Enough with the slap hits

This is what Baseball Prospectus said about Joe Mauer last season:

Mauer is the best position player on the Twins, and one of the best in all of baseball. The scary thing is that he`s probably only going to get better from here: the 36 doubles and 13 home runs he hit last year are going to slowly morph into something more like 25/25 over the next few years, and that batting average is anything but a fluke. Oh yeah, and we haven`t even mentioned how good he is defensively. We`re guessing all that talk about the Twins making a mistake by taking the hometown boy over Mark Prior with the first pick of the 2001 draft has calmed down a bit.

This is a quote about Delmon Young:

In terms of hitting ability, at 6’3″, 205 pounds, Delmon presents an intimidating and strong plate prescence, and his hitting ability has often been compared to that of Albert Belle.

25/25 and a comparison to Albert Belle seems to suggest that they should be hitting for some degree of power, right? Then why do new call up Alexi Casilla, Adam Everett, and David Eckstein all have more home runs than Young and Mauer combined? I would venture to say that it’s no coincidence that both of these vaunted hitting prospects are essentially floundering in the same system that rejected David Ortiz.
The Twins system preaches a slap hitting, opposite field approach that will work out for fast guys like Carlos Gomez, and strong, patient guys like Justin Morneau. Mauer isn’t particularly fast, and he seems to timid to pull the ball with any authority. Delmon Young is simply to impatient, and needs to be taught how to work a count and drive pitches. The fact is, the Twins need to start scoring more runs, especially if their pitching starts to deteriorate, which it appears likely to do.