A Look At Jai Miller

My choice in the poll would have been:

He probably isn’t any good, but neither is Taylor, Cowgill’s unexciting and Sweeney can’t really cover the whole outfield so let’s give him a shot.

Although I am still not convinced he is any different then previous prospects like Matt Carson or Matt Watson. It would be a nice surprise if he amounts to anything.

the guy struck out at a 37.7% clip in AAA last year AND had a .401 BABIP.
He K’d 179 times in 110 games. That’s just terrible. I don’t need anymore stats to know he would easily break the strikeout record given a full season in the majors.
While it would be nice to think we could give him a shot to see if he’d be worth something in the future, he’s just not. I’d much rather see what we can get out of Cowgill and Taylor because both have better potential to contribute in the majors than Miller…

Because they’re not based on MiLB stats, but MLB stats. And he’s had:

2008: 1 PA
2010: 60 PA
2011: 12 PA

That’s all.

his strike-out rate is literally “off the charts”. That is, the green line extends beyond box that was selected for display.

Seriously, if you use MiLB numbers instead, his K% still increases:

2009 = 27.2%
2010 = 34.1%
2011 = 37.7%

I would be willing to believe the increase in HRs in 2011 suggests he figured something out if the K% didn’t go up as well. Looks to me like he’s just swinging harder and more.

… log all the AB’s possible, keep the power, get the K numbers down into the 25% range while showing some semblance of the strike zone, and then we’ll talk. At that point, knowing how shitty our OF will be, he’ll have even forced the conversation – and if all that happens, maybe a call-up.

That’s about my best case scenario for Jai Miller.

that Jai Miller is actually Derek Bryant, playing under an assumed name.

Jai Miller hasn’t been anointed this teams starting CFer in 2012 – I mean, the OF is wide open, yet he hasn’t even been guaranteed a spot on the big league roster.

Does anyone here remember Jesus Guzman and his 2008 season?

That huge BABIP reminds me of Guzman circa 2008. However, Guzman never struck out at nearly the clip that Miller has, which is likely one of the reasons that he finally stuck with a big league club last year and actually was a 2.3 WAR player in limited time with the Padres. If the A’s had that little faith in Guzman, it doesn’t surprise me that they, like the most of us, consider Miller’s season last year to be anomalous and are taking a wait and see approach. If he lights it up in spring training and does stick and puts up any sort of productive numbers in the first half next year, they’d be foolish not to trade him while his stock is high.

then we should trade him – and it’s not sell high, it’s sell smart. Yes, I think there are GM’s that would look at one half season of statistics and be foolish enough to trade some prospects of actual value to the A’s for a guy like Miller.

For the sake of an argument, I believe this discussion about Jai Miller is nonsensical and only explainable by the lack of BB activity. On many teams there has been a fifth-sixth bat with a relatively high strikeout rate, but representing a high HR threat. At this time, this is strictly fantasy baseball – we do not know how any of the rookie OFs will fare once the season starts. Some limited information will be available after the A’s abbreviated Spring Training, but it will weigh heavily on Melvin to decide whom to put in his OF on opening day – the data base will be too small. And, since the team is not expected to be in the race this year anyway, might as well use as many of these youngsters as possible, to see what can be made of them. In fact, since we know what Sweeney is capable of (which is nothing spectacular, anyway), I would use the rookies to test them to the max – and leave Sweeney for later in the season, in case those do not pan out. For that matter – I would think long and hard to try to squeeze Green and Choice into the lineup – let them have as much encouragement and coaching as possible, but train them at the MLB level!