tyler colvin is not that great

[Derwood]

this board's need to either deify or [expletive] on Tyler Colvin is totally creepy. He's just a guy who plays baseball and is sorta okay at it

[Sammy Sofa]

 

Yeah, screw that Castro guy.

 

 

Hilarious, Castro has been mediocre (710 OPS and 3rd most errors in the NL) and if anything is the guy on the cubs who needs to go back to minors and work on things. His fielding needs work and his bat has been frankly bad since his kosuke-like debut.

 

But let's send down the guy who currently has the highest OPS on the team. Brilliant

 

I'd rather he'd have stayed in the minors, too. And again, I haven't advocated sending Colvin back to the minors this year; I'm talking about having him down there starting full time working on the flaws in his offense next season. Castro, quite frankly, is more talented than Colvin and is much more likely to be able to develop at the ML level.

[Soul]

If the overall point here is that we should keep our expectations of Colvin to reasonable levels, then I have no problem with it.

[Fred Hornkohl]

Reasonable expectations and CUBS fans seem rather incongruous together.

[Soul]

True.

[hardcorecubfan]

Corey Patterson has no bearing on Tyler Colvins future. Neither do Jake Fox, Felix Pie, Brant Brown, Gary Scott, Jerome Walton, or Dwight Smith. I dont know what wil ultimately become of Tyler Colvin, but what he is at this point is a bright spot on a team that doesnt have a lot of them.

 

Well said :clapping:

[CubColtPacer]

 

Yeah, screw that Castro guy.

 

 

Hilarious, Castro has been mediocre (710 OPS and 3rd most errors in the NL) and if anything is the guy on the cubs who needs to go back to minors and work on things. His fielding needs work and his bat has been frankly bad since his kosuke-like debut.

 

But let's send down the guy who currently has the highest OPS on the team. Brilliant

 

I'd rather he'd have stayed in the minors, too. And again, I haven't advocated sending Colvin back to the minors this year; I'm talking about having him down there starting full time working on the flaws in his offense next season. Castro, quite frankly, is more talented than Colvin and is much more likely to be able to develop at the ML level.

 

Colvin's not going to be able to work on his strikeout rate well at the minor league level. It was already acceptable in the minor leagues. He needs to see major league pitching if he's going to be able to make progress on that now (both to catch up to the hard fastball and the sharp breaking balls that he struggles with at times. He's not going to see many of either of those pitches in AAA).

 

Colvin definitely has some worrying numbers. The walk rate needs to not slide any further or will be a major concern. The strikeout rate is too high (although it has been slowly sliding down). His BABIP doesn't worry me anymore. It was ridiculously unsustainable but it's fallen so much. At .319 now, that's the type of BABIP Colvin can maintain because he usually makes good contact with the ball when he actually does make contact. And the HR/FB number is definitely unsustainable.

 

Most of Colvin's HR's leave the park so fast though that even if he doesn't get quite as strong of contact on them in the future they'll likely just increase his singles or doubles rate.

 

Colvin's probably still a .775-.825 OPS player who can play all 3 OF positions. If he can lower his strikeout rate to 20-22% he could be a little more than that. He's likely always going to be a mistake hitter. He's the type of player you typically want to stay away from in free agency because his numbers will bounce around from year to year but he would likely be just fine as a cheap starter and he isn't so good that keeping him as a 4th OF isn't a horrible decision either. A smaller market team would likely find more value for Colvin but he'll probably be fine with whatever role the Cubs decide to put him in.

[Sammy Sofa]

keeping him as a 4th OF isn't a horrible decision either

 

That's my thinking. I'm not saying the guy is a bust or is useless. I just think we need to see some key parts of his game improve before he's made a starting OF full time for the Cubs. This year is a great opportunity to see what he can do, especially if Fukudome is moved, but I think it's a mistake to rely on him to be a corner OF or even the Cubs' 1B as others have suggested. 2011 doesn't have to be written off already. If he shows significant improvement over the rest of this season (would he play any winter ball?) and is still going strong at the end to justify giving him the starting job next year, OK, but how likely is that? Again, yes, the HR are great, but he needs to show he can do something, anything, else, because he can't possibly sustain what he's doing right now.

