If you are a true fantasy baseballer (<–my mom’s term!), then when you read Byron Buxton‘s name in the title, you waved yourself with a handkerchief like you were Scarlett O’Hara and stutter-stepped like you might pass out. That’s how sexy Buxton is. Another sign of his sexiness, I searched his name on the top right of the site and there were ten pages of results with ten results on each page. 100 posts about Buxton and he’s still a rookie! This is like the chicken and the egg. Are we victims of the hype and hence there’s that many posts about him or are we perpetuating the hype by writing that many posts about him? Brucely, my dear, I don’t give a damn! At this point, you might be asking your mirror, “You, with the handsome head of hair that you paste onto your head every morning, why is Buxton hyped? Wasn’t he garbage last year?” You’re right, you, you smart person you. Buxton was awful this past year in his small cup of coffee; let’s say his espresso was bitter and no amount of lemon rind was helping it. In 138 plate appearances, he had 129 at-bats. Doesn’t that tell you so much? Okay, how about the .209 average with two homers and two steals with two times caught stealing. Does that round out the picture of crapitude he was sporting? Must I remind you that Trout’s first espresso was awful too? Ciao, faccia brutta! Anyway, what can we expect of Byron Buxton for 2016 fantasy baseball?
First, we have to ask ourselves if comparing him to Trout is fair. It’s not. *claps hands together* That was easy! Wait there’s more! Next, we have to ask ourselves if there was a reason Buxton was so rounded hyped. There was. Hey, this is easy! Okay, let’s explore that last one a bit further before we hurry along like we have a bullet train to catch. In Single-A and High-A in 2013 at the age of 19, Buxton had 12 HRs and 55 SBs. Well, hello there. Then in Double-A, was there more meat-pounding action? Wait, meat-pounding sounds like an audio blooper from someone reading roller coaster copy for a radio commercial when they meant heart-pounding. In 59 games last year in Double-A, he hit 6 HRs and .283 to go with 20 steals. That is super solid for a 21-year-old. It’s not meat-pounding, per se. The Twins are promoting him aggressively, but I’m not sure it’s fully warranted. To take this back to Trout, if you can remember back to his first full season, he didn’t even come up until the end of April. Likely holding some weight on that decision was his horrid previous espresso. “I wouldn’t even dip my biscotti into that!” That’s Joe Garagiola reading along at home. My train of thought here is, while Buxton is his own player and not Trout, I wouldn’t A) Be surprised if he starts the year in the minors. B) Is called up before April ends. C) There’s no C. In fact (Grey’s got more to say!), I think Buxton might be helped by a short stint in the minors to start the year. It’s not like he played much in Triple-A last year (13 games with not much of a sample size to draw from — or draw on, as she said). For 2016, I’ll give him the projections of 53/7/43/.241/20, which is, I’m hoping, way too conservative. It makes him draftable in all leagues, but puts him in the fifth outfielder with upside category. Lots of upside, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, kazoo.