Michael Saunders

In 46 games at the major league level last year, Michael Saunders didn't just fail to impress - he bombed. He hit a less-than-torrid .221, drew 6 walks against 40 strikeouts (that's 31% of at-bats ending in punchouts, for those keeping track), and flashed roughly zero power. His ISO last year was a paltry 0.056, which is beaten quite handily by Willie Bloomquist's career rate. The stolen homer in his first game would have helped, but while that was a nice excuse for his flashing nothing in the way of results for the first couple of weeks, 120something plate appearances later he still didn't have a home run for his troubles. The only real skill he displayed was being a phenomenally good drag bunter, with six bunt hits in his short stint with the big club. If not for the bunts, his totals for 2009 would have read .182/.223/.296 which... yeah that's not good.

So that's almost all of the the bad about Michael Saunders. The rest of the bad is that he seems to get hurt a lot, which mitigates some of his poor performance with the big club (he was fairly banged up by the end of the season, hence hamstrung Bill Hall in left). While I'm not totally willing to throw out his performance, my read on his time in Seattle is that he faced a glut of same-handed starters in a row, then topped off his first week in the majors by facing off against Roy Halladay. Sometime shortly thereafter, he picked up a minor injury. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm not going to give up on a 22-year old lefty outfield prospect over that, especially not one with the tools Saunders possesses and results that he's put up in the minors. So while keeping his discouraging performance with the big club in our minds, let's not over-weigh it against all of the good.

And there really are a lot of good things to say about Michael Saunders too. He's been featured in BA's top 30 lists for the M's lists since the end of 2006, the year he made his full debut, and has been rising ever since. He ranked as the #2 guy in our system last year per BA, and I guarantee you that they'd like a do-over on putting Halman ahead of him. He entered the season as a very good outfield prospect, and if his stint with the Mariners hurt his stock, his time with the Rainiers cancelled that out and then some. In a touch less than 300 plate appearances as a 22 year old in Tacoma, Michael Saunders accomplished the following despite missing time to injury:

• Hit thirteen home runs en route to a .310/.378/.544 line, an improvement of .114 OPS points on his 2008 season.
• Cut his strikeout rate by 41% from 28.6% in 2008 to 17.0% in 2009.
• Swung more often but missed the ball less: Contact rate went from 70% to almost 80%.
• Despite the above, made a slight improvement to walk rate, implying an improvement in his pitch-recognition ability.
• Continued to be an above-average defender at each outfield position despite labrum surgery to his throwing arm.
  

I'd rate that as a pretty good year, myself, especially as a 22 year old who began it with barely 100 AAA plate appearances to his name. Simply looking at the stats gives you the picture of a very good prospect, one perhaps on the cusp of being a quality starter in the majors. But looking at stats alone isn't always a great idea, and we have a good set of reports of Saunders in the minors to draw on. From the time he's been drafted, Saunders has been drooled over for his athleticism. He's fast enough to be a centre fielder, could hit 90 on the gun before his surgery, has fairly good hands, and can hit for both power and average. The major knocks on him were all to do with experience: his defensive positioning and route-running needed work, and he had trouble recognising breaking balls. It's interesting to track his reports year by year and seeing the flaws start falling off. His defence turned from a worry to a plus within a couple of years, and while discipline was an issue as early as the beginning of the season, his time in Tacoma will have eased concerns there as well. Michael Saunders is the kind of guy who more or less everyone thinks will turn into an average-slightly above bat with a good glove in the corner. It's an open question to whether he can play centre as he fills out, but we're still looking at a 2-3 win player under club control here.

Simply put, Saunders is a very good prospect. The question is whether or not he's major league ready now or whether he could use more seasoning in the minors. If he truly has nothing to learn in Tacoma, if keeping him in the minors will stunt his development, there's a very strong argument to be made for installing him as our starting left fielder for 2010. However, if it would be beneficial to give him more AAA reps, there's not a very good reason for him to be in the bigs with our roster as constructed simply because it's not immediately clear that he'd be better overall than Ryan Langerhans (he wins with the bat but loses handily with the glove). You'd be giving up service time and development time for a marginal/non-existent upgrade.

Gun to my head, I'd put Saunders as a 1-1.5 WAR player right now, maybe a couple of runs better than what I'd expect out of Langerhans/Langerhans's putative platoon buddy in left. Tacoma seems the best place to put him for at least the first couple of months until we get a clearer picture of what's going on, but I'd expect to see him get significant playing time as the year goes on. He might not be ready quite yet, and nobody thinks he'll be a star, but do make sure you don't fall into the trap of undervaluing him: his value as a prospect really isn't too far off where Adam Jones was at the end of 2007. And we loved him, remember?