Quote Originally Posted by mace View Post
No, there was an earlier occasion when he wasn't around and nobody knew where he was. I wish I could remember the exact scenario. I believe it was when all the other highly touted young guys reported early to spring training and he was conspicuously absent. Again, there may have been legitimate circumstances. We just don't know. But there's sort of a buildup of caution flags that we've been seeing with him.
I believe that you are right. Also, given the timeline of the birth of his child, around that time is probably when he was just finding out that it existed. Whether that has anything at all to do with why he didn't show up early when invited, I have no idea. As for caution flags, I will just say that all I have heard about on him has all been directly from this year. His third in the system. To me that suggests more circumstances than actual issues.

Does the fact that he was playing in Dayton really have much to do with it? Is it harder to play with a good attitude in Dayton than it is in, say, the AZL, where there are a lot of 18-year-olds?
I think it makes a difference in perception, yes. When he has been surrounded by other younger players in the AZL and Billings in the past two seasons, we never once heard any issues about his on the field attitude or effort. We never heard about any off the field issues with him either. Is it because they didn't exist? No idea. Is it because he was being compared to other players more along his age line, even though he was always much younger than the others? No idea, but it could be, especially since there is at least some history of those levels having other players close to his age come through. Dayton simply doesn't have any counterpart for comparison with him ever until Ronald Torreyes showed up in June, after we had already started hearing things, meaning that people were then also continuing to look for things to confirm that. Maybe it isn't perception. But I think it absolutely could be too, at least in part, because there simply haven't been anyone else his age on the team in its history, or even in a Reds full season league since at least 1995 when I stopped looking.