Normally, low level minor league teams play in small ballparks. They feature the youngest professional athletes, who are generally significantly less developed physically than they will be in just a few years and they are spared from playing on the massive fields that they will be capable of playing on in the future.
The Arizona Rookie League and Gulf Coast League are completely different situations. Here, the youngest players in baseball (17-19 year olds that are either coming from the Dominican Summer League for the first time or making their professional debuts after being drafted) play on Spring Training fields that were created for full grown men on Major League Baseball teams to use.
Because of this, there are a lot of triples in the AZL (outfielders tend to play very shallow and base runners can run forever on gap shots), but not very many home runs. Looking in Indians history at the rookie level, the team record is 19 by Manny Ramirez in 1991, but that was in a specially dedicated field for younger athletes in Burlington, North Carolina. In 2007, however, the Indians ceased their partnership with this affiliate and exclusively sent young rookies to the GCL Indians until moving to the AZL in 2008. In the 50 years that the Indians have had a team in either the AZL or GCL, only one batter has hit 10 or more home runs, Abner Abreu in 2008 with 11 and the second best number ever was Bobby Bradley with eight in 2014 when he won the triple crown, MVP and lead the team to the AZL Championship.
With less than two weeks left in the season, Oscar Gonzalez has already matched Bradley’s home run total of 8, but has done it in a very different manner. To start, Gonzalez is in his second season in the system after playing his age 17 season with the DSL Indians last year. Then, there was little to be excited about as he hit .203 with four home runs in 256 at bats, but he did walk 19 times (this will be important) and was still promoted between seasons.
Gonzalez certainly seemed more comfortable in Arizona than his home country of the Dominican Republic from day one. On that day, he went 2 for 4 with his first home run of the season, then went 3 for 6 with another homer and 5 RBI the next day. Two games later he hit another home run and his hitting streak to begin the season spanned seven games before being snapped on June 30th. Two games after this, he had his best game of the year, hitting two home runs and a double against the Padres on July 5th. This pushed Gonzalez’s average above .400 for the last time this year as he then entered a massive slump going 7 for his next 42 (.166 average) with just one home run from July 6th through July 25th.
The fact is, Gonzalez’s slump shouldn’t have been a surprise. While his prodigious early power numbers masked some underlying issues, Gonzalez walked the first time this year in game 8 and didn’t walk again until his 28th game of the season. At the same time, he has struck out in every single game this season except three including a 16 game streak from July into August. Like any extended hitting streak, he did not do it with a single K each game, but averaged 1.5 K’s per game for the entire season.
There is no question that Gonzalez was taking advantage of the overall aggressiveness by pitchers trying to get ahead in the count early on and once his name got out, his opponents tended to get a lot more timid. It was audible on the back fields of Goodyear near the beginning of the season. “Is that the guy with all the home runs?” “I don’t know, his jersey says 32, but his helmet says 39.”
Once he was discovered, instead of looking at a first pitch fast ball over the middle of the plate, Gonzalez started seeing many more off-speed and breaking pitches, particularly on the outside corner. Gonzalez has an atypical batting stance and is always looking outside. Pitchers took advantage of this by throwing much further outside than he could possibly hit and getting Gonzalez to chase. This was almost certainly the reason for his drop off in production over the middle part of the season. Of course, these are still rookies on both sides and things don’t always go to plan. In one particular at bat I saw Gonzalez swing at a ball in the dirt, then one far outside the zone for strike two. Rather than continuing with this trend, the pitcher threw one right over the middle of the plate and Gonzalez pulled the ball into the left field berm as far as any Major Leaguer (barring Mark Reynolds and Jerry Sands) has at Goodyear Ballpark.
Now, the purpose here is not to pick apart Gonzalez, but actually to commend him. Since August 9th, there has been another turn around statistically and I noticed him making adjustments and being more patient since before then. Since that point, he has walked four times in eight games after just one in his first 27. He has only hit one home run, but has hits in eight of nine games (14 total during the streak), pushing his average back up over .300. Below are videos of Gonzalez’s first three at bats on August 14th and they show him at his best and his worst, but an improvement over earlier this year is obvious.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WaDBdBh36s]This first at bat is reminiscent of early season Gonzalez. For some reason, Joan De La Cruz of the AZL Brewers thought he could get a high fast ball by him to start an at bat. This was not very intelligent and Gonzalez crushed the ball to the wall in center, although he was thrown out going to third I’m not going to get into baserunning or defense right now, just his approach at the plate.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foZASZ_ilKg]His second at bat was slightly lengthier and, while he eventually struck out, it was much more patient than many at bats earlier in the year. He has always taken the inside pitches and while he does swing and miss at one low and outside, he also takes two for strikes that were borderline, down in the zone.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktFag9amKQM]The third at bat is what we call progress. While it’s obvious that he still wants to swing at those pitches low and away, three times he takes a ball where he would have swung before and the only pitch he swings at in this area (a foul ball) was a strike. He eventually worked a walk (his fourth of the season) in one of the best total at bats I’ve seen out of him.
Like Bobby Bradley before him, Gonzalez will likely end the season as the AZL’s leader in home runs and he will probably be promoted after this season. I wouldn’t be surprised if he also copied Bradley in hitting 20 or more home runs once he gets to Lake County, but it would be a huge surprise to see him on any top prospect lists. Ultimately, if he wants to remain successful he will have to continue to show that he has the ability to be the batter he has been recently for the long term. If he can, he’s another name you should get to know, because this is real, legitimate power that you don’t see very often from a player this young. In fact, he’s just the third we’ve seen with this kind of power at this level in the past 50 years.
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