Mark Trumbo Results Crush Brandon Wood Hype

That the games still need to be played and the experts are just guessing as to who would be a success at the next level.

Looking at the spark and contribution of Trumbo, P-Bo, Conger (when he’s allowed to play) and Trout has been much larger than I would have imagined sitting at Spring Training. But here we are — we’re totally rebuilding, but we’re alive and in the hunt heading into Sept.

Wood is a proverbial ten cent head. He just couldn’t pull it together in the bigs. It happens. I think we’ve also seen recently that the Angels organization is not the best fit for some players — Napoli was not happy here, and seems to be relieved to be playing away from the Soth style.

Hatcher gets a lot of shit on this board, but he also presided over the first top to bottom lineup of over .300 a few years ago.

Even the best prospects frequently flame out — the history of the minors is full of guys who were given big bonuses and did bupkus in the Show. Heck, Jerome Williams is one!

Five years ago, would any Angel fan have been willing to write off Wood’s 2005 for the fluke that it was?

But I also suspect that some mind-fudgery may be at work here. Wood always played with the expectation, and wore it very badly in the bigs. Trumbo always played against the non-expectation, and used it as anger motivation to learn and excel. When you “know” that the only thing between you and semi-stardom is execution, and then you don’t execute well, that’s got to be extremely difficult to deal with. When no one loves you and all you do is produce, the effect on the mind just have to be different. By all counts, Trumbo is an extremely diligent and intelligent worker.

But yeah, who knows? And who knows if Trumbo, with his bad plate discipline, isn’t a prime candidate for a Ron Kittle-style sophomore slump?

Also, it’s “percentage points,” not “percent.”

It took BWood 5 YEARS of sporatic PAs to get to that number. That is scary. He might have just been a terribly flawed player all the time. But I blame the mismanagement.

  They gave him the chance to be a starter too. 218 AB’s. He’s just not that good.

Wood was a 1st round pick and had a lot of hype. He put up big numbers in the minors during 2005 and 2006, and received just about every non-pitching award that was available to minor leaguers. He was the Angels #1 prospect for multiple years. Woods hype grew when the Angels apparently considered him “untouchable” in trades for major league talent.
 
As for Trumbo, he was an 18th round pick in 2004. He did not show prodigious HR totals until 2008, and then his power number went down in 2009 before exploding in 2010 in the thin air of SLC.

Wood had enough talent to get to the majors, but his talent has not translated to staying in the majors. I don’t believe Wood was able to adapt to the changes between AA/AAA ball and the majors. Thus far, Trumbo has shown the ability to adapt to major league pitching and continues to get good results. He’s shown average major league production for 1st base. To improve upon his rookie campaign, he must learn to take walks and increase the OBP. It would not surprise me if Wood is out of baseball within 2 years.

Before we get too giddy about Trumbo let’s realize his OBP was below .300 before 8/31.

June = .281
July = .292
August = .304

We all knew he had power in the minors. Before praising Hatcher for ANYTHING let’s see Trumbo raise his OBP to more than .009 points above Adam Dunn. Trumbo has the 2nd worst OBP of any qualified 1B in baseball this year.

Has Hatcher EVER taught an Angels player to be more patient?

excellent post and replies, but let’s not foget Trumbo also was a highly touted prospect coming out of Villa Park. He was a two-way star and many saw his future as a pitcher. The problem was that he was on the fast track to USC to star there and the only reason the Angels got him was he dropped to the 18th round due to signability concerns, and many saw his future on the mound.

His signing bonues was $1.425 million – he was not the typical 18th rounder – everyone recognized the talent was there, including USC and his family.

Wood’s signing bonus was $1.3 million as a first rounder (one year earlier)

His OBP is attrocious.

And there’s a lot to celebrate with Mark Trumbo.

I really like his power, his work ethic, his professionalism, and his intellect. He’s a joy to watch in interviews, and seems like he could be a coach in some capacity in the future.

I also think he gets a bad rap for his defense, which has seemed completely adequate to me over the course of a season.

On the other hand, he’s shown severe limitations this season in hitting for average and getting on base, and I don’t know that how much more upside he has. If he can continue to make adjustments and make the translation to a corner outfield spot, maybe he can be Jermaine Dye for awhile, best case scenario.

From a principled standpoint, however, I don’t think Trumbo should merit that much ROY consideration when the season’s done. Even subtracting numerous exciting rookie pitchers, there are a number of exciting position players even in the AL that are likely to have more stunning careers than Trumbo when we look back a decade from now.

I understand that players like Ackley and Jennings will have only logged half a season worth of appearances (Lawrie and Reddick even fewer) come October, but their excellence seems more compelling to me. For someone with Trumbo’s plate appearances, Hosmer seems a better rounded hitter. But then, this year has had a pretty strong rookie crop.