{"id":791,"date":"2010-04-16T16:23:26","date_gmt":"2010-04-16T20:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/?p=791"},"modified":"2010-04-16T16:23:26","modified_gmt":"2010-04-16T20:23:26","slug":"heyward-thus-far-living-up-to-hype","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/2010\/04\/16\/heyward-thus-far-living-up-to-hype\/","title":{"rendered":"Heyward thus far living up to hype"},"content":{"rendered":"

Would anyone truly have been surprised if Jason Heyward struggeled upon his promotio\"MLB:<\/a>n to the major leagues?<\/p>\n

Despite all the hype it was just that. Hype. Things rarely are as good or as bad as we hear. Even your child’s chorus concert sounded bad but you’ll tell them it was good not to crush their spirits. So exactly why is Jason Heyward living up to the hype at 20 years of age?<\/p>\n

All spring we heard concerns that the left handed hitter lacked experience at Triple-A. Even I suggested\u00a0 the Braves would delay his path to the majors in order to stall his service clock and yet on Opening Day there he was in right field.<\/p>\n

The legend continued from there. He homered in his first big league at-bat and suddenly his spring training batting practice was starting to look like the real thing.<\/p>\n

So what happened next?<\/p>\n

Rob Neyer at ESPN and all the other big wigs decided Heyward can’t possibly be this good. Neyer went on to write a piece saying Heyward strikes out too much<\/a>.\u00a0 Maybe it’s true, maybe his sample size doesn’t correlate well with projecting any season numbers as you could just as well say absurd things like he’s on pace for 50 homers or 120 RBI.<\/p>\n

Will big league pitchers adjust to Heyward by throwing him breaking balls? Probably. But will Heyward also adjust? Maybe.<\/p>\n

We could go through a whole bunch of what-if’s but isn’t it better to just watch Heyward on the field? That’s where I like to see him right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
Batting<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/td>\n
Team<\/td>\nG<\/td>\nAB<\/td>\nR<\/td>\nH<\/td>\n2B<\/td>\n3B<\/td>\nHR<\/td>\nRBI<\/td>\nBB<\/td>\nK<\/td>\nSB<\/td>\nCS<\/td>\nAVG<\/td>\nOBP<\/td>\nSLG<\/td>\nOPS<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2010<\/td>\nATL<\/td>\n9<\/td>\n33<\/td>\n6<\/td>\n10<\/td>\n3<\/td>\n0<\/td>\n3<\/td>\n12<\/td>\n6<\/td>\n12<\/td>\n0<\/td>\n0<\/td>\n.303<\/td>\n.410<\/td>\n.667<\/td>\n1.077<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Would anyone truly have been surprised if Jason Heyward struggeled upon his promotion to the major leagues? Despite all the hype it was just that. Hype. Things rarely are as good or as bad as we hear. Even your child’s chorus concert sounded bad but you’ll tell them it was good not to crush their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[50,59,294],"coauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-791","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-atlanta-braves","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-jason-heyward"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}