Domonic Brown’s cram session

Brown: still a little green

Well, you can't win 'em all.

Charlie Manuel's PowerPoint presentation was reportedly enough to convince Ruben Amaro Jr. that Domonic Brown is better off attending MLB-level classes. Manuel believes that he can cultivate Brown as he did two previous Philadelphia Phillies prodigies, Chase Utley (in 2004) and Ryan Howard (in 2005).

This decision may yield positive results in the long run. But, fantasy baseball players who invested in the phenom outfielder are probably going to have to let him sit for a bit. (You know, kinda like Uncle Cholly did in two of the kid's first three games after his call-up, both against southpaws.)

Brown skid marks

Pat Gillick was aggressive in his promotion of some top-notch prospects, but I think in this case he would've wanted to see more from Brown before acting. I could be wrong - in which case, I apologize, because Gillick, as far as I'm concerned, is infallible.

In 2004, Utley was in his age-25 season and had two-plus seasons of Triple-A ball as well as 152 solid big-league plate appearances on his resume. Howard had made only 42 MLB plate appearances to his credit before 2005, his age-25 season, but he accumulated 384 PAs at Class AAA prior to that.

The 23-year-old Brown, between this year and last, has walked to a Triple-A plate a miniscule 169 times. He stepped to the dish in the majors 70 times last year.

There isn't a perquisite for the prospect rite of passage or some quota one must fill before he's deemed MLB-ready. But, historically, baseball players with roughly a full season's worth of seasoning in the minors' highest level tend to transition more easily.

Besides that, Brown, a player with a tremendous ceiling but well-documented flaws, has played very little baseball, especially in a productive fashion, in the 10 months prior to his promotion.

The 2010 major league stretch includes Brown's three plate appearances in the postseason. He was off for nearly one month and then reported to Leones del Escogido in the Dominican Winter League. Clearly, that experience wasn't going well; the Phils cut the stint short because they were concerned that he was fatigued and would end up reinforcing bad habits.

The data naturally doesn't include sim game action in spring training or a week-plus of extended spring training. Before ST, Greg Gross made some refinements to Brown's swing in an effort to reduce his load time. The youngster's struggles continued, however, and he ditched them just before he broke the hamate bone in his right hand. That extended ST bit, in which he tore it up, was Brown's first action since the injury.

The interruptions weren't finished: He suffered a sprained thumb while rehabbing at Triple-A Lehigh Valley and missed several days. A couple of days after he returned to action (for two games), the Phils rang the IronPigs and asked for him.

In the roughly 10 months before Philly brought its star pupil back to retake the entrance exam, his practice test consisted of a grand total of 197 plate appearances. All these stretches were brief, save the first - the one in which he debuted and played sparingly for almost three months - and came against varying levels of competition - mostly substandard.

Meanwhile, the Phillies have all along desired to see Brown cut down a swing that makes it easy to bust him inside. His defense is still a work-in-progress; he needs to take better routes consistently, and his arm isn't the most accurate. Mission accomplished? Or, Manuel got dat?

How much has Brown, in the past calendar year, built on the foundation he and the organization laid prior to it? I can't say, but it mustn't be much. And I don't expect to be removing him from the pine of one of my fantasy baseball teams any time soon.

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