Plenty of questions on Indians prospects after season with no minor leagues

Here’s to a week with more good than bad.

Tribe News

Sorting through the Indians prospects made even harder with no minors | cleveland.com

From Terry Pluto:

Yes, some of the top prospects played intra-squad games and practices at the “alternate site.” For the Indians, that was Eastlake, the home of their Class A Lake County franchise. Those workouts fall into the “better than nothing” category, but isn’t a good way to develop young players.

For example, the Indians have a power-hitting first-base prospect named Bobby Bradley. He hit 60 HR over the 2018-19 minor league seasons. In 2019, Bradley had 49 plate appearances with the Tribe, striking out 20 times with only one homer. That season at Class AAA Columbus, he whiffed once every three at-bats while also hitting 33 HRs and batting .264.

The temptation is to look at the bulky 225-pound left-handed hitter and think “He probably strikes out too much to be an impact hitter in the majors.” But Bradley is only 24. What if he’d had 450 Class AAA at-bats in 2020? Perhaps he would have cut the strikeouts. Power hitters sometimes develop later in their careers.

Instead, he was at Eastlake. The Indians know little more about him heading into 2021 than they did in the cut-short spring of 2020.

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