been really good.