Brewer Food For Thought: Determining a spot for Scooter Gennett

Building the case for Scooter Gennett is a road that eventually this ball club is going to have to go down. For the 22-year-old, he still has enough time to get through the rigorous tests of the minor leagues. Looking beyond 2013 and 2014, the Milwaukee Brewers will have two key free-agents, Rickie Weeks and Aramis Ramirez, so does Gennett’s window open there? It’s hard to tell, but Gennett is going to fit somewhere on this team. 

Now, does this necessarily mean Gennett is going to be the infield face of the Brewers?

Nobody knows for sure, but what we do know is that he can hit, and well at that. In the short time that he’s spent in the minors (since 2010), Gennett has steadily found himself rising higher and higher. He’s already advanced to Double-A and may very well see himself in Triple-A sooner than later if he is able to continue the same production he did in 2012.

Scooter Gennett (standing) is going to have an impact on this ball club one way or another. Mandatory Credit: Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports

Looking back at Scooter’s 2012, we’ll see he wasn’t a huge power guy, only five home runs in 573 plate appearances, or 133 games. However, power alone does not make a player. Gennett’s slash line of .293/.330/.385 proves the fact that he’s just a really good contact hitter than can also hit some doubles as he was able to hit 30 of them. Granted that said, his ISO of .092 sounds a lot more concerning than it should be, but in reality, it just means he isn’t a power guy. He also stole 11 bases so his speed will be an asset to him once he’s up in the majors. Scooter’s bat is quite incredible and the fact that he was able to produce this well in just one season in Double-A shows us a lot of promise.

However, the one major flaw right now with Gennett is his defense. In 2012, Gennett committed 19 errors and had an overall fielding percentage of .970. Gennett plays second base, which as we all know now, is occupied by Weeks. Obviously Gennett has some fine tuning to do on his defense and another year or two in Double-A or even Triple-A can help him with that.

Placing Gennett on the team is something that cannot be done at the moment. Currently, Gennett is on the 40-man roster, but with Taylor Green and Jeff Bianchi getting call-ups before him, Scooter has time to work with. Honestly, Gennett fits on the team when players like Weeks and Ramirez are gone as he’ll more than likely be the second baseman in the future. Going forward, he can possibly come up sometime in 2014 to work as a utility player and then we can assess his talents from there, but until then, there’s just no room for him on the 25-man roster.

That isn’t to say that Gennett’s time is strictly limited to 2015 and beyond. We speculate he can be ready at the earliest in 2014, but with the way he’s been in the minors, aside from his defensive holes, he’s advancing up just like Hunter Morris. Not to mention, Gennett is young and his maturity as a player is only going to grow from here on out. He’s been one of the highly touted prospects in the Brewers’ farm system so perhaps he can live up to that reputation. I don’t see Gennett being the talk of trade bait if the Brewers want to acquire someone down the road because he’s too valuable of a prospect to trade. Once Gennett is up here though, we’ll truly be able to see whether or not he was worth the wait.