Derek Carty over at the Hardballtimes.com profiled Delmon Young late last year, and it’s a solid read. It does however repeat what every fantasy owner already knows:
Young is a young guy who is a good athlete and a scout favorite—and has breakout potential on this basis—but improved numbers in 2009 will have to come from legitimate skill growth or good fortune.
In case you’re unsure of the Delmon Young story, here’s a quick recap. Young was drafted first overall by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, way back in the year 2003, as a standout highschooler.
Young smash-killed the ball in the low-minors as an 18 and 19 year old. During his time in the minors, Young ranked no lower than 3rd overall on the Baseball America Top-100 Prospects list.
Then the Devil Rays rushed him through Triple-A and called him up to the bigs as a 20-year old and thus began Delmon Young’s power outage.
Young’s always been young for his level, and at this point in his career people are actually starting to give up on him with good reason. The Minnesota Twins outfield is pretty jam-packed, and Delmon Young isn’t even guaranteed a starting spot.
Gomez and Span can both play center or left, possibly even right field. Cuddyer’s got a great arm, and is a solid corner outfielder who should be playing in RF. These leaves Young, and Pirdie as the 4th and 5th outfielders vying for one of the starting spots.
It looks like Kubel, who could still play outfield in an emergency, will be manning the DH spot. Right now it looks like it’s really going to come down Delmon Young and Denard Span battling for the LF job. Cuddyer isn’t the epitome of health; so Young will nab RF at-bats even if he ends up starting the season as the 4th outfielder.
With that said, there’s absolutely no statistical data that says Delmon Young’s heading for improvement. He’s not getting unlucky, he’s not being effected by a poor park. When things look this bad for a former top-prospect / man-child, you’ve gotta assume that their pride is going to be taking a huge hit.
Athletes, even when they’re getting paid insanely massive-jumbo-jumbo amounts of money, are still competitive as all hell. This is why I’m predicting one of those breakouts that two-months from now everyone will say they called it.
Delmon Young is still a very young 23 years old. Absolutely nothing points to him getting better, other than the fact he’s 23 years old.
With a late round pick, why not pick someone with all of the talent in the world? Delmon Young lacks focus, he definitely makes up for in bat-throwing ability.
As the case with all of the sleepers that I recommend based on nothing more than a gut feeling, don’t draft them too high. You can just cut bait with Delmon Young a month into the season if he still hasn’t displayed focus and better strike-zone judgment. Even if Young remains a free-swinging enigma, he still has the possibility of succeeding by ensuring he uses those quick wrists of his.
Here’s some of that off-season MLB.com fodder that says every players in better shape and ready for a breakout season:
“I feel really good right now,” he said. “At one point my body composition had changed a lot, but my weight stayed the same. Now, since we’ve been doing more power lifting the last month, the weight has been coming off. I just feel good.”
Photos Courtesy of Keith Allison and Trev Stair, Flickr
