Stanton's Far From Ready

Mike Stanton, The Natural who was supposed to be the Marlins' savior, is obviously not ready for Prime Time. Stanton is striking out at an alarming 50% rate; one out of every two at bats is a strike out. People were calling Cameron Maybin a strike out machine; Stanton is way ahead of Maybin in strike out ratio. Well, I did not expect this 20 year old kid to come in here and save the Marlins' season; I was more realistic than that, I figured the kid would struggle a bit. But what's happening here cannot be called "struggling a bit". Night after night, regardless of who is the opposing pitcher, Stanton looks completely over matched. And here's the alarming part: pitchers are not just getting him out on major league breaking stuff. That would be expected. No, the really troubling part about Stanton's struggles is that pitchers are blowing fastballs by him. And I'm not talking about 100 mph heaters, either. Pitchers re blowing him away with low 90s fastballs. This is a really bad sign, because you can learn to hit the curve ball, but you can't learn to hit fastballs. Either you have the bat speed and the hand eye coordination or you don't.

I was going to say that at least his hitting woes have not affected him out in the field, but that went down the drain tonight. The pitcher was batting with two strikes and a man on 3rd base. JJ needs a strikeout here to keep that on 3rd base from scoring on an out. The pitcher lofts a fly ball foul down the right field line. Stanton charges the ball hard and...he makes the catch! The only problem was that the runner on 3rd was able to tag up and score easily as Stanton was in no position after the running catch to make any kind of a throw to the plate. Padres lead 2-1. Obviously Stanton should have let the ball drop and give JJ another shot at striking the pitcher out, almost a sure thing. By making that catch Stanton not only allowed what turned out to be the game winning run score, he cost JJ his consecutive game streak of allowing only one run or less. The kid's head was not in the game; probably dwelling on his poor hitting. And to add insult to injury, he struck out three times in the game, including looking for the final out.

At this point, the kid is not helping the team here and not helping himself. As the Ks mount, his confidence plummets. The Marlins need to send him back down to the minors, but to AAA this time, not AA. He should face a better grade of pitcher in AAA than he did in AA where he was killing them. And they might as well bring Cameron Maybin back who at least only struck out once every four at bats. He did show some flashes here and there. At any rate Maybin is much closer to being ready that Stanton, of that there is no doubt. The numbers don't lie.