Keith Law is such a Reds-hater it's silly. He released his Midseason top 50 today: Stephenson at 36, no Winker.
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Keith Law is such a Reds-hater it's silly. He released his Midseason top 50 today: Stephenson at 36, no Winker.
Baseball Prospectus had Winker ranked 42, but somehow him being ranked more than 9 spots lower than that is some crazy, Reds hating bias?
Seems a bit much. Law puts a lot of stock in up the middle guys. Winker isn't one of them. If his Top 100 comes out at the end of the year and Winker isn't in it, then start talking about crazy biases. But for all we know at this point, Winker is #51 on his list, which isn't exactly out there when looking at other places lists.
Or, he simply doesn't believe that he is. Again, not that I agree with him, but everyone doesn't have to agree on something and it doesn't make them dumb, biased, stubborn or something else just because they disagree with you or I on it. OK, some times it does, but not always.
You're right, but I think people do not give Law the benefit of the doubt because he is a class-A a-hole
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article/cin/...&vkey=news_cin
Quote:
Our task with this week's Pipeline Perspectives is to discuss who we believe will be the first from the 2014 SiriusXM All-Star Futures Game to play in the Major League All-Star Game. But we needed to make it a little more challenging.
Both Jim Callis and I agree that Cubs third-base prospect Kris Bryant is the best answer to the question. So we agreed to pick someone other than Bryant in each of our pieces.
I decided to take a little bit more of a chance, going with a player who has only played 20 games at the Double-A level this year after spending his first 53 in the Class A Advanced California League. But after watching Reds outfield prospect Jesse Winker swing the bat in the Futures Game, I'm convinced that his sweet left-handed swing will get him to Cincinnati sooner rather than later and carry him to All-Star Games fairly quickly thereafter.
Quote:
Winker doubled the other way in his first at-bat, facing a lefty in Edwin Escobar, no less. He came around to score the first run of the game, in the bottom of the third inning, and tried to go the other way again in his second at-bat, flying out to left. That should tell you something about his approach.
One former general manager on the field who was watching said, "Wow, this kid can hit, huh?"
That he can. Winker is going to figure out Double-A before long, and I could see him being a prime candidate for the Arizona Fall League. That experience could be just the catapult he needs to get to the highest level.
I would like to note, that while Winker was in the same neighborhood as Bruce in HR total while both were in Dayton at similar ages, Bruce had 40 2B, while Winker's 2B total was in the teens.
If you want to compare Winker to a current Reds player I wouldn't choose Jay Bruce. Winker is much more similar to Joey Votto in terms of his swing, approach, power and plate discipline. Votto, like Winker, was also an underrated prospect for most of his minor league career.
You are almost right.
His swing is a lot more like that of Bruce. The results are quite Votto like in how he uses it, but the swing itself is far more Bruce than it is Votto. It's why you hear a lot of Bruce comparisons. That is also the reason I tend to hate scouting comparisons because they are about how a guy looks a lot more often than they are about what a guy projects to produce like.
If Winker ends up producing like Votto, the Reds are going to be very, very good for the next several years.