[Schwarber Fan]

Crap like this is why people hate NSBB. The Cubs are having one their worst seasons in recent memory and a bright spot like Colvin comes along, a young guy in our organization that is actually having success, and people go out of there way to try and prove he isn't as great as he's playing. It may be true, but stop trying to analyze it and let the kid do the talking... none of us expected him to hit his way onto the team in the spring and into a starting spot in the lineup, so who is to say he can't keep it up? God forbid people try to pull something positive out of an otherwise horrific year.

 

Oh, and the all lower case thing is really annoying.

[Sammy Sofa]

So people hate NSBB because it's not more like Cubs.com?

[Schwarber Fan]

It's one thing to be realistic, it's another to just be downright pessimistic about everything.

[bhogg]

If Hendry gives him $18 million for the next 12 years with a full no trade clause and a 5 year player option for $30 million per year, then we can assume he's crap will not amount to much.

[dew1679666265]

Why are some people so oddly obsessed with making sure nobody thinks Colvin is any good? It's very creepy. He's a 25 year old first round draft pick who is having his second consecutive good season. I don't see much hope that he'll be a super star or even an all-star caliber player, but it seems perfectly reasonable that he could provide .800+ OPS for very cheap for a few years. That could be a very valuable asset if we get a GM who can take advantage of the financial flexibility that creates.

 

Apparently the only evidence that he's terrible is that the month he played more, his OPS was only a little bit better than everyone else instead of a lot better. Can't people just be excited that we might have a cheap, serviceable player instead of being wierd?

 

I'm trying not to sound "anti-Colvin" because I'm not. I like him and think he can be productive, I just think it's better for his development right now to keep him in more limited, favorable matchups instead of playing him every day. Give him a chance to build some confidence while continuing to work on his approach.

[dew1679666265]

The question is, will the return be good enough to overcome the value he's likely to provide to us? He could make a good 4th outfielder and maybe an average-above average starter in time. Could we get more than that in a trade?

 

I have no idea what the Cobs could get in return for Colvin, but they need to be shopping him around to find out. He's not the sort of player a team needs to jealously guard.

 

By the way, on a note completely unrelated to dew's post, whatever happened to Jeff Francoeur?

 

I'm not against shopping him around to see if somebody will blow you away, I just doubt his value is really high right now.

[treebird]

my argument is that he's the same guy now he was at the beginning of the season. if you loved him before the season, i suppose you should still love him now. the fact that he's hit a fluky number of home runs in the major leagues shouldn't sway your thoughts on how good he is or can be.

[Sammy Sofa]

my argument is that he's the same guy now he was at the beginning of the season. if you loved him before the season, i suppose you should still love him now. the fact that he's hit a fluky number of home runs in the major leagues shouldn't sway your thoughts on how good he is or can be.

 

Exactly. There's no "WE SHOULD HATE TYLER COLVIN BECAUSE HE IS HOPELESS AT BASEBALL"-type tangent. It's an effort to look at his numbers so far more realistically.

[dew1679666265]

If the overall point here is that we should keep our expectations of Colvin to reasonable levels, then I have no problem with it.

 

This is basically what I'm getting at. It could be detrimental to his career if a majority of fans start expecting something he can't deliver.

 

He can be a valuable player, I'm just hoping people don't start expecting more than he can deliver because of this torrid start - as fun to watch as it's been.

[Guest]

Crap like this is why people hate NSBB. The Cubs are having one their worst seasons in recent memory and a bright spot like Colvin comes along, a young guy in our organization that is actually having success, and people go out of there way to try and prove he isn't as great as he's playing. It may be true, but stop trying to analyze it and let the kid do the talking... none of us expected him to hit his way onto the team in the spring and into a starting spot in the lineup, so who is to say he can't keep it up? God forbid people try to pull something positive out of an otherwise horrific year.

 

Oh, and the all lower case thing is really annoying.

Actually, realistic analysis like this is what is best about NSBB.

