#1 Brandon Belt, 1B/OF. BD: 4/20/1988. 6'5", 195 lbs. B-L, T-L.
A+: .383/.492/.628, 10 HR, 18 SB in 269 AB.
AA: .337/.413/.623, 9 HR, 2 SB in 175 AB.
AAA: .229/.393/.563, 4 HR, 2 SB in 48 AB.
AFL: .372/.427/.616, 8 2B, 5 3B, 1 HR in 86 AB.
You can't argue with his numbers. They are all there: Hitting, hitting for power, plate discipline, good speed for his size and position. If those numbers are for real, well, Brandon Belt is the real deal. Let the puns begin: Brandon Belt's 3 HR's in one game! Brandon Belts it deeeeeep!!! In his first season of professional baseball, Brandon Belt has gone from being an unheralded 5'th round draft choice who some people thought might have sleeper potential to being one of the hottest prospects in all of baseball, likely top 20-30 in BA's Top 100, if not top 10. I simply could not ignore the height of his ceiling as well as his proximity to the majors and thus made him my #1 Giants Prospect of 2011.
The accolades come from everywhere. No less of an authority than Will "The Thrill" Clark said that Brandon Belt's swing is even better than his own, and Clark's was legendary! One of his minor league managers compared his plate discipline to Barry Bonds saying if the pitch is 2" off the plate, he's not going to swing at it!
So, how did Brandon Belt go from being a "sleeper pick" in the 2009 draft to being one of the hottest prospects in all of baseball? He played his college ball at Texas, a baseball powerhouse, so there was nothing wrong with his level of competition. He put up lines of .319/.381/.496 with 6 HR's in 2008 and .323/.416/.523 with 8 HR's in 2009. Those are good numbers, but nothing special for a college hitter using metal bats. He had a reputation of hitting more for average and OBP than for power. Now, the Giants have long had a reputation for not being able to develop hitters, so it has to be surprising that they immediately had Brandon open up his stance and elevate his swing from level to slightly uppercut during the 2009 Fall Instructional League in Arizona. The results couldn't have been more dramatic. It should be noted that these changes are not unlike the ones Andres Torres made to his approach on his own before signing with the Giants. His results were pretty darn dramatic too!
The only hesitation here is the nagging feeling that maybe this is all too good to be true. Although Giants fans have seen a lot of good things happen lately, they also have a long history of having hopes dashed by touted prospects, especially of the hitting variety. Maybe this is all too much too fast? Maybe some scout will find the Kryptonite hole in his swing that he just can't close? You always have to have a bit of healthy skepticism for one year wonders.
The Giants have said that Brandon will get a chance to win a starting MLB job out of spring training. It will be either 1B or LF and Aubrey Huff will play the other position if Belt is successful. He won't be on the active roster as a reserve. If he fails to win a starting job, he will go to Fresno to get AB's and continue his development. If all this is real, and he wins the job in spring training, he just might make the Giants an offensive force to rival their vaunted pitching. Let the dreaming begin!
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I haven't been this excited to see a Giant hit since Bonds. I will be really surprised if he is not in the top 20 on BA's top prospects of 2011. Hopefully he will make the roster after a great ST.
ReplyDeleteWith the reports we keep hearing, why would Brandon Belt play OF if he makes the opening day roster? Is Aubrey Huff really that poor in the OF that the Giants would rather let Belt roam out there then develop what people are calling a gold-glove quality glove at 1B?
ReplyDeleteYou haven't been this excited to see a Giant hit since Bonds? What about Posey? Roger you need to calm down and breathe, while lowering your expectations completely. We're all excited to see Belt hit, but to hear you say that just makes you look like a giddy child who just discovered masturbation. Posey was the favorite by scouts and analysts to be the number one pick in the draft, then fell to us at number 5. He then went on to have an awesome season and be named minor league hitter of the year. Belt and Posey had similar years, they both hit for about the same average, Belt had slightly more pop, they both walked and had high on base percentages but Belt walked more while Posey struck out a lot less, Belt had more rbis and more speed. Belt had a better season, except we all knew Posey had the potential to be a superstar. Belt, on the other hand, exceeded everyones expectations but we have to wait and see if this is the REAL Brandon Belt and that he can carry off this success into the majors.
