With the Oakland A’s falling into a tie with the Rangers, Billy Beane‘s club is going to need everything they can get to challenge Texas for the division crown. If we’re looking for holes, the only one they seemingly have is the second base position – and it’s got top second base prospect Grant Green‘s name written all over it.
The A’s original plan coming into the season was to play Jed Lowrie at second and Hiroyuki Nakajima at short. Instead, Nakajima struggled and got hurt, leaving Lowrie at short. Second base is currently manned by a pedestrian Eric Sogard (.269/.337/.339, zero HR, nine RBI, 23 R) and defensive specialist Adam Rosales (.195/.272/.333, four HR, eight RBI, 11 R). With neither a real starting caliber second baseman, Beane will have to look outside of the 25-man roster for help – but he won’t have to look far.
Green is a former top 100 prospect who has been consistently reliable in the minors. This season, Green owns a .316/.375/.494 line with nine homers, 45 RBI, 56 R, 22 2B, and four steals over 310 at-bats. Over his 458 game minor league career, the 25-year-old owns a .304/.353/.467 line. He has shown an ability to hit 15-20 home runs and steal 10+ bases in the minors but is a good all-around extra-base hitter with plenty of doubles and triples on top of the home runs.
Green’s only weakness is his defense. He has eight errors in 56 games this season and a career .943 fielding percentage. But the A’s need offense and coupled with the fact that Green is playing in Triple-A for a second year he’s a no brainer.
So what can we expect from Green in the second half? For one, a good average. He has never batted below .291 in the minors so that’s a good sign. He’s definitely also worked on his walk game and now has a .374 OBP that would make Billy Beane proud.
He also has pop but it’s not overwhelming. He’s a great extra-base hitter who occasionally gets home runs. He hit 20 home runs in High-A in 2010 and 15 last year in his first go-around in Triple-A. More importantly, he had 65 XBH in 2010, 43 XBH in 2011, 49 XBH last season, and already has 33 XBH this year. He’s a doubles hitter who could hit around 15+ homers in a season.
He can also steal some. He has 33 career steals with 13 coming last season. He does get caught a lot though so it’s hard to tell if that will be a real part of his game once he’s called up.
Offensively he’s very sound in every way. That should alleviate some of the problems with his glove. Once he’s called up, I think the A’s will have a very reliable (and unlike Jemile Weeks, low-risk) offensive second baseman who (in a full season) figures to be a .290+ hitter with 15-20 HR, 30+ 2B, 75+ RBI, 75+ R, and maybe even the occasional steal.
