There R Giants #41: Alexander Suarez
Luis Matos (left) and cousin Alexander Saurez (right): from Suarez’ Instagram Account
We’re into the There R Giants Top 50. Over the next few months, I’ll write a post on each of the fifty players in my rankings, leading us back to spring. So far, we’ve covered:
If my last edition of the Top 50 was a player I had assumed might be part of the top 30 on this list, today’s subject is a player I very much wanted to get into my top 30. I kept pushing him into that 30 range, but then would squint my eyes and cock my head and check the list twice and thrice, and inevitably, others would float up above him once again. Some of this is born of experience — as a pre-teen fan, I thrilled to the exploits of a young Bobby Bonds and to some degree, Bonds has remained the blueprint for my very favorite prospect archetype ever since — an OF with power and grace, a dinger-crushing, base stealing 40/40 threat. And if there’s a little swing and miss attached? Well, that never hindered Bobby that much, did it?
Sadly, I’ve been burned on this type of prospect many times over the years, and at some point I reached a Francisco Peguero Bridge too far and the truth began to sink in that just maaaaaybe I shouldn’t stampede over the red flags in my early enthusiasm for another Bondsian beauty. So while Alexander Suarez is exactly the type of prospect to fire up the engines of my imagination, you see before you, Dear Reader, a humble bumble who’s been singed in that particular fire often enough to be a wee bit hesitant. If my post on Anthony Rodriguez amounted to a warning against reading too much into low numbers in the complex league, with Suarez, in the end, I’m pumping the brakes on reading too much into his high ones — no matter how much I would like to!
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