Michael Saunders Might be Figuring it Out

The game’s been over for like 4 hours, so neither Taylor nor I are going to bother writing any sort of recap, but I just wanted to talk for a minute about the one and only Michael Saunders. He’s a guy who’s had sort of a rough path to the big leagues. He was an 11th round draft pick who immediately started impressing people at a young age and quickly became one of the more highly regarded prospects in the Mariners’ system. He kept hitting, and eventually got his chance to show Seattle his stuff towards the end of last year. That didn’t go so well, though, as in his 129 big league PA’s, he struck out 40 times and put up a line of .221/.258/.279, against mostly lefties, and Roy Halladay. And as if that wasn’t enough of a downer, he then started off the 2010 season in Tacoma by OPS’ing .506 in 21 games.

He managed to earn the much coveted call up by getting off to a hot start in May, though, and he’s starting to remind us all why we were so excited about him in the first place. Now, I know it’s been 2 games, which is like the ultimate small sample size, but I really love talking about Michael Saunders, and those 2 games have been really nice. In those 2 games, he has 7 PA’s, 3 hits, 1 HR, 1 2B, 1 BB, and he’s seen 27 pitches. I can’t draw any real conclusions from 2 games worth of data, but Michael Saunders might just be ready, and if he is, he could be here to stay.