Jonathan Mayo - A native of the Bahamas, Stuart played three sports at Christ School in Asheville, N.C. Brevard is a Division II school and is off the beaten path for scouts, but they have taken notice of Stuart. He is a special athlete who is still learning the game and has exciting raw tools. His swing is a work in progress, but he generates good bat speed. His tools profile best as a top of the order hitter where his speed can play up. Stuart has a solid arm and can play right field or center field, though he must improve his reads.
“Athletically, he went to over a dozen major league workouts,” said McCay, who played his college ball at North Carolina and served as an assistant there before coming to Brevard in 2010. “He’s been running some 60s in the 6.1s. I played with and coached some pretty fast guys and never saw anybody run below like a 6.4.” James said he was told Oakland clocked Stuart’s outfield throws at 95 miles per hour. Stuart swiped 39 bases in 42 attempts and led Brevard (16-32) with a .300 batting average and five homers. As a sophomore, Stuart led the South Atlantic Conference with a .419 average and 14 stolen bases.
.300/.444/.479 8 doubles, 1 triple, 5 HR, 30 BB, 37 K, 39 SB, 3 CS
Baseball America - Blazing speed can’t be taught, so scouts naturally gravitate toward players like Stuart. He is a native of the Bahamas but attended high school at the prestigious Christ School in Asheville, N.C., where he played football, basketball and baseball, before heading about 45 minutes away to Division II Brevard for college. Brevard had a poor season, finishing in mid-April with a 16-32 record, but that was enough time for scouts to get intrigued by his all-around package. He hit .300/.444/.479 with 39 stolen bases in 42 attempts this season. Stuart has a short, strong frame at 5-foot-11, 175 pounds and offers surprising power. Speed is obviously his biggest calling card. He needs to work on his routes in center field, though he can get away with outrunning his mistakes. The biggest question is with the bat. He has a simple swing but a poor approach and gets beat by below-average stuff. He hits too many fly balls rather than putting the ball on the ground and getting down the line, and he doesn’t incorporate his lower half enough.
PG - Stuart is a rare baseball product from The Bahamas, though has actually spent the last six years developing his skills while hidden out in the mountains of North Carolina—most recently for three years at Brevard College, a small Division II school, and prior to the that at The Christ School, a private high school in Asheville, which gained national attention recently for launching the three Plumlee brothers onto prominent college basketball careers at Duke. Stuart was a three-sport athlete in high school and played basketball briefly with the Plumlees, but his primary motivation for coming to the U.S. all along was to pursue a baseball career, and he has quietly emerged as a significant prospect for this year’s draft, mainly on the strength of his blazing raw speed. He was clocked in 6.31 seconds in the 60 last fall at Brevard’s Scout Day, and duplicated that time this spring by running a lightning-quick 6.34. But the 5-foot-11, 175-pound Stuart is hardly just a one-tool talent as he led the D-II South Atlantic Conference in hitting (.423) a year ago, while going deep six times, and followed up by hitting five more homers this spring, while stealing 39 bases in 42 attempts. With a fastball at 89-91 mph at the time, Stuart was initially recommended to new Brevard coach Matt McCay as a pitcher, though has since settled into center field, where his raw speed and arm strength are both significant assets. Though he has played little baseball in his career beyond his time in the Carolina mountains, at least two scouting directors, not to mention several cross-checkers, made the trek to Brevard this spring to personally scout Stuart, and give him a fighting chance of succeeding at the pro level on the strength of his top-of-the-scale speed alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment