BCB Community Over/Unders: Scooter Gennett

Today we handle the once fringe prospect Scooter Gennett, who will apparently have the first shot at winning a full time job at 2nd base this year with last year's platoon mate Rickie Weeks out of the picture. I have my doubts that it will actually happen; if the Brewers do attempt to roll with Gennett every day I think they will quickly realize that an option like Luis Sardinas against lefthanders makes much more sense. Scooter has only had 78 chances against a lefty in his MLB career, but he has hit a pitcher-esque .128/.150/.141 in those opportunities.

That's probably too much dwelling on the negative. Scooter has proven to be plenty capable defensively and has really impressed with hitting ability in his first two seasons in the big leagues. Finding a potential league-average middle infielder in the late rounds of the draft is huge for an organization like the Brewers. Last spring I was pretty skeptical that Scooter was going to be a long-term contributor, but I'm now a believer.

A replacement player is basically defined as a player 2 worse than the league average, so those 1.8s in the WAR column basically tell us that Gennett was a league-average player in 2013 and 2014, although his production was packed into half the at-bats in 2013. With even more at-bats in 2015, ZiPS basically projects him to be league-average once again. If he's locked in every day, I think his batting line will sag more than this and pull down his value. But I'm thinking he'll end up with around 500 at-bats and a slightly better batting line, mostly against righties. So I have the OVER.