ReplyDeleteAnd Jazzhands, YES Huff is terrible at defense in the outfield. I watched at least at least 120 games last year and Huff had extremely poor range in the outfield. People would say how he did a good job at first, and how Burrel did a better than expected job in left field and how Uribe was great at short stop. Truth is, Burrel and Huff did not make many mistakes in the outfield and first base, respectively. And Uribe had an excellent arm at short stop. But that was just all the Giants fans and analysts overrating their players. Truth is, Uribe, Burrel and Huff had horrible range. There were so many balls hit past Uribe last year, did anyone ever see him make a diving attempt that Burress easily could have made? He was chunky and slow at short stop, but he had a bullet arm and made little mistakes when he did field the ball so he got way overrated. Burrel could catch what came to him, but he had a weak arm and he was super slow and could not get to any balls hit in the gap. He has no athleticism. Huff did a better than expected job at first, he actually made some good scoops from poor throw too, which were mostly from Uribe. Ishikawa is a gold glove defender and would have snatched up many balls that were hit past Huff, but Huff at least made some nice diving efforts which would turn into a nice play sometimes. In the outfield however, he was horrible. He could catch anything that was hit to him, but he took terrible routes and had no range. If Ishikawa was at fist, Burress at shortstop and Schierholtz in right field, the Giants pitchers would not have given up as much hits as they did, as Bumgarner, Zito and Lincecum gave up a lot which should have been outs. Belt should start at first because he's a great defender there, but it might be safer to put him in the outfield since Huff is a poor defender.
ReplyDeleteAnd Torres approach is not that dramatic. Giants fans overrated him. He is one of the most strikeout prone hitters in the league, which is made worse by the fact that he is suppose to be a lead off hitter. He hits for low averages (.268 average is horrible for a lead off hitter, Sandoval had about that average and everyone gave him crap) and is very streaky. His speed is very overrated, as if you watched as much games as I have you'd have noticed that he gets his steals off catchers with extremely terrible arms and pitchers who handicap their catchers chances at throwing out a runner by throwing knuckle balls or having a very slow motion. Perfect example: in the playoffs, Torres got thrown out by a mile twice by Brian McCann, who has an above average arm, and was thrown out by a wide margin by the Phillies catcher, who has an average to above average arm. He then got a stolen base off of Benji Molina, who has one of the worst arms in the Majors. Torres also got extremely lucky, he had one of the highest averages for balls hit in play. Many analysts use that stat to measure a player, and when a below average or average player such as Torres suddenly has a good year and his avg for balls hit in play is extremely high, then that means that he was incredibly lucky and is in for a huge downfall. You get the avg for balls hit in play by subtracting out strike outs and home runs, calculating that shows that Torres hit .374 whenever he hit a ball in play, which is incredibly high, especially considering that he hit a measly .268. Also if you watched the games you would have noticed that he hit a lot of ground balls and line drives into holes, which also points to luck. Just because he had a few big hits does not mean he is a good player, as nearly every hitter in our lineup had big hits because our pitching was so awesome that it would only give up 1, 2 or 3 runs and our hitting so horrible that we would be losing 1-0 or 2-1 or 3-2. And then our offense will finally score after our pitching is taken out, and people will point to the "big hit" in reality we had no hitting and our pitching put us in position to win but our hitting would almost lose it for us.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteYour analogies are well thought out and articulate. There is no sense arguing with you because you are quite the master debater. I was just trying to say that Belt came out of nowhere unlike Posey where we had high expectations. It is much more exciting to see talent come from unexpected places such as Torres and Huff where we weren't really expecting much before the season started.
Gee Whiz! Anonymous sure has a lot to say. Maybe he should start his own blog!
ReplyDeleteLets's see here:
I would rate Buster Posey a better prospect last year than Belt this year, probably Bumgarner too. I do think it's extremely exciting that Belt has come out of practically nowhere to be possibly an impact player as soon as this year! On the other hand, that's about the same way I remember feeling about Jesse Foppert back in the day.
I agree that Huff is a much better first baseman than a LF, so if Belt keeps hitting and can play a good LF, that is where he would help the Giants the most in 2011.
I completely disagree re. Torres, who had a by WAR than Jayson Werth did last year. I don't know when you were watching him, but the memories that stick in my mind were the booming drives up the alleys and over the fence. He had a lot of those! His BA took a huge hit starting from about 2 weeks before his appendectomy through the end of the season when he probably came back sooner than he should have. He was back to full health in the playoffs and became a force again. I don't know if he can keep it going or not, but Andres Torres had a great season last year.
BTW, anonymous. How hard is it to get yourself a handle so we can distinguish you from all the other anons out there?
67 of Andres Torres' 138 hits last year were extra base hits. That would seem to contradict the notion that his BABIP was due to a lot of seeing-eye grounders. I don't think any Giants hitter made more consistent hard contact than Andres when he was healthy.
ReplyDeletehttp://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20110117&content_id=16448384&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb
ReplyDeleteBelt is #3 1B prospect in all of baseball...
Sweet! Even though I think that is just for 1B.
ReplyDelete