The Padres acquired career minor league player Jabari Blash from Seattle via Oakland in the rule five draft. He needs to stay on the Padres roster for the full year if San Diego wants to keep him. What I don’t understand is why he stayed in the minors for the Mariners so long? Blash does not hit for average, but he draws a high number of walks. That means he gets on base frequently. In addition, he hits a ton of doubles and home runs, giving him a high slugging percentage. Given the Mariners recent history of a lack of power, Blash might have helped the team a bit.
I suspect the Mariners looked at his batting average and said, “He can’t help.” Rather, they should have looked at what he could do, and found a place for that to work.
You have to look at his career as it happened and not just his overall minor league career numbers. In 2014, he looked completely outmatched in AAA. .210 average, 57 strikeouts in 45 games — you’re going to call that up to get picked apart in the majors?
Then last year he started in AAA and was terrible for the first month and clearly flawed so they sent him down to AA. He did ok, but was up and down so they let him work on some things and develop some consistency/confidence before calling him back up to AAA, where he went absolutely on fire for the last month and a half.
Anyway, you can argue that they shouldn’t have let him go in the rule 5, but except for maybe a September call-up last year he hasn’t ever looked ready for so much as a cup of coffee.