March
6, 2007
Carlos Gonzalez
Winter Player Of The Year: Carlos Gonzalez
Gonzalez earns another accolade
CAROLINA, P.R.--At 21 years old, Carlos Gonzalez was doing things in his home country of Venezuela that players his age and experience level only dream about.
That performance earned one of the top prospects in the Diamondbacks system Baseball America's 2007 Winter Player of the Year award.
Gonzalez spent the last two weeks of the regular season in the United States at Double-A Tennessee, where he hit just.213/.294/.410 in 61 at-bats. The 2006 Futures Gamer wasn't sure he even wanted to play winter ball back home, but after being hit by a pitch twice--once in the neck--before being promoted to Double-A, he ultimately decided he needed to work through some issues.
"There were some things I was doing wrong after I got hit those couple times," Gonzalez said. "Sometimes it was lowering my back shoulder too much, sometimes my balance struggled because I couldn't get that right feel under my legs, and sometimes I was worried about it happening again--especially right after it happened."
So Gonzalez went to play for Zulia and was immediately a star for the Aguilas, hitting .319 in hitting and tying for the second in the league with nine home runs.
"He's a guy you just didn't want to pitch to--runners on base or not," Aragua manager Buddy Bailey said. "He has this quiet approach; probably a lot of people could take him the wrong way and say he was cocky. But being cocky is part of this game, and it's even more so in winter ball.
"It's not show-you-up cocky, but it's confidence. He was a hell of an out."
He was even more so in Zulia's postseason run, when Gonzalez batted .348 and drove in 10 in 11 games and lowered his strikeout rate along the way. Gonzalez did not play for the Caribbean Series club Venezuela sent to Puerto Rico, opting instead to rest for spring training, where he will get his second shot at Double-A in April.
"He's a classic right field guy," a scout with an American League club said. "He had real pull power in the Cal League (at high Class A Lancaster) last year, but he's starting to show some consistent (opposite field) power.
"His hands are very quiet in his approach, not a lot of moving parts to his swing. He runs OK, probably average now with 40 (on the 20-80 scouting scale) potential. But the arm strength is there, the bat speed is definitely there and the power . . . the ball jumps off his bat."
The biggest downside for Gonzalez continues to be the cockiness Bailey mentioned, which often gets thrown under "makeup." Such questions have followed Gonzalez since he broke out in 2005 at low Class A South Bend, where he hit .307/.371/.489, totaled 52 extra-base hits (including 18 homers) and scored 91 runs in 515 at-bats.
Some scouts say he didn't always play hard, run every ball out, and was a negative presence in the clubhouse at times. Diamond-backs farm director A.J. Hinch doesn't agree with the perception that Gonzalez' makeup is a negative.
"I'm not sure where exactly that started, but just look at what he's done," Hinch said. "He's a very loose, very laid-back guy. Every manager that's had him the last two years hasn't had any complaints about his work ethic, and certainly not about what he's done on the field.
"He still has some work to do, but I like what he's been able to do this winter--controlled the strike zone better, performed in a tough environment and really got back to a positive place confidence-wise. That started to come around the last two weeks (in Double-A). He started feeling better physically, and he was definitely a little gun shy after getting hit twice. But we're very pleased with his development this winter overall." |
