Quote:
Originally Posted by stevem810
Puente started off his career like he was going to be a world class player; Curiously, he sort of tailed off (age 24) about the time you would have thought he'd take the next step forward.
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Indeed. It really seemed to come down to his failure to make consistent contact and his propensity to strike out. When he was younger he also drew a great many walks though so at least he had decent to very good OBP and he does have good speed and base-stealing ability. So that made him more useful. His ratings would seem to indicate that his HR power hasn't really declined, but he doesn't make contact regularly enough to keep the HR totals up. Oddly, he is 5th in the MGL this season in Win Probability Added. He is having a tremendous year in the field as our starting right fielder.
If I had to guess right now, I believe Puente will remain on the team for the rest of this season but might well be traded in the off-season. I'll be giving Ryan Rodgers a few more days worth of PA's down at AAA before bringing up back to the club. Paul Mackins, who has done a fine job filling in, will head back to AAA. But it will be important to get enough playing time for both Andrew Kennedy and Pat Rondeau. So Puente might be sitting more often the rest of 1972.
Plus, I've reached the mid-point of the season and while the Brewers certainly have plenty of time to get back into contention they have shown few signs of getting on a sustained roll. So I'm leaning towards going pretty much full on youth movement in terms of position players, at least.