Lastings Milledge is stinging the ball right now. Even with his 0/3 last night, he’s hitting .294 with a .385 OBP in the month of May. He’s drawn nine walks (one intentional) with just 13 strikeouts. Honestly, that’s great for Milledge; for his career he’s drawn just 90 walks in 1411 plate appearances along with 248 strikeouts. The problem is that for the whole month, he’s got just five extra base hits; four doubles and a triple. That’s a slugging percentage of .382.
So what do we make of Milledge so far in 2010? Can Milledge be a starting corner outfielder without any real power? Can Millege hit for any power? Can he keep getting on base? Don’t you hate it when the process of answering questions raises even more questions than you had in the first place?
There are a few things I feel pretty comfortable saying about Milledge after watching him in the short time he’s been with the Pirates. One is that his defense is certainly not excellent, but it is much better than anything I was expecting after hearing horror stories about his time with the Nationals. His positioning is usually good and he’s got a very strong arm. He does take the occasional bad route to the ball, but he’s getting better at not doing that. The problem as I see it is that his defense isn’t good enough to make up for a subpar offensive performance.
And currently, that’s where the questions lie. His total lack of power this year (he’s slugging just .331 with a very well-publicized zero in his home run column) is really baffling to me. In the past, he slugged .440 over a 59-game stretch with the Mets in 2007 and his career slugging percentage in the minors was .470. In general, his isolated power (slugging percentage minus batting average, essentially extra bases per at-bat) has been much higher than his paltry .073 this season. He didn’t show much power last year, either, but he was also in the process of rehabbing a wrist injury for the better part of the season that both he and the team said sapped his power. This year, that excuse isn’t there.
Put shortly, if Milledge can’t show any more power than he has in his first 100 games with the Pirates, then he has to hit like he has this May (say, on base percentage around .380) to be even considered for regular playing time. It’s possible he’s maturing at the plate (his minor league walk rate is better than his big league rate), but short stretches aside, there’s not a whole lot of reason to think he can be a high-average/high-OBP guy over a long period of time in the Majors. He’s gotta work some power into the equation at some point. That’s not to say that the Pirates should throw in the towel and start playing Ryan Church at this point because I think they need to see the Milledge experiment through at least a little bit longer and there’s not really any reason to play Church at all, but the longer he goes on hitting like he generally has with the Pirates, the fewer variables there are in this experiment and the closer we’re getting to an answer, even if it’s one we don’t like.
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