Speed is the New Power?

Several weeks ago, right around the time of the 2007 amateur draft, a friend emailed me a rant he had read on the Twins' disproportionate emphasis on pitching prospects in the drafts between 2002 and 2005. The argument itself was pretty silly on its face, as the dates are rather obviously chosen specifically to exclude the several quality position draftees that currently occupy Minnesota's roster. If we accept the easily acceptable proposition that the point of the amateur draft is more to build a quality MLB team and less to impress Baseball America with your system depth (not that those goals are necessarily exclusive) then it's not difficult to accept that Twins' scouting brass looked at the team in 2002ish and thought to themselves, "We're gonna have a batch of pretty decent position players up on the big club for the next 5-6 years. Maybe we should find some pitching." Though it's possible this sentiment was circulated in email or cellphone form rather than telepathically. We can't be sure.

An alternate rant that I would have sympathized with is that the Twins are still recovering from some rather unimpressive drafts. BJ Garbe? And the 2001 draft is pretty underwhelming once you get past the first name on the list. That's not the point here though.

I'd rather talk about Ben Revere. He's put up a .328/.373/.481 line in GCL play so far. As a 19 year old, that's not really too breathtaking, though it's his first couple months of wood bats and pro ball so it's not like he's a particularly slow mover; he was just old for a high school senior. What's rather cool about that .481 SLG is that it's built on the strength of 8 triples in 33 games. After Denard Span and Matt Moses and countless other Twins' prospects made short work of rookie and A-ball competition only to stall out as they advanced, I'm resolved not to get too wound up about Revere. He needs to walk more and hit the ball over the fence once and awhile before he's more Curtis Granderson than Jason Tyner. But what I will get wound up about is a triple every four games. There's obviously not much to take from that developmentally, except that Revere is very, very fast, a fact which hasn't been in dispute. So we wont deal with it from a developmental perspective, but rather from a fan perspective.

Triples are awesome.

Jose Reyes is a great, valuable player because he's buttressed his speed with improving plate discipline (honestly, why would anybody walk that guy if they could possibly avoid it?). But Jose Reyes is awesome because he hits triples.

Joe Benson is the CFer for the Twins' low-A affiliate in Beloit. He has 6 triples this year in 95 games. That's not as frequent tripling as Revere, or even as many triples as Revere, but it's a decent triple total. He's also hitting .294/.369/.452 since the beginning of July. There was a cool Bryan Smith article in BPro a couple months ago about teenage prospects in the MWL. Since I possess the tiny brain of a stegosaurus, I enjoyed his liberal use of anecdotal evidence. Since I further possess great powers of rationalization, I prefer his liberal use of anecdotal evidence because the ultimate end of player development is quality MLB players. Volume is nice, but the process is directed towards production of specific, individually valuable players. In any event, Justin Upton hit .263/.342/.413 there and it didn't stop anybody from thinking he was the next Willie Mays. Unless they never thought that to begin with. Lots of people prefer not to go overboard by comparing 19 year olds to inner-circle Hall of Famers, and being boring and reasonable is their prerogative. He also only hit one triple, which gives him a significantly lower awesome quotient than both Ben Revere and Joe Benson. Miguel Cabrera hit .260/.328/.382 there when he was an 18 year old at Kane County. He also only hit two triples, but gets some extra credit because I presently have a difficult time imagining Miguel Cabrera hitting triples even though he's apparently done so twice this year.

If you've gotten this far without already wondering what my point is, you should begin that process now. I did, in fact, choose a title to this blog entry, which suggests that I intended at some point to construct an argument. Don't feel bad if you were duped by this. I don't actually have a point. If you're looking for something to take away from all of this, here are some choices:

1. Between Revere, Daniel Rams, Chris Parmelee, Joe Benson, Wilson Ramos, Deibinson Romero and Trevor Plouffe, the Twins have a pretty good batch of 21-and-under position prospects.

2. Maybe four of those guys will ever see a big-league roster. Maybe 2-3 of those will put together a 5 year MLB career.

3. Prospect watching is fun anyways.

4. Triples are awesome.

5. Speed isn't really the new power. Speed is speed, but that's still better than speed being the old speed, which nobody cared about at all.

6. Corey Hart has only three triples, but is almost shockingly fast for somebody listed at 6'6". He was also picked in the 11th round of the famously bizarre 2000 draft. The Twins chose Adam Johnson. The Rockies chose Matt Harrington.

7. Matt LaPorta has a .260 IsoP in the Pioneer League. The Brewers have had some absolutely fascinating drafts lately.