I dunno for sure if I'm right. I've suggested we look at NBA and NFL college players who leave after their sophmore season for clues. But the response is "baseball's different" - and it is. But I rarely hear a convincing case that an NBA or NFL regular who played two years of college would have been far more successful had he stayed two additional seasons - even if those players just sit at the end of the bench for those first two seasons. Unlike Ackley and Montero, Zunino never had the "can't miss" star tag on him - maybe I'm remembering wrong. But unlike those two, we couldn't easily envision our team without him for all his skills. When we picked him up on draft day, there was a big collective, "meh". The one big thing in his favor, everyone agreed, was his proximity to the bigs, because he was a solid leader and backstop, and he had some real plus power. Seems to me he came as advertised - big league ready, good power.
But I now see he's dropped below 0.0 in Replacement value, even as he leads the entire majors in Defensive Runs Saved. So I'm ready to concede that his bat is so bad it's probably the wise thing now to send him down, in case I am wrong. I've always said (or meant to, anyway) that if he's at or below replacement value, we should replace him. We can play 8 games below .500 without him as well as with him.