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Brewers sign Lorenzo Cain


beekay414

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On 1/25/2018 at 9:35 PM, NewAge said:

The general baselines for me for guys who age well are:

- well rounded skillset
- tall
- good eye
- hits the ball in the air a lot
- athletic (high stolen bases early in career correlates well)
- durable

Or, in other words, be Curtis Granderson. 

Cain meets a good number of these. Even as he loses some speed he'll still have plenty for the average player and has enough secondary skills to fall back on. He won't be prime Lorenzo Cain but he'll be a fine player if he stays healthy.

Bumping this thread because his plate discipline has been absolutely amazing starting off the year:

His walk rates by year, starting in 2012: 6.1, 7.5, 4.8 (yeesh), 6.1, 7.1, 8.4, 16.7
His swing rate at pitches outside the zone, starting in 2012: 29.9, 25.7, 33.9, 33.5, 31.2, 31.7, 18.5

The speed has declined somewhat, though he's still in the 70th percentile for MLB players, but clearly the Brewers saw something and worked with him on his plate discipline, because even in a 1 month sample size, that's top 10 in baseball type pitch recognition. And it's not like he's just not swinging at anything, his swing % on balls in the zone is about 5% lower, than last year but not that far off his career average.

So, going back to your list:
- well rounded skillset - Check
- tall - Check
- good eye - Check
- hits the ball in the air a lot - Not really, about league average
- athletic (high stolen bases early in career correlates well) - Check
- durable - Nope

I think you pretty much nailed it when you said the only real risk here is health.

 

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