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ANALYSIS: Minnesota Twins catching prospect Willians Astudillo has been featured over at Fangraphs.com a couple of times as being the strangest minor league player since his callup, and we are inclined to agree. He is primarily a catcher, but has played infield and outfield enough in the minors to qualify there in a number of leagues. What is even more odd is that the Twins seem fine with running him out almost literally anywhere. In fact, The Ringer’s Ben Lindbergh noted that Astudillo is the only player ever listed at 5’9 or shorter and heavier than 215 pounds to have ever played center field. It was just an inning, but that is a hell of a trivia question.
Regarding Astudillo the hitter and fantasy asset, coming into last season he was more of an anomaly than prospect. A gifted pure hitter with elite bat-to-ball skills, Astudillo regularly produced both walk and strikeout rates under 4%. In 2015, he struck out and walked at the same rate, 2.4%. That’s not a typo, and it is also not an aberration; those numbers came over 418 plate appearances. This season, the trend has continued, walking just 2.7% of the time and striking out 4.8%. So far in the bigs, he has not disappointed, as he has yet to walk or strike out in his first 14 at-bats.
Aside from the weird plate discipline, something changed for Astudillo in 2017. Once regarded as an extreme contact hitter with no power, he started lifting the ball. Suddenly, this gifted hitter who could connect with almost anything he wanted to connect with was putting his hits in the air, and thus producing more power numbers. The Fangraphs piece by Travis Sawchik compares this adjustment with that of another short, thick, but brilliant contact hitter who started producing league average power: Jose Altuve.
Now, it’s a lot to expect from a guy that before two weeks ago only those who actually worked in baseball knew about, but it’s also not out of the realm of possibility. After all, the first step to hitting a home run is actually hitting the damn ball; something Astudillo can do with aplomb. If there’s more power hidden in there, and combined with his infield and catcher eligibility, fantasy owners might find themselves a diamond in the deepest of roughs.
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