[RedsManRick]

I see that .300/.400/.500 and my eyes light up too -- especially because of the walk rate. But I also see that his walk rate was more than cut in half in AA while he continued to strike out more than 20% of the time. And if we were to normalize his BABIP, we're looking at a .260/.360/.440 line. Still impressive for a 22 year old catcher, but not quite as much.

Not to break character, but in any event there's a BIG difference between what slash stats a guy puts up and what his hit tool is. Doug is talking about an assessment about the guy's ultimate true talent -- not how that talent has manifested itself so far.

Especially in the low minors there can be a big gap between observed performance and actual (or projected) ability, for any number of reasons. For example, a guy who can launch a straight fastball 500 feet and who has decent pitch recognition but who can't touch a good breaking pitch can hit .320 in the low minors with great power since he's facing a bunch of guys who can throw their breaking stuff for a strike. Put that guy in AAA (or the majors) and he's a .240 hitter and his power drops off as he makes weaker contact against better quality pitches. And that's just one thing. There's also the poor quality of the fields, worse defense, park effects, age relative to competition, etc.

When we're talking about the minor leagues, the simple answer is that the performance numbers can be very deceiving. That's not to say they're useless, but the lower you go in the minors the less and less insightful actual performance is and the more you need to rely on the scouts. I don't think any of us has greater insight from what we can read in the numbers than we Doug can provide us from what he's scouted.