A respectful rebuttal on Cam Smith
I should first start this off by immediately setting the tone for this piece. It is not my nature to put people on blast or dunk on them in the social media sense. Hell, I quit Twitter over a year ago when things there took a much darker turn. In an era where we expect instant gratification and instant results, decisions like the decision to promote Cam Smith take time to digest. I am writing this on Wednesday before Opening Day, but you are probably reading it after Opening Day. Regardless of what happens on Thursday, we do not know what will ultimately happen.
However, there were three points of contention I wanted to address based on the commentary on this decision. I should start with the obvious. This is not an unprecedented decision. I wouldn’t say seeing kids come up a year after they were drafted is exactly common, but it is not uncommon. Paul Skenes might be the most famous recent example, but Wyatt Langford might be a more appropriate comparison.
Sure, there are historical examples of this blowing up in team’s faces. David Clyde is probably the most famous of those examples. Yet, we could cite examples of a quick promotion as being successful. Pete Incaviglia, Bob Horner, and Robin Ventura all were promoted without any minor league experience whatsoever. All three were worth more than ten wins over the course of their career.
Incaviglia was the worst of the three because he was the worst defender of the three. I’m guessing that three or four years of minor league experience wasn’t going to solve that problem. He still produced a .783 OPS in his first season with 30 homers. Yes, he led the league in strikeouts, but I’m not sure that minor league seasoning would have really improved his game that much.
I’ve chronicled the Ventura story here in my HOF Index pieces. Horner played a little more than half of the first season and had a little over two wins in that short amount of time. His .852 OPS made him the best Braves hitter on that team that year and he joined with Dale Murphy to be the only two good players those Braves teams had.
Is Cam Smith Bob Horner or David Clyde? Honestly, none of us know. This brings us to the second point of the conversation. If you have a 70-win team in the offing then you can afford to make decisions in the best long-term interest of the prospect. You can push back the clock as long as you want. The Astros themselves did the same with Carlos Correa and George Springer, even though it was pretty clear both guys were ready. Did the waiting help them? Maybe. Did it help the Astros? Almost certainly.
The Astros aren’t a 70-win team. They are probably somewhere between 85 and 90 wins. A win or two could easily be the difference between making the playoffs and fishing in October. Therefore, the question has to be asked. Is he the best solution right now in right field? Notice I didn’t ask if he were an ideal solution. I asked if he was the best solution. This makes his situation similar to Lankford in Arlington. Lankford earned nearly four wins last year. He looked bad at times, but there wasn’t a player on that roster that was going to produce four wins in left field.
Granted, Lankford is a plus defender in left field and has been an outfielder his whole life. That’s different from Smith, and that is a valid point. However, one of the questions (certainly not the only one) has to be whether he is the best in-house solution. Is he better than Chas McCormick right now? We don’t know the absolute answer to that question, but we are pretty sure we have a good guess based on the evidence available to us.
The second question is how he is equipped to handle failure. We absolutely do not know the answer to this question. However, I would surmise that the likelihood of failure is still there if he were in the minors for another three or four months. If he made his debut next year, it would still be there. Playing in AA and AAA can definitely help make the leap, but it is still a leap.
He has yet to experience failure at the professional level. I definitely get the concern that a rough stretch to start the season could damage his psyche. I also don’t know the kid as well as they do. They’ve worked with him every day. They watched how he worked and how he processed even a minimal lack of success. Far be it for me to question the coaches and scouts on this particular issue. Time may very well prove that he wasn’t ready. None of us can know that.
The last point and the most comical one is the comparison with the Angels. Let’s be clear. Decisions like this are not why the Angels suck. Blaming their lack of success on bad call-ups would be like blaming King Midas’ troubles on his choice of jeweler. The Angels are where they are because they have given out a virtual crap ton of absolutely ludicrous contracts. Some of that is incredibly bad luck and some of that was absolutely predictable.
Even this spring, they selected Tim Anderson to be on the final 26-man roster. Decisions like that should be accompanied by a laugh track. If we wanted to take Astros moves that were Angelesque it would be more along the lines of paying Jose Abreu and Rafael Montero. Those are the kinds of decisions that turn you into a laughingstock if they are made routinely.
Again, I’m not suggesting that I know anything about what is going to happen with Cam Smith. None of us do. That’s really my whole point. It’s a gutsy decision to be sure. It certainly comes with its fair share of risk. It may very well blow up in Dana Brown’s face. However, there is very little that any of us has seen that can prove that it is a bad one. Even historical examples cut both ways.