GREENVILLE, S.C. -- Over the course of the season, the Greenville Drive has become arguably the deepest, most interesting team in the Red Sox farm system, with several potential big leaguers both on the mound and at the plate. In early July, I was able to travel down to South Carolina and take in all four games of a weekend series between the Drive and the Asheville Tourists. Today we take one last look at Greenville hitters with two pre-season top 10 prospects.
- The top position player on the Greenville roster coming into the year,
Luis Alexander Basabe, got off to a slow start, but has really come on of late, putting up a .380/.458/.662 line thus far in July in 71 at bats through the 24th. Basabe is one of the toolsiest prospects in the system, flashing four plus tools. However, the one tool that lags behind is his hit tool and as a result it also makes him a very risky prospect with a large gap between his ceiling and floor.
Basabe has a projectable, athletic frame, listed at 6-foot-0, 170 pounds. He is still only 19 years old and relatively new to the game of baseball, having only picked it up a year or so prior to signing out of Venezuela. He has room in his frame to add some size as he physically matures, especially in his upper body, without losing much present athleticism.
A switch-hitter, Basabe has a vertical, slightly open stance. He holds his hands high and uses a small leg lift as his timing device. Basabe has solid bat speed and quick hands, and when he makes contact it tends to be loud. Basabe’s approach is still on the rough side as he struggles picking up spin on pitches, though he was tracking the ball better than he did last year in Lowell and looked to have a firmer grasp of the strike zone. He will always have swing-and-miss in his game, but he has the quick hands and bat speed to handle velocity. At times during the series it was noticeable that he was almost too quick with his trigger and was getting his bat out ahead of some mediocre fastballs in the 88-91 mph range from fringy right-handers. Basabe, however, has shown the propensity to use all fields already, especially from the left side of the plate where he looks more comfortable. Given he has only been playing baseball for about five years and the strides he has already made over the last year, Basabe could continue to improve at the plate and develop a fringe-average or, if you want to dream, an average hit tool. Given what else he brings to the table, however, even if he only develops a below-average hit tool, he still could be a valuable player.
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