David Adams is hitting again. He looked to be on the fast track for the majors until a severe ankle injury ended his 2010 season after just 39 games. A standout hitter and second baseman at UVA, Adams had done nothing but hit since becoming an adult. He was hitting .309/.393/.507 for Double-A Trenton at the time, and had come off a similar batting line between Charleston and Tampa in 2009. The injury knocked him out for more than a full year, and it wasn’t until early this year that he finally returned back to normal.
65 games into his season, Adams is now hitting a very strong .320/.391/.445 and playing decent enough defense at 2nd, where he had played every game of his career above Single-A. Recently however, the Yankees have been playing him at 3rd base, and he now has 12 games there. He probably will not hit well enough to be a major league 3rd baseman. Clearly, they are finally preparing Adams for a future utility role.
I think that Adams can be a starting major league 3rd baseman on a decent team. Robinson Cano is obviously a better candidate, but Adams (or my personal favorite, an Adams/Joseph platoon) is a decent enough back up plan. As a utility player, he would be a genuinely strong player backing up Yankee infielders.
There’s only one problem though – Adams can’t play shortstop. Any backup infielder is going to have to not-so-occassionally spell Derek Jeter at short. The Yankees would still have to carry a Nix or Nunez even with Adams on the roster. This would make an Adams/Joseph backup difficult.
Bigger picture: The current Yankee roster requires very good backup players to be competitive. Mark Teixeira, Derek Jeter, and Alex Rodriguez are going to miss significant time over the course of a season, and need to be DHed for even when they are healthy. The team has so far been well-served by guys like Raul Ibanez, Andruw Jones, and Eric Chavez on the roster, but that may not last forever. Adams and Joseph are a part of the next generation of this arrangement. I wouldn’t be shocked to see Corban Joseph tried out at 3rd base as well, and maybe some time at 1st or left field too. A lot of teams would, assuming the Yankees view Robinson Cano as the long term solution, use guys like Adams and Joseph as trade bait. The Yankees should not follow this model.
The Yankees have an underrated prospect in Adams. I didn’t have a lot of faith in him as recently as a few months ago, but he’s been on a long enough tear that I am a buyer again. He’s 25 years old, but is more like a 23 year old in terms of actual minor league playing experience. He and Joseph are both on the 40-man roster, so perhaps we will see quite a bit of them in September.
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6 Responses to The Plan For David Adams
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TIQ IQ
Dude give up writing on this topic as you suck at it! You have no clue if someone is a good or bad defensive player as you never see them play!
I know, seriously. What a dick this guy is. Its not like he’s reading professional writers every single day make judgments about prospects, then synthesizing that information down using experience from six years of blogging and twenty years of minor league baseball fandom, then expressing that synthesis in meaningful words about a prospect.
God! I hate him so much. If only he were as creative and thoughtful as this comment.
The consensus around David Adams has long been that he’s a passable but not great 2nd baseman. Nothing has changed in the past four years on that. Me still living close enough to Trenton to still catch a few games a month doesn’t change that one bit.
The inability to play a position hasn’t been all that much of a barrier to backups making the Yankees in recent years
True, although I’m not sure how comfortable we’d be with someone who has never played shortstop before. I’d be less worried about someone who’s played the position, but was demonstrably bad at it (like, Eduardo Nunez) than someone who has never been there before.
I have no clue how Adams has been at 3rd, but there isn’t much question about his defense at 2nd. Corban Joseph, on the other hand, may well be just pretending to be a 2nd baseman at this point, if you believe some scouting reports.
I think “Moron” has given himself a very apt screen name — certainly more accurate than mine.
Nice post. Adams was always something of an under the radar prospect because of his age and because he didn’t hit HRs but he was an elite collegian (Wahoowa!) and if he can bring 15-20 HR power to the plate along with good discipline and a plus hit tool he can be an above average major leaguer at 2B or 3B. I saw pretty positive reviews on his play at 2B, especially turning two, but Cano is indispensable and absent something going really wrong in negotiations I assume they pay the piper. But ARod’s struggles to stay healthy illustrate the importance of a good 3B who can play everyday, and if Adams can take a few games at 2B he can probably cobble together 200 ABs or more at the next level.