July 20 minor league updates

[princeton]

just curious...what type of end-of-season numbers would Stubbs have to put up to ease your concerns????

His current numbers aren't much different than Jason Larue's numbers in Billings, so I'd say that if he holds his current stats, then he might be able to hit like a decent major league catcher. So hope for improvement.

[Caveat Emperor]

RF - You will find out that there are some guys who will get a longer a leash on REDSZONE than others. Stubbs seems to have fallen into the latter category and I suspect that it will dog him for the rest of his REDS career. If he isn't producing phenomenal stats day in day out he will be ridden hard.

He was drafted in the first round out of one of the top 10 college programs in the nation. He's older than most of his competition, physically more mature, and has more games of experience under his belt than most of the other kids he is competing against. He should walk into the rookie leagues and he should murder these guys. I buy getting off to a slow start -- players slump all the time and it could just be that he slumped right out of the gate. Not his fault.

However, having said that, there are still a lot of warning signs that I dislike from Stubbs. First and foremost is his almost complete lack of power numbers. With roughly 120 PAs to his credit, Stubbs has yet to hit a home run. He has a grand total of 8 extra base hits, and though I haven't seen him play and given the reports about his speed, it makes me wonder how many "hustle" XBHs he has gotten as opposed to good gap-power XBHs.

I hope the switch from aluminum to wood hasn't robbed him of the power he showed in college; we'll have to see how his development goes as he continues through the minor leagues. Suffice it to say, though, if he can't develop a power game it will limit his potential to be anything truly special or out of the ordinary.