Casey McGehee visited
Our very own dark horse Rookie of the Year candidate Casey McGehee has not-so-quietly had a spectacular year for Milwaukee, putting up a line of .304/.370/.515 in his rookie year with 15 homers in only 335 PA. If he didn’t split playing time with other guys and didn’t sit out with an injury on the year, we’d be talking 20-25 home runs… and all with no splits whatsoever.
I’d say he should be the starting third-baseman for the Brewers next year along with Mat Gamel, but then I took another look at his minor league stats before this year. His minor league OPS is career .100 points lower than it’s been in the major leagues, and he’s benefited from a high BABIP this year, both sure signs that Casey’s going to drop off a little bit.
He should regress down to career norms and then some, and you might even be able to sell high on him if the Brewers are really convinced that Gamel is the future at third. However, it doesn’t really make sense for the Brewers to do that since Gamel’s really bad at defense and there’s an open position in the outfield. And besides, even if McGehee does have a hard regression year, he’s still valuable to have on the team. A .725-ish OPS with positive defense at third is definitely valuable when you consider he’s still a pre-arbitration player and will make league minimum.
In other words, if I were running the team, I’d be a little wary of how he’s going to do starting the year at 3B, since he’s 27 and hasn’t yet put up an OPS above .750 in the minors ever, but since he’s a low-risk player with virtually no hit on the budget he shouldn’t even be considered a candidate to sell high or get sent back down to the minors. We should all be proponents of rewarding players for doing well for your team regardless of how much of a mirage it is — what kind of message do you send to the other players if Casey gets sent back down to AAA after putting up a .900 OPS during his rookie season?