RIP Oscar Tavares

[Rickyy]

So sad...looks like he was going to be a pretty good player for many years to come... condolences to the Tavares and the Cardinals Family...

Ricky Y

[the 'stache]

I'm absolutely heartbroken tonight. I'm a Brewers fan, but I can appreciate talent from any team. And I've been watching Oscar Taveras for three years. A few years ago, I signed up on MLB.tv for the first time, and I signed up on Milb.com the year before last, in large part, to watch Taveras play.

I bought this Bowman Chrome prospect auto the day after the product hit eBay. It was $100 well spent, I thought. I still thought that this afternoon, too.



This guy was about as close to a sure thing as I've seen since Mike Trout. He didn't have Trout's speed, but he could hit like nobody's business.

Just two weeks ago, he was hitting a pinch hit, game-tying home run in game 2 of the NLCS.



Lots of people have said that Taveras was the next Albert Pujols. While much of the time, comparisons made to a young player coming up are unfair because of the incredible pressure that they come with, this is one time where the expectations were not unfair. Taveras had incredible bat speed, and a great eye. He did not set the world on fire in his brief stay in the Majors: .239 AVG, 3 HR, 22 RBI in 234 at bats. But Taveras was coming. The Cardinals were so sure of it that they traded away Allen Craig, a career .306 hitter, so right field would be open for Taveras in 2015.

Not even a month ago, I was joking with some fellow posters on a Brewers forum I frequent that Taveras was going to kill us for the next 15 years. Nobody took me to task for saying it, because they knew what I knew. It was never a matter of "if" with Oscar. It was a matter of "when". That classic swing, tailor made to send baseballs into the seats, was beautiful. Below is the video of his first Major League hit, a home run. Go to 1:04 in this video, and watch his swing in slow motion.



I've talked to some Cardinal fans tonight. They are numb. They were making plans for next season, and the talk revolved around Taveras. He was going to start. He was the next great one, playing for a franchise that has had more than their share of great ones. Now he is gone.

It doesn't matter if you are a fan of the Cardinals or not, or even if you are a fan of today's game. We all can appreciate the impact of this loss. This was a young man with his whole life ahead of him. He had worked so hard to get where he was, and tragically, he will never have that chance now. Taveras and his girlfriend both died in the car crash, and we are left to wonder what could have been.

My heart goes out to Oscar's family and friends, and Cardinal fans everywhere. On behalf of the Brewer nation, I wanted you guys to know you are not alone. We share your pain.

[KCRfan1]

Regardless of the talent level and potential, there were two lives lost in that car accident. Both were very young, Taveras who was 21 or 22 and an 18 year old. Both had lots of life left to live and that is what's so unfortunate.

[deadballfreaK]

I am a Cardinal fan so I am especially stunned I guess, but my sorrow goes beyond team loyalty. I was enjoying the WS like most of you when Rosenthal came on with the news. Ruined my evening. Turned over to football to try to get it off my mind. Didn't work of course. Then went to my DVR and pulled up his first HR in his first game. He was such a happy guy and was so excited about giving the ball to his mom. 22 years old, girlfriend 18, new tricked out Camaro. Seemed to have the world by the tail, but none of us ever do, do we?

My hobby the last couple of weeks has been creating fake 1964 Topps cards (my first year collecting) with colorization and computer tricks. I was intending to post some here. I immediately thought of the 1964 "In Memoriam" card of Ken Hubbs. Hubbs was a young star in the making for the Cubs and to this day I get sad looking at that card. I sat down and created a similar card for Oscar. I'll post it in a couple of days when I get time.

SAD!!

[Leon]

RIP Oscar....very sad.

[deadballfreaK]

http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/f...to-glow-021314

[packs]

Awful news. It wasn't that long ago that Nick Adenhart was killed in an accident as well. Truly sad.

[ethicsprof]

so tragic.
my condolences to family,friends,fans

barry

[HOF Auto Rookies]

Lost potential greatness both on and off the field. And, not even close to Trout

[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by HOF Auto Rookies

Lost potential greatness both on and off the field. And, not even close to Trout

Overall? No. Hitting potential? Absolutely.

[HOF Auto Rookies]

Originally Posted by the 'stache

Overall? No. Hitting potential? Absolutely.

