Amidst the discussion about Franco, allow me to chime in to my good friend PC about a potential deal for Kingery. No way do I move him, no way! Scouts who have seen him play rave about him and he seems to that that certain IT that few players have. PC, this was a collegiate walk on who made himself into a star and has that rare ability to hit, hit with power, run well, field well and play multiple positions in a pinch. In fact, he is that rare Phillie infielder that Peter Mac won't have to force feed in the outfield, he started his collegiate career as a CFer, and a good one.
Look, you don't deal away youngsters with star potential, you build around them. PC, as a fellow 1960's phan, you know as well as I do what happened when the Phils began moving youngsters like Jenkins, Phillips, Johnson etc. and then in the early 80's began moving guys like Sandberg, Dernier, Franco, Moreland and Vukovich. None of them worked out and I am sure you were like me in having trepidation at the time about the wisdom of the moves.
Kingery is one of those guys we have followed since being drafted, he is a part of the new breed we have dreamed over, wrote line up cards on napkins over, cheered for. You DON"T move those guys, you just don't., And this whole "does he walk enough or doesn't he?" is a devil's argument, the guy is an intelligent baseball player who will figure it out.
Hernandez, the guy you would keep instead? Decent player, who is about as good as he is going to get. Never going to be a good base stealer or base runner, those entail instincts, not just speed and he just doesn't have those superior instncts for base stealing, heck neither did Jeff Stone when he became a Phillie and he was as fast as hot butter spreading over warm bread. I loved Jeff Stone but realized he was never going to be a great baserunner, just wasn't. Same with Hernandez.
And whether we like to acknowledge it or not, Phillie phans view Hernandez [and Galvis if we want to admit it] as not part of a new and exciting Phillie future but part of a 5 year period that was among the worst in recent Phillie history. Not their fault, and Hernandez has been one of the better players on bad Phillie teams.
But neither will ever be guys we lump together....the Hoskins, the Williams, the Crawfords, the Altherr's, the Alfaro's. the Nola's...and the Kingery's. That is simply part of the charm of baseball fandom, the ability to look forward to players not yet stars but soon to become one.
Trust me, PC, my friend, Philadelphia phandom will look much more kindly on a traded Hernandez who becomes a star elsewhere [though he likely won't] than they will on a Kingery who becomes a star in Seattle, San Francisco or Moscow, Russia. He will be mentioned with guys like Sandberg and Jenkins as guys who played well in the minors, showed the baseball smarts of a future star, and yet were traded without ever getting a chance to show their talents in the city of Brotherly Love.
No, no, 1000 times no to moving Kingery. You just don't do it, the return is simply not going to be good enough. Deal Galvis or Hernandez for the best return you can get on the dollar and allow Phillie phans to continue to write Kingery's name on those restaurant napkins. Baseball is as much about dreaming as it is anything else.
And right now, our hopes are all about dreams. And Hernandez never shows up in those dreams, Kingery is always there.