Alex Presley vs. Chris Duffy

Alex Presley has been tearing up AAA pitching for a couple of years now, and that got him a promotion to the big leagues this year, where he continued to hit extremely well. In the 20 games he played before going on the DL, Presley hit .333/.402/.494 and provided a serious spark for the Pirates offense.

His success was so great that a lot of people around Pittsburgh expect him to be the savior for this struggling offense when he comes off the DL. However, I'm not as high on Presley as other people. You can't argue with what he has done the last 2 years in every level he's played at, but it's just too small of a sample for me to be really excited about. Honestly, Presley reminds me of a former Pirate who was also a speedy outfielder. His name is Chris Duffy, I'm sure you remember him.

Duffy started his Pirate career in 2005 at the age of 25 (which is how old Presley was at the beginning of this season), and he hit .341/.385/.429 in 39 games (126 at-bats). Pirates fans were excited, thinking that Duffy was going to be the long term solution in centerfield. However, 2006 wasn't too kind to Duffy. He started the season in center for the Pirates and hit .194/.255/.276 in his first 98 at-bats before being sent to AAA on May 15th. After hitting .349/.415/.509 in the minors, he was recalled on August 1st and finished out the year in the majors, hitting .282/.345/.366 and giving fans a little more optimism. That was enough to get another opening day start in centerfield in 2007. Duffy almost made it the whole way through June with the Pirates, but was sent down again after hitting .249/.313/.357 in 241 at bats, ending his Pirates career. He tried to find his way back up to Pittsburgh but couldn't ever do it, hitting .266/.336/.413 in 2008 with Altoona and Indianapolis before ending up with the Brewers for the 2009 season, where he found the majors but his .125/.222/.156 in 19 games to end his major league career.

A sad story indeed, and one we have heard far too many times about young Pirate players. So will Presley be the same way? Well there is really no way to tell. I can tell you that Presley and Duffy have a lot in common.

Both of these outfielders were 8th round picks by the Pirates, so neither of them was really supposed to be a major league starter. Their career minor league triple-slash lines are very similar as well (.292/.362/.411 for Duffy and .290/.345/.435 for Presley). Presley has a little more power than Duffy did, and has drawn more walks per game (by a very small margin), which are both favorable signs, but Presley has been a strike out victim in his career, going down on strikes .713 times a game in his minor league career.

Another interesting name that is in the same boat as Duffy is Tike Redman, another Pirate centefielder. Redman hit .330/.374/.483 in 56 games with the Pirates in 2003 and was the everyday center fielder the entire 2004 season and most of the 2005 season. After his hot start in 2003, he hit .280/.310/.374 in 2004 and .251/.292/.332 in 2005 before leaving the organization.

I'm not saying that Presley is going to end up like Duffy and Redman and be back in the minor leagues for good next year, I'm just saying that we haven't seen nearly enough of him for extreme confidence to be warranted. It's the same with Pedro Alvarez, except the other way around. A lot of Pittsburghers are giving up on Alvarez because of a really bad showing this year (in just 212 plate appearances), but history has shown us that you have to be really patient with young hitters and get a very large sample before you can say what kind of player they will be.

Presley has been one of the Pirates best hitters in the short time he's been up here, and I hope it continues, but I'm not ready to pencil him in as the starting left fielder for years to come.