Usually people roll their eyes at what Bobby Valentine says, but I am pretty sure that he is accurate with this Nishioka thing. Good observation after-the-fact, yet I still believe that it was made in a timely manner.

For the Parmelee article the focus on tape measure power (“waaayyy over the fence”, “those homers traveled a long way”, “his best attribute: the ability to hit the baseball a long way”, “Here’s a kid who can hit the ball a mile”) was a bit of a head scratcher. Chris Parmelee’s 4 MLB HR’s in 2011 traveled the following distances:
422
405
380
356

FWIW, Thome, Kubel, Cuddyer, Hughes, Plouffe, Valencia, & Tosoni all hit HR’s farther than Parmelee’s longest HR.

Dave – I totally agree with you about the annoying things that many baseball writers say. I’m primarily a Dodgers fan and am exposed to the crap of Plaschke and Simers way more than I would prefer. I just feel in this case that Aaron’s criticism was unnecessary and nitpicky. The effort would have been better used on something else.

The only part of this debate where I could agree with Powers is that perhaps Parmalee does have a power-hitter’s makeup. It sounds like he approaches the game like a power hitter and thinks like a power hitter. But, when I hear the phrase “true power hitter”, I think 30+ homeruns, which so far Parmalee has shown no evidence he can do. Maybe someday he will, but calling him a “true power hitter” without pointing out his anemic home run totals is absolutely misleading. It would not have been that hard to give a more complete (and accurate) picture of Parmalee – that he approaches the game like a power hitter (which you Dustin actually do better than Powers) but doesn’t yet have the stats to back it up.

It’s possible to still be optimistic without ignoring the facts, and it’s different than being ignorant or delusional. Sometimes Aaron is a bit overly negative and pessimistic, but at least his writing is grounded in reality, and not full of unsubstantiated generalities and impressions.