It always concerns me when I put too much faith in The Sciosciapath playing a guy that is under 25 years old. A bigger concern is one that is currently penciled in at DH. If Josh Hamilton gets a nagging injury, then he’s going to DH and C.J. Cron will be benched. Same, really, with any Angels player. The only one we don’t have to worry about is Pujols. Not because Pujols is guaranteed to stay healthy, but if Pujols gets gimpy, he’ll DH and Cron will play 1st base. At one point last year, The Sciosciapath benched Cron vs. righties. And he’s better vs. righties! Much of the brain’s complex advancements in evolution happened in the neocortex. The Sciosciapath benches his neocortex for what he sees with his eyes. “You can’t second guess what you see, otherwise you may as well wear tanning bed goggles and get led around by a seeing-eye dog that can read sabermetrics.” That’s Scioscia addressing the media. Anyway, what can we expect of C.J. Cron for 2015 fantasy baseball and why is he a sleeper?
He has power potential that shows in his 27 homers in High-A in 2012. Then in 2013 *covers mouth so you can’t hear* and, in 2014, he hit 18 homers between Triple-A and the majors (11 in MLB in 242 ABs). No idea what happened in 2013, perhaps he thought his first initials stood for Custom Juice and he got roped into this stupid custom juice craze. I miss the salad days of fro-yo. Now everywhere I go it’s kale juice this, beet juice that. What about orange juice’s feelings?! Are you people that unsympathetic?! Cron did all of this before celebrating his 25th birthday (unless he celebrates his Europe birthday by inversing his month and day. I have a good friend who used to do this because they were born outside the country and when they came here the DMV didn’t understand the concept of listing the day before the month. This came in handy when she was able to turn 21 six months before her actual birthday. I feel like there’s an SAT math problem in there figuring out what her birthday is and what the DMV thinks it is. Maybe I’ll just exit this parenthetical now.). Cron is capable of 25 homers. Your 2007 self is like, “Whatever, everyone hits 25 homers.” Well, your 2007 self sounds like it’s foggy in the head. Consult with your 2014 self because no one hits 25 homers anymore. The other nice thing about Cron is he doesn’t hit for a junky average (barring bad luck). He hit around .300 in the minors (though with no plate discipline, so beware in OBP leagues). .300 feels aggressive, but he could make .270 work for him by cutting his Ks a tad. If Cron hits, Scioscia will have to start him, right? (Though, I’d like to drop the comma and just say, “If Cron hits Scioscia…”) Scioscia benched Napoli for five years, so, well, no one knows if he’ll start, but let’s just assume he will. For 2015, I’ll give him the projections of 62/23/70/.262/2 with upside. Yup, he could be huge, potentially Cron-Magnon.