Different hit tools but power wise could be close. His swing is absurdly quick. Left handed Sheff.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by HOF Auto Rookies

Different hit tools but power wise could be close. His swing is absurdly quick. Left handed Sheff.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That's a pretty good assessment. And I wasn't looking to be argumentative, Brent I'm sorry if I came off that way.

I am absolutely confident that this kid was going to be one of the very best hitters in the game. I thought he could be a 30 home run hitter, but I was more confident in his ability to hit for average than I was confident in his power hitting ability. So, when I say "only" 25 to 30 home runs, that says something about the kind of talent he had. The home runs were an afterthought. He was going to be an extra base hit machine. I wish minor league splits were better. I'd like some stats to back up what I'm saying. But Oscar could hit with power to all fields. And for a guy with such a live bat, he had good plate discipline. There wasn't a lot of swing and miss to his game. Even as a rookie in the Major Leagues, when he only hit .239, he only struck out in about 14% of his plate appearances. He hit .240 vs righties, and .238 vs lefties. And towards the end of the season, he was putting it together. After hitting .244 in August (22 for 90), he hit .295 in September and October (13 for 44). His OBP was up to .340.

I started watching him in 2011 when he was in class A ball at Quad Cities in Iowa. I want to say it was about halfway through that year. He'd go on to hit .386 that season. I saw him play 6 or 7 games. After that, I would watch whatever I could. If I couldn't watch the entire game, which was most of the time, I'd pull up the game, and skip to his at bats.

Taveras had a very long swing early, yet as a 19 year old, he was dominating kids that were 2 years older than he was. He hit .386, and Kolten Wong hit .335. He wasn't hitting the long ball yet, but he had a 1.028 OPS. 308 at bats, 27 doubles, 5 triples and 8 home runs. The next year he hit 23 home runs in 477 ABs. The swing was still long, but it looked to me like he's moved his hands into a slightly different position pre swing from last year. I think more than anything, the power came because he was maturing physically, and developing more natural loft in his swing. That's what made me really think this kid could be a power hitter. The great ones go up there, and drive the ball, but they don't go up there looking to hit the home run. Hank Aaron, for all the home runs he had, didn't have the majestic home runs that Mark McGwire did. Aaron didn't have the incredible loft. He hit a lot of line drive home runs. Taveras went up there looking to make solid contact, and he just drove the hell out of the ball. He used his entire body. His leg kick used to be a little higher. It looks like a hitting coach had him lower that just a little, too. Whatever they did, whatever he did on his own, and whatever just happened naturally, he had such a beautiful, fluid swing. He could hit the ball out on a rope, or he could hit the deep, soaring fly balls that Cardinal fans are used to seeing. I just loved his total offensive approach. Now, it looked to me like he was becoming a little less aggressive at the plate the closer he got to the Majors. He knew he could hit. He was working on developing the discipline needed to succeed. I thought he could have come up in 2013, and played at the Major League level as a starter. After hitting .386 in 2011, in 2012 he hit .321 at AA Springfield with a .953 OPS. 37 doubles, 7 triples, 23 home runs, 94 RBI in 477 ABs, and 10 stolen bases in 11 tries. In 2013 he hit .310. In 2014 he hit .318. In his minor league career (436 games), he hit .320 with an .892 OPS. His slash lines were impressive:

A .444/.584/1.028 in 78 games
AA .380/.572/.953 in 124 games
AAA .358/.485/.843 108 games

I think his AAA numbers would have been better with another half season. He moved through the system so quickly. He hit .321 at A ball, .310 at AA, and .318 at AAA. This wasn't some AAAA star that wasn't going to make it in the Majors. He was the real deal.

The Cardinals will now look to Stephen Piscotty, another talented outfielder. Piscotty is ranked the #51 prospect in baseball. He's a plus hitter with average, slightly above average power. A really good prospect, but not Taveras. I think Piscotty has star potential, but oddly enough, I liken him to Allen Craig, the player the Cardinals moved to make room for Taveras.

[the 'stache]

Nice custom, Ken. Nice, but also heart-wrenching.

I've got Vista reinstalled on the desktop computer, so my color is right again. I might just have to break out the Wacom, and see what I can come up with in Photoshop. It's been a while since I've done anything.