Just because moron voters give out the awards wontonly doesn’t mean that a measuring stick fo defense can’t be considered. If he wants to call it “gold glove” caliber defense, then fine.

don’t see why its a forgone conclusion that Smoak will hit for such a higher average. They were both 22 in AA last year and Carter hit 16 points higher in 200 more ABS. And too say there isn’t a huge gap in the power tool is crazy. Aside from hitting a lot of HRs with metal bats Smoak hasn’t shown prestigious power. 15 HRs in 450 pro ABs doesn’t scream game changing power to me.

Only thing I see Smoak having clearly ahead of Carter is defense.

“More likely to flame out”.. sure… but how much more likely? A single percent would still be “more likely”.

I don’t think Carter is significantly higher a flameout risk than Smoak. I just think that if we’re talking about their skill sets, Carter’s come up shorter than Smoak’s over a 10 year span. I’d still expect Carter to be a strong performer during his prime in the majors, though perhaps not as glorious as some are predicting.

This isn’t Josh Bell. That was a SSS with an oblique problem on one side.

Scouting wise, he has a nice swing that makes tons of good contact with great plate coverage. He has always been projected by scouts as a .300 hitter.

Really grasping at straws to base a concern on his platoon split in a SSS when he was rushed to AAA with an oblique injury in his first full season as a pro.

one scout had more concerns about Carter’s propensity to swing and miss than anything positive to say, noting that he’s “so big and strong, and it is absolutely enormous power. But if the ball is not in his immediate bat path, he misses.” The scout added, “He’s bad at seeing the slider, and bad at laying off the slider, and that’s a very tough combination to overcome,” admitting there are some fears that Carter will be just an up-and-down player in the end. “He’s going to keep putting up big numbers, but he has holes above and below the barrel, and lots of areas that big-league pitchers can go to get him out. With what the A’s have done with Jack Cust, you’d never want to say never, but I think when he gets to the big leagues, he’s just going to strike out a ton.”

http://baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=9154

The Mexican Pacific League is a unique place to play. Filled with pitchers from the home country, there’s rarely any need to bring a radar gun to the game, as fastballs ranging in the 80s are the norm, but they can all spin a breaking ball. That’s led to a combination of dominance (four home runs in 28 at-bats), and embarrassment (14 strikeouts) for Carter, who still needs to adjust to non-fastball offerings, both in recognizing and lunging at secondary stuff.

He is a dead red bat. He can handle the fastball and even some mistakes with other offerings but they have to be up. Sure he has a good hand pivot and a soft subtle approach but he shifts and lunges to the front side creating issue’s with pitchers who know how to change speeds and locate.

Carter’s sway-back rear hip load is very inefficient and causes him to get onto his front side too early. When it comes time to launch his swing, his weight has already shifted to his front side, leaving him vulnerable to good off-speed pitches down and away.

What remains to be seen is if he can make the necessary adjustments to cover all areas of the strike zone to handle Major League quality pitching, or if he will forever be a Five O’clock superstar. Carter has the athleticism and power to do damage in the Majors, but going forward the pitching will only get better and smarter and exploit the holes in his swing.

He actually had huge holes in his swing going into 09. This was pretty widely reported and talked about frequently around here. He made a lot of adjusments in 09 to improve that, as previously he had major problems with offspeed and breaking stuff as well as better pitchers (which added to the perception he’s a mistake hitter). He’s still something less than good with that, though.

Its not a huge concern, and his natural power makes up for a lot of it… but we’re comparing him to a pretty elite prospect here w/ Smoak.

His minor league averages haven’t been that great. Add in an MLE based on superior competition and he’s hovering in Ryan Howard territory in both average and strikeouts.

Yeah, he hit .337 in AA ball last year… with a .407 BABIP. No way he’s pulling that off regularly.