Get to know your prospects: Eric Sogard

Yesterday afternoon, the A's traded Aaron Cunningham and Scott Hairston to acquire Kevin Kouzmanoff and a prospect. The deal thinned out Oakland's still great OF depth and filled the hole at 3B. The prospect was Eric Sogard, which few of you had probably heard of until you looked up his stats last night.

Stats on FanGraphs; Stats on The Baseball Cube (college stats included)

Sogard was drafted by the Padres in the 2nd Round, the 81st overall pick overall. You probably shouldn't put that much stock into the MLB draft reports, but they are helpful nonetheless. Here is a link to a video of him fielding, taking batting practice and some live game action. Here is a link to the draft report from MLB. If you don't want to click, here's the summary they offered: 

Sogard gets the ultimate compliment from scouts by being called "a real baseball player." He can flat-out hit and has suprising [sic] pop. He's got average speed, but can steal a base. He makes the plays at second base with limited range. While each individual tool may not receive a high grade, Sogard is the type who always plays above his tools.

The report also said he "reminds some of Dustin Pedroia," though this is a lazy comparison; two undersized players from the same school are not always similar. Regardless, this report is two years old. Take from it what you will. 

Since being drafted, Sogard has shown limited power, though he did hit 10 HR and 42 doubles in 2008 in a full season in High-A ball, putting up a slash line of .308/.394/.453. One thing he has shown is an advanced batting eye, walking more times that striking out in his two full seasons. 

Before last season, Sickels rated him as the Padres' 11th best prospect. Link here. 

11) Eric Sogard, 2B, Grade C+: Excellent secondary skills. Needs to repeat this in Double-A.

He then went on to put up a line of .293/.370/.400 in AA. This year Sickels rated him as the Padres' 20th best prospect.

20) Eric Sogard, 2B, Grade C+: Gets on base, not punchless, defense is so-so but I like the bat enough to keep give him this grade

A couple other scouting reports because it's January and being a baseball fan is boring these days: 

Here is one from hot-prospects.net that says Sogard is "built like a fire hydrant" and "a high-energy dirt magnet." Here is another from baseball-intellect.com that ranks Sogard as the Padres' 10th best prospect (before last season) and actually has a ranking on the traditional 20-80 scale, though I can't say how reputable these two reports are. This report figures Sogard could become an average second baseman, though is more likely a utility player. 

Though most reports had his defense as average at best, TotalZone had him at 12 runs above average over 150 games. Minor league defensive metrics are iffy at best, though it's really all we have to go by. 

Where Sogard fits in the A's system isn't really known at this point. Kouzmanoff fills the hole at 3B, so whether the A's continue to groom Cardenas as the 3B of the future is still not known. Weeks and Cardenas are both better prospects. Sogard isn't quite a player of the future but he's not exactly minor league filler, either. It's early, but it does look like the most likely scenario is that Sogard turns into a serviceable utility player. He's certainly not a terribly exciting player, but it's January. What else are we going to talk about?

Thoughts?