Reds shortstop prospect Billy Hamilton is probably a couple years away from the big leagues, but he's already one of my favorite players. He was selected today to the MLB Futures game, so now I've got a good reason to watch.
Hamilton, playing for the Bakersfield Blaze of the high-A California league this year, has already stolen 80 bases in 66 games. Last year, he stole 103 bags in 135 games in the midwest.
But wait! The stolen base king of professional baseball was also recently on the receiving end of a little thievery, when he was held up and robbed at gunpoint earlier this week after the California-Carolina League All-Star game in Winston-Salem. The umpire for the game was also robbed by the same henchmen in a separate incident just minutes apart from Hamilton's robbery.
God, I love the minor leagues. But what I don't understand it: why didn't Hamilton just run away?
Back back to Billy Hamilton and his ridiculous base stealing capabilities. Eighty stolen bases may sound like a lot (because it is!), but consider how far out ahead Hamilton is from the rest of pro basbeall.
The Angels' Mike Trout leads the American League with 19 steals. The Cubs' Tony Campana leads the NL with 24. No one in either triple-A league has more than 27 steals. No one in the three double-A league has more than 31. The leader of the high-A Carolina league has 21, and the Florida State League leader has 22.
Hamilton's nearest competition comes from his own California League, where Rico Noel has stolen 46 bases for the Lake Elsinore Storm. And let's all pray, by the way, for Rico Noel to make the big leagues because we've had a terrible shortage of Ricos in Major League Baseball ever since Rico Brogna retired in 2001. Rico Washington had a cup of coffee with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2008, in 2008, but we need a Rico that we can really sink our teeth into.
The word on Hamilton is that he's got some work yet to do defensively, but there seems to be enough potential in his bat to go with his legs that he should play in the Majors. He struggled as an 18-year-old in his first yearof pro ball, but then hit .318 the next year in the Pioneer League and hit .278 last year in the Midwest League.
This season he's hitting .322 and has a tremendous on-base percentage of .408.
Not since the 1980s, when Rickey Henderson and Vince Coleman were tearing up the base paths, has Major League Baseball seen a true stolen base artist. Mike Trout looks like he's got it in him, so let's hope Billy Hamilton can get there soon to give him a counterpart.
But in the meantime, he's got to watch his back.
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