METS MINORS SPOTLIGHT - LUIS GUILLORME
Some guys are just efficient, you know? And competent.
Luis Guillorme is one of them.
Binghamton AA shortstop/2B glove Luis is putting up another very, very solid season in 2017.
In 2015, he won the MVP for the South Atlantic League Mets squad, slashing .318/.391/.354 in 122 games for a team that won a whole lot, in no small part to him.
Last year in St Lucie, he slipped to .263 in 123 games, pulled down by a weak May, but hit .275 when the calendar excluded the merry month of May.
In 2017, May (.248) was again weak, as he is hitting .317 with a .415 OBP in non-May months. .298/.370/.351 overall; 12 hits and 9 walks in his last 9 hot games thru July 9.
His teams win.
With him on the Binghamton squad, it is not surprising that they have a winning record, a scarce commodity for Mets minor league teams.
He clearly does quite well at getting on base.
Offensively otherwise, he is the anti-Judge, with just 2 career triples and 1 homer in about 1,800 plate appearances, along with just 61 doubles.
Anti-Judge size too, 10 inches shorter at 5'9". Luis' power game falls at the very low end of the spectrum. 16 doubles, no 3Bs or HRs in 2017 for daily player Guillorme.
Speed? He is a competent basestealer but infrequent, with 8 of 11 in 200 games in 2016 and 2017, after 18 of 26 in 2015. My take? Average speed, intelligent baserunner.
Defenively, he is a whiz, both with catching bats and day-to-day fielding. Splitting time between 2nd and shortstop this year, he has made 9 errors, not terrific but acceptable. I'm sure his defense saves many runs.
So why is he still in AA?
He's blocked by mid IFs Amed Rosario, Gavin Cecchini, Josh Rodriguez, light hitting former 1st rounder for the Astros Jio Mier, Matt Reynolds (for the short stretches when he is not with the Mets), and Phil Evans in Vegas.
Evans has been playing 3rd to lessen the logjam, and Rodriguez the outfield, but both have been more of a middle infielder than a corner of OF guy.
A case could be made that fellow AA Rumble Ponies 2B (and currently disabled) Kevin Taylor (.308, .401 on base) and 3B David Thompson, who has raised his average 65 points since mid-May, deserve promotions too, although the logjam in AAA may preclude that for them until 2018.
My guess? Luis gets promoted to AAA to play SS as soon as Rosario gets promoted to the Big Show, maybe this month.
The question? Will he achieve even what Reese Kaplan non-fave Ruben Tejada (MLB appearances, .252/.326/.320) has done in his career? Ruben debuted at age 20, while Luis in AA turns 23 shortly after this season (partially due to much less competitive Mets minor leaguers in 2010 allowing for quicker promotion).
Ruben has 118 extra base hits in about 2,400 MLB plate appearances, about one every 20 times up vs. Luis' 1:30.
And Luis is a career .962 fielder at SS, .978 at 2B. Ruben is .974 and .980 in his major league career. So Tejada may not be a better fielder than Luis, but his fielding % is superior.
Heck, even l'il Ruben is listed 2 inches taller than Luis.
The Ruben vs. Luis question - which will be better long term - is worth pondering. I'd have to vote for Ruben until proven otherwise. Guillorme by comparison still has much to prove.
Perhaps Guillorme can achieve much more than Tejada, even in a day and age in baseball where power is a far more greatly valued attribute than back in the Bud Harrelson days? Your valued thoughts, dear reader?
Anyway, if he does get promoted to AAA in the weeks ahead, yesterday's Macks Mets-spotlighted AA player Dale Burdick will be happy to start playing a lot more.
Anyway, if he does get promoted to AAA in the weeks ahead, yesterday's Macks Mets-spotlighted AA player Dale Burdick will be happy to start playing a lot more.
5 comments:
The only Reuben I want to hear about contains corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss and Russian dressing on rye.
He does have "utility infielder" written all over him as his bat is probably not enough to get a starting role ahead of guys like Rosario, Rivera, Flores or even Cecchini. Of course, that should have been Tejada's role, too, but the Skipper saw him through Honus-colored lenses.
Oh, and off-topic I saw this tweet this morning to warm the cockles of your heart, "Through 14 games with St. Lucie Mets Tim Tebow is slashing .318/.412/.500, has reached base in each game and has 9-game hitting streak."
Reese, for a guy like Tebow, to not have any BB pro experience, he is badly outplaying many other Mets' top prospects like 5th rounder Colby Woodmansee (.094) and 2nd rounder Des Lindsay (sub .200). He deserves tons of credit.
And the alluded-to Reuben sandwich has me thinking "lunch". Tejada by the way is hitting .237 in 23 Orioles games.
My main memories of Ruben were him looking like a 14 year old at the plate when he was a rookie, and the little man hitting 2 balls near the top of the Great Wall of Flushing that first year, homers anywhere else but Queens.
Reese, saw this in an article about Timmy T that represents a professional, up close observation:
Jupiter manager Kevin Randel says he can see improvement in Tebow’s game, just from when he saw him in spring training to now. ”I don’t think anything he does is a surprise,” Randel told The Palm Beach Post. ”He’s a superior athlete. He was off the game for so long, so it’s not a surprise that it’s coming along.”
Timmy boy is all over the media today with his walk-off home run for St. Lucie. Maybe Sandy Alderson is indeed like a broken clock.
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