I was talking to my dad earlier about Newcomb and how he is the last piece from the Simmons trade. I was telling him how frustrating it is that Simmons struggled so much his last year or two at the plate in Atlanta, yet has done really well in LAA.
That got me thinking, outside of Freeman, who is the last good hitter that we have developed through our system recently? Heyward did okay early on but struggled mightily towards the end. Before that, francouer was the same. Dansby came up and did well last year but fell off the face of the earth.
Do you think focusing almost solely on pitching has caused us to fall behind on how to properly teach these kids to hit...? (Of course you sometimes get lucky and have guys with natural hitting talent like freeman. Hopefully Acuna falls into that category.)
Btw, it seems like a lot of the issues for these guys seem to be similar. Poor situational hitting, lots of strikeouts, and poor pitch recognition.