Holy crapola. Renteria for Andy Marte. The Sox’ entire infield is going to be new next year. Here’s a little on Marte, the Braves’ AAA third-baseman:
Broadly speaking, Marte has “classical” third-baseman skills of the Mathews/Schmidt type. He’s not going to be a .300 hitter, at least not normally. He’s hitting .275 this year in Greenville, hit .285 last year, and .281 in 2002. (To compare, Mathews’ career BA was .271, his career high .306, and he hit .300 three times in his career. Schmidt hit .316 once but his next-best year was .293.)
What Andy brings to the table, already at his young age, is power. Despite missing a lot of time — about 100 plate appearances worth — with his ankle injury he still leads the team in homers with 18, and he’s second in doubles with 24. His isolated power (a number of statistical analysts are pushing this as a good indicator for minor leaguers these days) is .279. (That’s actually down a little, but still impressive. JD Drew’s isolated power is .276.)
Who’s for bringing back NOMAR??
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