Laurila: Bryan Reynolds is stoically a very good hitter
From SABR member David Laurila at FanGraphs on October 8, 2019:
Bryan Reynolds was a pleasant surprise in a Pittsburgh Pirates season that was anything but. While the frustratingly-frugal team he plays for plodded to a last-place finish in the NL Central, the 24-year-old outfielder put up a .314/.377/.503 slash line. Displaying better-than-expected pop, he stroked 37 doubles and went deep 16 times.
Clint Hurdle wasn’t expecting that kind of production from the switch-hitting rookie when the Pirates broke camp in Bradenton. The since-ousted manager admitted as much when I asked him about Reynolds in the waning days of the season.
“I don’t think I had on the radar that Bryan Reynolds would be hitting .314 on September 25th,” Hurdle said. “From what I’d heard from our scouts, and what I’d seen in the spring, I thought we had a good young player… and it would be interesting to see how he developed. [But] I didn’t have any expectations.”
Nor did a lot of people, although he didn’t exactly came out of nowhere. Reynolds was a second-round pick out of Vanderbilt in 2016, and he came to Pittsburgh from San Francisco as part of the Andrew McCutchen trade. He ranked ninth on our Pirates Top Prospects list coming into this season, with the following commenting his bio standing out: “We keep waiting for Reynolds’ BABIP to regress (it hasn’t).”
Read the full article here: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/sunday-notes-bryan-reynolds-is-stoically-a-very-good-hitter/
Originally published: October 8, 2019. Last Updated: October 8, 2019.