Archive for the “Aaron Luna” Category

Let’s continue looking at a few interesting prospects over the winter.  Next up is OF Aaron Luna.  Luna was drafted by the Cardinals in the 9^th round of the 2008 MLB draft out of Rice.  He played in the infield for the Rice Owls, but his professional future would lie in the outfield.

In his first partial season in professional baseball, he started out in Quad Cities as a 21 year old and basically mashed.  He had a wOBA of .429 over 82 at-bats even though his batting average was only .234.  That gives any early idea of the kind of power that Aaron Luna could produce.  He was promoted to Palm Beach in August and never got adjusted to high A in only 13 games.  He struck out 8 times and had an OPS of .383.  Aaron probably wants to forget that stint, so we will as well.  Luna played in the outfield in every game that season.  He went to the Instructional league that offseason to work on playing 2B again.

In 2009, he was returned to Quad Cities and he only played 6 games before being moved back to Palm Beach.  Back in the place where he had a disappointing end to his first professional season and played much better.  He had a wOBA of .393 over 54 games.  He continued his high OBP ways, even though he still struck out 22% of his at-bats.  A high OBP combined with a ISO slugging of .231 got a promotion to Springfield for Luna in his age 22 season.  Luna actually played a majority of his games in Palm Beach at second base, which made us reach quickly to our paper bags as we dreamt of a second baseman with that kind of power and on-base capability.  But, when he was moved to Springfield, he was used almost exclusively in the outfield.  He ended the season with Springfield and OPS’ed .782 but continued to keep his high OBP at .362 even though is average was below .235.

The rest of Luna’s career after the jump.

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When I saw Aaron Luna in August, I wrote:

Same kind of scenario as Brown. Good speed, weak outfield arm.  If I questioned Brown’s bat, Luna’s seems even less likely to play at the majors as a corner outfielder. There’s just not enough power or secondary skills there

Looking through some statistics recently, I am continually caught off guard by his numbers and how good they are. There’s a reason for that though.

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I know, I know – it’s early.  Small sample sizes and all that – I get it.  But still, I think that we’ve seen enough of some of our draft picks to have a very early idea of what we’ve got in them.  The truth of the matter is that I’ve been dying to write this post since the day Brett Wallace signed his contract, but I wanted him to get a few at bats under his belt.  He now has 68 plate appearances and 54 at bats.  That’s good enough for me.  So, then, after the jump we’ll take a look at how Brett and the rest of the 2008 draft class have been faring.  Read the rest of this entry »