[mcgoobs]

I don't think anyone has expectations that how Colvin is hitting now is how he should be expected to hit over the course of a full year. However the Cubs season looks just about done, and with Fukudome is in his annual summer swoon Colvin should keep getting PAs. Hopefully Jaramillo is using those PAs to help Colvin a) develop some patience and b) hit LHP better.

[CubColtPacer]

my argument is that he's the same guy now he was at the beginning of the season. if you loved him before the season, i suppose you should still love him now. the fact that he's hit a fluky number of home runs in the major leagues shouldn't sway your thoughts on how good he is or can be.

 

I agree with this somewhat. Most people though hadn't really seen Colvin before this year. He hit 16 home runs in under 500 AB's in 07. He hit only 14 in over 500 AB's in 08 but it was uncertain how much of that was slowed by the problems that led to the TJS. He then only hit 1 home run in Daytona in 114 AB's but 13 in Tennessee in just over 300 AB's. And then of course he added all that muscle over the offseason.

 

The power potential was always the thing that was going to potentially save Colvin. The numbers for Tenessee were a welcome sight but it was uncertain what that meant with all the other confusion in his numbers.

 

So to see him hit a large number of home runs is very encouraging. To see him hit them the way he has (the fact that so few of them have been cheap) is perhaps more encouraging.

 

Before the season based on the numbers, Colvin was probably a 10-20 home run player in the majors. Now based on both the eye test and the numbers he's put up, he's probably more of a 15-30 home run guy. Right now he's on pace for 44 over a 600 AB season which will come down sharply when his HR/FB ratio balances out.

 

With so many more factors than normal influencing the data, evaluating Colvin is still a work in progress. We know the basics of his game, but the particulars have a lot more variability than a normal player. But I would definitely agree that in general his strengths and weaknesses have not changed.

[Guest]

...and with Fukudome is in his annual summer swoon...

:banghead:

[Hairyducked Idiot]

It's one thing to be realistic, it's another to just be downright pessimistic about everything.

 

When a team and organization is as bad as the Cubs are, it's easy to get the two confused.

[Sammy Sofa]

Plus I defy anyone to find what's actually "downright pessimistic" about Colvin in this thread. There's a huge difference between pessimism and attempting to be realistic.

[Irrelevant Dude]

my argument is that he's the same guy now he was at the beginning of the season. if you loved him before the season, i suppose you should still love him now. the fact that he's hit a fluky number of home runs in the major leagues shouldn't sway your thoughts on how good he is or can be.

But he isn't the same guy that I thought he was. Regardless of whether he can continue to hit at a 40 HR pace, which he almost certainly cannot, he has shown more power than I ever expected. It isn't fair to completely dismiss Colvin's only major league experience as a "fluke". I agree with Soul's comment about managing expectations, but that doesn't mean we can't be excited about what we've seen so far. I have tempered optimism for Colvin and still won't be shocked if he ends up as a fourth outfielder, but I find it preposterous to suggest at this point that he should be sent back to the minors next year. We still have an entire half a season for Colvin to play nearly every day and that is much more valuable than time spent in Iowa. Until we see what he does in a full season, it is much too soon to speculate about next year, but we can still be excited about what we are seeing in the present.

[Sammy Sofa]

I have tempered optimism for Colvin and still won't be shocked if he ends up as a fourth outfielder, but I find it preposterous to suggest at this point that he should be sent back to the minors next year.

 

You're being way too melodramatic over the idea of him going back to the minors. If he ends getting the bulk of the RF starts the rest of the season and goes into a tailspin it would hardly be "preposterous" to have him in the minors at the start of next season where he can start full time and ideally work on the issues in his offensive approach. It's hardly the only option or something that would have to happen, but it's not "preposterous."

 

And it's still not a sure thing that he should be getting the bulk of the starts in RF for the rest of the year. What's actually more important for the Cubs right now is to move Fukudome where ideally they don't have too pay too much of his salary, whether it's before the deadline or in the off season. It's very unlikely the Cubs can accomplish that if they effectively bench him for Colvin. That has to be considered.