Miami Marlins prospects: Colin Moran's slow start in Greensboro is misleading

Colin Moran is one of the top third base prospects in all of baseball, and he's playing in a farm system that has third base as a particular position of need. Moran has a sweet left-handed swing that should be able to propel him to the highest level of the game rather quickly. However, in roughly a month of ballgames for Low Class A Greensboro, Moran has struggled to get positive results at the plate. Nonetheless, by digging deeper one can find that Moran has been the victim of some bad luck and he should be able to turn things around sooner rather than later.

Entering the 2013 MLB Amateur Draft out of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Colin Moran was widely considered the most well-rounded hitter in the draft. In some sense. This should draw him to former UNC infielder and the second overall pick in the 2009 MLB Draft, Dustin Ackley. Similar to Moran, Ackley might not have had the highest ceiling of any of the hitters in his class, but the fact that his bat was so polished led to a early pick. Anyways, Moran was selected sixth overall by the Marlins and signed relatively easily. The Marlins didn't mess around with his first professional assignment, sending him directly to Low Class A Greensboro.

In 18 games and 74 plate appearances for the Grasshoppers, Colin Moran has hit a rather disappointing .234/.297/.359 with 1 HR and an 85 wRC+. Even though he is playing at a higher level than any other 2013 Marlins draftee, Moran was expected to tear up the Sally League from the day he got there. He seems to be struggling making hard contact with the ball and to his credit, he has gotten his share of bad breaks. In fact, when you look closer, it's easy to see that Moran has been much better than his triple slash line suggests.

Despite being drafted out of college, Moran still is only 20 years old, which makes him one of the youngest players on the Greensboro roster and in the Sally League in general. Considering that he has been facing competition at a level that's he's never seen before, Moran's numbers really don't look all that bad. Also, Moran is walking 9.5 percent of the time and striking out only 16.2 percent of the time. If Moran continues to walk and strikeout at around those rates for the rest of the career, he should be in pretty good shape. Another factor to weigh when evaluating Moran's performance is his BABIP. The average BABIP in the Sally League this season is .310, and right now Moran is sitting at .259. As luck starts to find him and he settles in with Sally League pitching, Moran should see his numbers sharply increase across the board. Colin Moran's future is still as bright as it has ever been, so don't let a rough month alter your view on his future.