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Gabriel Moreno is a 22-year-old catcher, number one on our prospects list (well, that’s a spoiler, our prospect list will be coming out next week).
I was hoping we’d see him some this spring, but he didn’t get into any of the major league spring games. He had a visa issue. He did get into 2 games, 4 at-bats with 3 hits last year. With one of the hits being a double, he has a 1.000 career slugging average. It would almost be a shame to ruin that. Almost.
Keith Law had a story of talking to scout about Moreno:
So anyway, he was the guy, he said to me, ‘Moreno is the best guy I saw last year. I can’t believe what a good athlete he is. Yeah, he can catch, but it’s more just such a dynamic exciting player.’ When you see a guy who has present skills, but also has all this athleticism and is kind of a high-energy player, you also walk away saying, I like the way that guy plays, the finer points of how he’s playing the game. But also, he has all this upside left because of the athleticism — those are the guys you have to watch and they’re the guys you bank on.
The athleticism is part of why they were playing him at third last year, but then we got Matt Chapman, and the talk of him playing third has died. In some ways, he reminds me of Russell Martin, a guy that is athletic enough to play infield positions, but he’s so good at catcher and has such a bat. He is the guy you put in a spot and move other guys around.
There is no end to the glowing comments about Gabriel.
Quick bat, compact swing, makes hard contact, good arm, threw out 40% of base stealers last year, good at blocking the plate, receiving, basically everything sounds good.
He’s already been optioned to Buffalo, but....
Should he be starting the season with the Blue Jays? Likely he could and likely he would have a good season.
But, last year, he played Double-A for the first time, and just 32 games there (and 3 games at Triple-A). And they have Jansen and Kirk (and McGuire). It isn’t service time manipulation that is keeping him down.
If a catcher were to get injured, I’m sure we’d see him. And, when that happens, he should be the number one catcher.
PECOTA only sees him playing 8 games in the majors.
Poll
The number of MLB games Moreno plays this year will be
This poll is closed
-
7%
0
(33 votes) -
24%
1-10
(100 votes) -
40%
11-30
(170 votes) -
18%
31-60
(76 votes) -
8%
More than 61
(37 votes)
Poll
Where does Moreno get most of his playing time this season
This poll is closed
-
5%
Double-A
(21 votes) -
89%
Triple-A
(344 votes) -
4%
MLB
(18 votes)
Poll
If I ran things, Moreno would be our number one catcher
This poll is closed
-
7%
Opening Day
(31 votes) -
5%
May 1st
(21 votes) -
24%
Mid-Season
(98 votes) -
61%
Not until 2023
(243 votes)
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