Roger S. writes: I'm not happy with the way that Jeff Fiorentino is playing at Frederick. Wasn't he supposed to be a future star? Why did the Orioles call him up early in the year?
Um, why aren't you happy with his Frederick numbers? He's doing OK: .270/.320/.473, 15 homers. The OBP is lower than I'd like and he needs to be a bit more patient, but overall he's having a decent season.
I think the problem here is unrealistic expectations, and for that the Baltimore front office needs to be blamed. When they needed an outfielder in early May, they called up Fiorentino. Yes, he had gotten off to a good start. . .in Class A, less than one year out of college. I didn't understand promoting him at the time, and in retrospect the fact that he came up to the Majors, played 13 games, hit a homer, and didn't look too awful, has set him up for, well, as I wrote above, unrealistic expectations. His numbers at Frederick now look disappointing, and he's already fighting the perception that he isn't as good as he was supposed to be.
I advise Baltimore fans, and any fantasy owners who bit on Fiorentino early, to forget about his May promotion. Ignore it. In his minor league career, Fiorentino now has 525 career at-bats, almost all of them at the full-season A-ball level. He has 32 doubles, 27 homers, a .288 average, 50 walks, 123 strikeouts. He is a promising power hitter, but it is unclear how much batting average he will have at higher levels, and his BB/K/AB ratio is not ideal. At this point he looks like a Grade B- prospect to me.
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