Houston Astros’ George Springer showing a lot of promise for the future- MLB News
The Houston Astros have a great future prospect in form of George Springer who has shown flashes of brilliance in his brief professional career. He has also done fairly well this year during the Arizona Fall League representing the Mesa Solar Sox.
In Arizona, Springer scored 14 RBI’s with four home-runs and posted a batting average of .286 with an excellent on-base percentage of .412 in just 70 at-bats. In 2012 regular season, he played for the higher Class A Lancaster JetHawks and the Double-A Corpus
Christi Hooks in the Astros Minor League System.
In a combined 506 at-bats, George posted a .302 batting average along with a .383 on-base percentage. He had 153 hits, including 31 extra base hits and drove in 87 runs and went long 24 times. He posted a .993 fielding percentage in the various positions
that he fielded in the outfield.
Springer learnt a great deal from the experience in the Arizona Fall League where he came across a number of very experienced pros.
"A lot of the pitchers have a lot of experience, and so do the position players," he said. "They play the counts, they play the holes, they play your swing. That was probably the biggest adjustment there."
The Mesa Solar Sox manager Rodney Linares, was also quite impressed by the work George did in the AFL. He believed that the player in his early playing days has loads of potential and will need to be fine tuned over a period of time. He has the tools, he
just needs the experience to use them to the best of is advantage.
"With Springer, he's as athletic as they come, a real five-tool player. It's all about repetition with him, it's going to take a little bit of time for him to get adjusted to pitching, but we saw a short sample of what he can do during the season this year,
he's got a good combination of power and speed and good defense," Linares said.
Rodney believed that it was guys like Springer on whom the ball clubs can build their future upon.
"So the sky's the limit when you got guys [like those]. You can build around guys like that," he said.
The burly 6-foot-3 hitter has a large built and certainly will have the ability to hit balls long. He is only 23 at the moment and played as a professional player for two years after being drafted by the Houston Astros in the first round of the 2011 Draft.
The 2012 season was the first season in which George Springer got a decent chance as he only played eight games in the preceding season. He has certainly shown signs of being an excellent hitter and a decent outfielder. Should he continue to work hard, there
is no reason why he will not be playing in the big leagues soon.
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