Is anyone else more than concerned about Almora? He's hitting .250 in AA with talks about changing his batting approach already. He's only got 1065 career minor league AB's in bits of 4 seasons so far. A healthy player should be at nearly 1400 by now. It's promising that he's still only 21 years old. And I'm probably fat & spoiled by the advanced learning curves of our other first rounders. They say that the HS kids take longer. But Javy was here in 2014 after being drafted in 2011 (and showed he wasn't completely ready yet). Maybe I'm just impatient.
Not really. Almora is changing his approach because he almost never took walks. They tried to do this with Castro too for what it's worth and Almora is a more extreme version of Castro. Think of it this way, if Almora had been drafted as a college player he'd probably have been in this year's class. Now with that said I think people need to temper their expectations for what he is. He was never likely to be a great hitter. I made comparisons before last year to him and Coco Crisp as what his upside might be.
Overall, I think this year is an encouraging sign. He's walking at the highest rate at any point in his career. He's also striking out less than any time but his 65 PA stint in A-. He's also putting the ball in play almost 84% of the time. Fangraphs doesn't have batted ball data on minor league players so it is difficult to tell how he's hit without having seen the games myself. My guess is he's not making great contact with the ball given that his ISO is the lowest of his career.
It's possible the lack of good contact is a systemic problem that ultimately stops him from succeeding. Without having more data I can't really say how worrying it is. But if he's just adjusting to a new approach it's not a huge deal. His BABIP is .263 right now. He doesn't have amazing speed but expecting him to be a .300+ BABIP guy isn't unreasonable. And if he does not have a systemic problem it's reasonable to expect that to move closer to .300. If it does you're looking at someone who's hitting in the range of .290/.340. The power still hasn't been there which is another issue. But I think people are a bit spoiled by the hitters the cubs have. If you get a .290 hitting CF with gold glove defense as probably you're #8/9 hitter you take that.
This is why people talk about him being a safe player. His defense is likely so good at a premium position that you'd take a decently below average hitter.
