The following is too long for a shout, and too short for a guest post. So I'm putting it here:
Regarding Montero: I've been looking at his stats closely, and I think we (and the scouting community as a whole, of course) made a serious misjudgement in his abilities, something the Yankees knew and exploited in the trade. Jesus could become one of the great all time lefty mashers, today in fact. He's so good at mashing lefties it really hides his ineptness vs. righties. And that ineptitude dogs him to this day.
The only thing holding Jesus back today is human biology - the scarcity of left handed pitchers. In fact, his recent prodigious thumping is almost largely due to the good fortune of having a spate of left handed starters, and a reliever or two, facing the Rainiers. This is something quite rare in the PCL, and Montero has taken full advantage of it. But his .759 AAA OPS against righties this season, while an improvement from his lifetime minor league mark of .722 since 2011 (a mere .728 in his second season at Scranton - the season Doc has suggested may have led to boredom), is still too low to translate into success in the majors as a DH or everyday DH/1B.
So, while Montero would be useful in a Greg Colbrunn kind of way on a major league roster, his overall value to a team is going to be very negligible (and that's unfair to Colbrunn, who actually hit right handers at a better clip in the majors than Montero has done in the minors). And that's why the Mariners sent him back down: he needs to improve against righties, and make a serious leap in doing so. Hitting him against right handers at the major league level right now will cost us games and sitting him will retard his development in that regard. I don't think boredom has that much to do with it. Right now it's simply a fatal flaw. It's really the one thing to watch as we follow his Tacoma box scores - he can mash lefties in his sleep in any league. But I think he needs to get that OPS against righties up to around .850 in AAA to become a full time DH in the majors. That's how good he is against lefties (.837 in the major leagues, 1.099 minor leagues since 2011 - which is as far back as the Minor League Central website will go). And actually, he is making some progress. But he needs to make more. If he does so, say in the following month, we could see him playing an important role in our stretch drive. We may anyway, come September when rosters expand.
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