And I've been wondering about both of them.
If you took the two games I saw them, statistically, it looks like this:
Almora 9 PA, a triple, a homer, a strikeout, two HBP, 286/444/1000, one really spectacular play in CF running a ball down at the wall.
Correa 10 PA, two walks, a double, a single, a steal, 250/400/375, one very good play at SS to pick a ball up behind 2B and get the runner by a half-step.
Looking at the above you might think Almora stuck out. But it was Correa.
Pre-game, while the players were on the field stretching and playing catch, Correa, who is still 2 months away from turning 19, is the guy the other Quad Cities players gravitate to. He walks like, for lack of a better term, a Yadier, at only 18. He's focused on defense, and looks like he's locked into every minute detail of the game in-between plays. He's a very very good player, clearly a natural leader, and clearly working hard every minute he's out there.
Almora got hit by a pitch in what looked like the tricpes of his non-throwing arm in his first PA on 7/4. This was against a SP who had walked the previous batter on four pitches and couldn't find any part of the plate. Almora was nothing short of a prima donna, slammed his bat and helmet down out of frustration, took about 6 minutes of time talking with the trainer....then stayed in the game perfectly fine. He got hit again in I believe his 3rd PA (might have been 2nd) and acted put out again to have been hit by a pitch. On routine fly balls he just kind of coasts under the ball, and.....I'm not sure I can describe it, but that one-handed-catch thing where it's obvious that you're trying to make it look even easier for you than it already is. The kind of [expletive] a good player on a 7th-grade traveling team would do.
What it really got me wondering was whether there's anything at all to the above. Not even so much the Correa stuff--I mean, [expletive], the kid is 18 and arguably the best player in the MWL now that Buxton is up in high-A. You look at him and you just go "[expletive] Ballplayer." But the Almora stuff is what bothers me because I have seen a lot of teenagers come through the MWL the past several years, and I've never thought so negative of a player by the way he carries himself. It could be I caught him on a bad weekend--I've seen Almora a few other times this year and while he's never been Correa-esque, he's also never carried himself in such an offensively entitled way.
It bothers me, that I think this about Almora. I think Correa will be the better player. But I don't know what to make of Almora or what I've been thinking about him for the last few weeks.
Anyone seen this in a player before and they ended up trumping your opinion?
