Sep 2, 2016; Baltimore, MD, USA; Baltimore Orioles third baseman Manny Machado (13) writes on the infield dirt before the game against the New York Yankees at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Mandatory Credit: Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports
Sep 2, 2016; Baltimore, MD, USA; Baltimore Orioles third baseman Manny Machado (13) writes on the infield dirt before the game against the New York Yankees at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Mandatory Credit: Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports /
The Atlanta Braves have always put a focus on exceptional defense from their shortstops, and they have another elite defender in Alejandro Salazar. Can he hit enough to have a major league future?
Who Is He?
The Atlanta Braves signed Salazar out of Venezuela as part of the 2013 July 2nd international free agent class. A small guy, many saw the excellent defensive skills and solid contact skills and thought he could grow into more power as he aged.
Salazar was assigned to the Dominican Summer League to start his professional career in 2014. He hit very well, slashing .303/.355/.361 with a 7.1% walk rate and 15.3% strikeout rate. His glove drew rave reviews, specifically his arm, which received big-time praise.
He was moved up to the Gulf Coast League in 2015, and he continued making solid contact with excellent defense. He slashed .284/.352/.361 with a 9.1% walk rate and a 14.6% strikeout rate. His range continued to draw praise from evaluations, but he struggled some with his judgement on throws, per reports, making tough throws and trusting his arm rather than “pocketing” a ball that he couldn’t get an out on.
In 2016, the Braves bumped Salazar beyond Danville straight to Rome. His defense didn’t miss a beat, and his contact skills were still solid, as he slashed .278/.307/.309 with a 4.1% walk rate and an 18.4% strikeout rate.
Salazar is listed at 6′ and 170 pounds. He’s definitely lean, though he could be an inch or so taller than the 6′ listed.
Hitting
Salazar sits moving in the box, but he does have a very good approach once he gets lined up for the ball. He is very quick to the ball with a quick, succinct swing.
One of the struggles I’ve noticed in his swing that could be an issue going forward is that Salazar knows he has remarkably quick wrists, so he can sometimes get a little bit lazy in getting his lower half connected in with his upper half.
Salazar has put on some natural strength in his lower half in the last couple of years, so he’s certainly got the strength in the lower half to generate power in his swing. I still don’t know that he’ll ever be a guy who would hit 20 home runs, but he could be a guy to use the gaps much more, sneaking over 10 home runs in a good year.
He will need to work with coordination in his swing to do that, however. His hands are some of the best in the entire system, especially considering all the video I saw of him was as a 19 year-old playing in full-season ball. However, if he could just get those hands in tune with his lower-half, he’d generate a lot more positive contact.
Base Running/Fielding
Salazar is one of those guys who really puts the difference between base stealing and base running into focus.
As a base stealer, Salazar is mediocre at this point. He’s got long legs, and while they’re fluid on the field (more on that in a bit), he takes a bit to get them going on the bases. As such, he’s played 206 games in his minor league career and stolen a total of 20 bases while being caught 13 times.
However, this is not due to being slow by any means as Salazar certainly has above-average speed, and the best place for him to exhibit that offensively is in his base running. He does an exceptional job of taking extra bases when he’s running bases, and he seems to have an extra gear that he kicks into about half way between bases that if he’s going for two bases of running, he’s running at an elite speed for a good portion, but going station to station, he’s just a shade above average.
Defensively is where Salazar really shines. He has incredibly fluid movement in his long arms and legs moving side to side for balls. His best instincts are two his arm side, which helped in Rome this year as Austin Riley was struggling badly on defense at third and Salazar certainly covered up a lot of his mistakes with his range.
Salazar’s arm is right on that border of above-average and plus, but his accuracy with his throws has improved impressively since his time at lower levels. In nearly double the innings and 1.5 times the chances this year with Rome, he made less errors than his 2015 time in GCL, and most of those errors could be traced to inaccurate or poor decision throws.
That defensive maturity as a 19 year-old is why Salazar gets such high remarks from people within the Braves organization that I talk with, who often discuss his glove leading his contact-oriented bat up the minors until the bat catches up.
One of my favorite “punch line” players is really the absolute perfect fit for the skill set that Salazar presents.
In the late 1990s, the Colorado Rockies brought up a young, defensively skilled shortstop by the name of Neifi Perez. Neifi had good contact skills, but not much else offensively in his background. He became the great example of both the craziness of the offensive environment of the time and the crazy environment of Coors Field at the time with his numbers at the time as he was able to have one season with 39 doubles, 11 triples, and 10 home runs, but still he was only able to post a 69 OPS+ in that season!
Perez was a guy who came up with very good bat control and defensive skills and in his career, he posted 12.7 dWAR on Baseball Reference, but he also posted -3.8 oWAR on Baseball Reference, due to the lack of power and patience in his offensive approach. Interestingly, the offensive season I mentioned previously was the only year Perez won a Gold Glove, but at the time, he was facing fairly tough competition as Perez broke a 3-year streak of Rey Ordonez winning the award in the National League.
While Salazar is certainly not limited to Perez’s career, that is the path he is on at this time. Without work on his pitch recognition and his swing to maximize his natural power in his swing, Salazar will be a guy who won’t have a bad batting average, but he will not give much else.
He did miss a good chunk of 2016 due to injury, so his 2017 may start back at Rome, but with the influx of shortstops into the system with the large IFA class, he may be sent to high-A Florida where he will play all next season at 20 years old.
