A few years ago the Pirates had two promising Dominican players in their system: Gregory Polanco & Alen Hanson. I remember there was talk about Hanson being the better of the two. At least, the idea was that he would have the most upside if he could stay at shortstop, but he was already fairly big and scouts thought he might outgrow the position. Polanco ended up making the majors first and as time went, it seemed that Hanson’s prospect status continued to diminish.
I was listening to a podcast the other day and Malcolm Gladwell was talking about how Victor Oladipo was not very good before coming to the Indiana Pacers (I know, I am talking about basketball), but once with the Pacers he exploded and became an awesome player. Gladwell was making the point that there are probably a bunch of Oladipo’s in the NBA…guys who have the potential and talent, but perhaps coaches/systems do not utilize them or get them to maximize their ability. This discussion made me think of baseball. Mostly about how players need X amount of plate appearances before you can truly gauge their ability. I honestly cannot remember what that number is, I want to say 600-800 PAs is when you can start to make actual decisions about players.
This brings me back to Alen Hanson and Gregory Polanco. When did things diverge for them and could the Pirates have been wrong?
Here they are at single A…
As you can see, they were pretty similar, except that Hanson was a year younger. Then we go to High A…
This is where things get interesting. Check out the age…
Yep, Polanco jumped up a level during his age 21 season.
If you remember, Polanco was on fire at AAA in 2014 and they brought him up , where he continued to be hot for a few weeks. Then he hit a pretty rough cold streak. As I have said before, I think Polanco is an extremely streaky hitter and I am wondering if he gets hot at the right time (he gets promoted before he can normalize). Alen Hanson seems to never get the streak bump up. Maybe he is too consistent. Hanson was cut by the Pirates last year because they considered him to be a bust. The White Sox took him and he got a few more plate appearances, but did not do much with them either. Now he is with the Giants and having a decent start to the year. People are excited that maybe the Giants (and perhaps Hanson) finally figured it out. My thought is…that he is getting enough time and PAs to actually normalize.
I wonder if we could compare Hanson & Polanco at about the same point in their Major League careers. After the first 300 or so PAs….
Clearly Polanco was younger, but you can see that their numbers are not that different. Polanco started off his career in the big leagues hot, whereas Hanson struggled. It seems weird to me that the Pirates put so much faith in Polanco and yet gave up on Hanson. Back in 2015, during his first year at AAA, Hanson started out slow: .255/.305/.342 and five home runs in his first 300 PAs. However the rest of the season he hit .273/.321/.405. He definitely improved, whereas I wonder if Polanco stayed at AAA, would we see him hit one of his down points?
I am not saying that Hanson is better than Polanco. I am also not saying that Polanco did not deserve his call-up in the way that it happened. I think what I am saying is that perhaps Alen Hanson is as good as those early prospect rankings, perhaps he just needed time.
