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BrianV
Joined: 02/08/2016
Posts: 125

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My full-time 2B for the last few seasons has been Mark Sparks - decent with the glove, high contact rate and little else. He's been good enough, and I feel like I could be happy with him for another season or two as he's only 29.

However, I have 24 year old heir-apparent 2B Jose Beniquez sitting in the wings. No promotion recommendation yet, but he's currently at 101 SI and I'm sure he would cap out even if I called him up early. However, I think he still needs to pick up some points in fielding before he's a full-time starter.

How would you manage this transition?

Sparks has a higher pure 'hitting' rating, but I expect Beniquez to get on base more with his higher discipline, control and power. I don't think I'm losing much offense by going to Beniquez.

However, obviously Beniquez needs a lot of fielding development still.

I left Beniquez off the Spring Training roster as I felt I had other players who could better use the experience, but I'm now regretting it as perhaps I could have gotten a bump to his fielding from it...

Should I just toss him in as a starter, or should I just trot him out for Cup games for as long as that lasts?

Rock777
Joined: 09/21/2014
Posts: 9571

Haverhill Halflings
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It nice to be in this situation. You can leave him in AAA without worrying about hurting his development. He will probably be fine if you promote him, but it looks like most of his growth is going to happen in fielding. In that case it is possible he might stunt a bit in fielding.

Offensively I'm not sure Beníquez will do as well as Sparks is right now. Its hard to tell because LL-6 leagues vary so much. Beníquez's AAA number are ok, but usually guys take a hit when they go up a level. Beníquez should get a little better, but again most of his growth is left in fielding, not hitting skills. He also needs more position training to be a good 2B defensively. So lots of needs defensively (fielding & Position).

Given Sparks has preformed well the last few seasons, I would keep him in as your every day for now and leave Beníquez in the minors to work on his fielding and position training.

When ever you do bring him up, I would start off by platooning him against lefties. He should do better than Sparks against lefties, and Sparks is MUCH better against righties. That will give him the ABs he needs to finish progressing in his skills (including fielding). This won't help his position training as much, which is why I recommend leaving him down for now.
BrianV
Joined: 02/08/2016
Posts: 125

Inactive

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So, it's now a few weeks later, and Beniquez has gained his 2B, and is now recommended for the Majors:

http://brokenbat.org/player/110840

I'm on the fence, Sparks is having a good year still, but I need to think two years in the future. Since I'm doing terribly this season anyways, if I play Beniquez he will be pretty well developed by the time this season and next are done, by which time Sparks will be in decline.
el_jefe_loco
Joined: 02/25/2015
Posts: 73

Inactive

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I agree with Rock that the offensive production will drop a bit when you switch to Benequiz...

You're 12 games out of promotion, so if you don't think your team has a 2nd half push in them, I'd go ahead and play the youngster. No risk in being relegated, so if/when promotion looks out of reach, why not get him some low-risk innings and AB?

At a minimum, you could go with a LH-RH platoon and get Benequiz in against LHP... especially since Sparks is a LH bat


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