The Angels announced today (via Twitter) that they have claimed outfielder Gary Brown off waivers from the Cardinals and optioned him to Triple-A. In order to clear room on the 40-man roster, Cory Rasmus was transferred to the 60-day disabled list.
Formerly considered one of the top 50 prospects in all of baseball by Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus and MLB.com, Brown’s upside never translated into results in the upper Minors. He’s a career .248/.305/.379 hitter in 1238 plate appearances at the Triple-A level and received a brief, seven-game cup of coffee with the Giants last season.
BA praised Brown’s 80-grade speed (on the 20-80 scouting scale) in their post-2011 scouting report — the same offseason in which they ranked him 38th among all prospects. He projected at one point as an elite defender in center field and a leadoff hitter with some surprising pull power, per BA, but clearly those expectations have been significantly dampened at this point.
For someone with 80 speed, he sure gets caught stealing a lot… 141/69 SB/CS in the Minors.
80 speed is not necessarily 80 decision making. Deciding when to steal a base is 50% of actually stealing it. No matter how fast you are, if the other team knows you are running, you are likely to be caught unless you are Rickey Henderson or a young Vince Coleman.
I wasn’t saying he didn’t deserve the 80 speed grade, just pointing out that if speed, and presumably, baserunning, is going to be your standout tool, you better be good at it. He is not.
Having great speed doesn’t necessarily translate to good base running skills.
and he has horrendous base running skills and is apparently non coachable
In addition, he is so fast that, even though he’s right handed, he can get to first base just as fast as any left hander.
But yeah, his inability to capitalize on that speed, whether through beating out grounders or via stealing bases, has been greatly disappointing.
That said, I still like him as a prospect. He had a good hitting approach when he was a junior in college, but if you saw his batting mechanics that year, he was all over the place and yet still hit the ball, and hit it hard, he got a lot of extra bases, enough for him to beat out Longoria in SLG and OPS for best in the 8 years of records I could find. I don’t have any hope for that any more, but I think he should at least be able to be a great 4th OF, spot starter, in the mode of how Blanco has been used, where he hits barely OK but makes up for that with very good defense (I don’t think he’ll be as good as Blanco, but with that speed, and natural defensive abilities he showed before, he could be better defensively).
I gave up on Brown last year. When I was reading interviews where he was refusing to give up his ‘power’ hitting for hitting for average like the Giants coaches wanted him to do, I knew he was going to stubborn himself into baseball purgatory.
Maybe his ego will take enough bruising with these releases that he’ll finally listen and change his ways.
for a second, i thought the angels got the governor.
The Mets dodged a bullet w. this guy (a few years back when they were looking to trade).
Thats ok, they ran into a few other bullets along the way.
ha ha!
Well, it all evens out, we got Pagan and the Mets, well, eventually released the guys we gave up.
Fair. Mets fans would probably be more perturbed given how well Pagan has played since the trade, but we also stole Wheeler for 2-3mon of Beltran. Granted Wheeler is on the DL, but I’d still do that trade 10 out of 10 times.