The Ryan Sweeney Era came to an unsatisfying conclusion Thursday when
the Sox shipped him to Oakland as the least essential part of a three-prospect package for Nick Swisher. Apparently, Sweeney's stock dropped within the organization as quickly as it rose in the first place.
Baseball America called Sweeney the Sox's
third-best prospect after 2005, and he jumped to
No. 1 after 2006. But after he failed to develop power in his second year at Triple-A, Phil Rogers
dropped him to No. 6 for the coming year -- and then he was gone.
That raises the question:
Sweeney, a second-round draft pick out of high school in the 2003 draft, burst onto the scene as a 19-year-old playing in spring training in 2004. He made
an enormously successful first impression -- 11 hits and only two strikeouts over 30 at-bats -- and impressed his superiors with his effort. Scott Merkin wrote quite the foreboding paragraph:
[Brian] Anderson has joked on a couple of occasions that Sweeney is treated
like Guillen's son, and he's more like Guillen's stepson. Anderson also
referred to himself as a bit of a bad influence on Sweeney, who is a
little quieter than the gregarious first-round pick.
Indeed, that's how it turned out when Sweeney was called to the majors. It only took a couple weeks for
Sweeney to dislodge Anderson as "center fielder of the future" -- even though
Sweeney nearly started his 2006 season with the Sox exactly how Anderson had -- two hits in his first game, with subsequent struggles thereafter. Ozzie went so far as to say:
"This kid played the game right. I loved when he went to third base
with the ball in the dirt. I wish my players would look at themselves
in the mirror when you see a rookie guy playing the way he played. He
has great instincts in the outfield. … He seemed like he was playing
there every day. … Good at-bats. … He reminds me of Ozzie Guillen."
Anderson inadvertently cleared the way for Sweeney thanks to a personality clash with Ozzie Guillen, and as long as Sweeney continued to work hard, he could develop into the player his size (6-4, 215 lbs.), athleticism and sweet swing hinted at.
Unfortunately, the problem was twofold:
No. 1: If Sweeney's power developed, he might've eventually reached ... Anderson's production at Charlotte.
No. 2: Sweeney couldn't afford to become complacent.
And, of course, the Sox saw the opposite of the desired outcome -- the former never happened, but the latter did.
It might be unfair to say Sweeney let up -- he did deal with a wrist injury that sapped the very moderate amount of power he had, after all. Any attitude issues could only be confirmed by Sweeney, Marc Bombard or members of the Sox front office.
The two things we do know don't help his cause, though. He regressed as a hitter statistically in his second full year at Charlotte, and word on the street is that he thought he should've been called up in September. It's dangerous to take inferences from quotes to the press, but
his post-trade interview didn't offer much in terms of self-evaluation:
"I think I've done a decent job in the minor leagues, and I need to prove myself in the big leagues, and I think if I can get a couple hundred at-bats, four or five hundred at-bats, get comfortable and get used to it and everything, I think everything will work out OK."
That's hard to believe, since he didn't crack a .400 slugging percentage in Charlotte's tiny park. Inside fastballs ate him alive, and that's a pitch 98 percent of major-leaguers can throw.
At the same time, Sweeney is right that he did a decent job. The problem is that the Sox rewarded him for decent jobs while pegging him as a major-league fixture, even though Sweeney's numbers were not commensurate with the expectations.
Sweeney's ability to handle himself at levels above his age excited the Sox brass, but
he never excelled at any level after rookie ball:
- Age 19: .283/.335/.379 at Winston-Salem
- Age 20: .298/.357/.371 at Birmingham
- Age 21: .296/.350/.452 at Charlotte
There's nothing wrong with that Charlotte line, but it did push his development past the point of no return. If the Sox had a year to freeze Sweeney at a level, it should have been with the Barons after the 2005 season. He had wrist issues then, too, and between that and the fact that Birmingham is hell for hitters, Sweeney only managed one homer all year. That's unacceptable for a corner outfielder, and because of the injury, nobody would've raised an eye for holding him back a year.
Instead, the Sox promoted him to Triple-A, and while he succeeded in his first stint, another wrist injury and an overall lack of offensive production -- especially in the Arizona Fall League -- cornered the Sox into having to start Sweeney in Charlotte for a third straight year. That would be a pretty big insult to Sweeney, as well as a fairly big indicator of his plummeting value to potential suitors.
It will be interesting to see if a change of scenery changes his outlook. Sweeney is still a scout's dream (although
the description of "an Abercrombie & Fitch-catalogue physique" still creeps me out a little), but he needs to lose the balsa bat if he has any hopes of sticking.
This year, he'll be in an organization that doesn't have any emotional ties to him. The Sox became too enchanted with his ability to hang out with the older kids and gave him a path of little resistance. He has no such history in Oakland, and he'll have to prove himself all over again.