On-the-job training not ideal, but necessary
PITTSBURGH — Jimmy Paredes is the 2013 Astros.
Young, energetic and somewhat promising. Unproven, unsteady and not quite ready for prime time.
Paredes and his rebuilding club became a cruel baseball punchline late Friday. Sloweddown TV highlights and detailed Internet videos of the 24-year-old right fielder crashing into the back of fill-in second baseman Jake Elmore were constantly replayed while announcers and fans laughed at the Astros’ expense.
It was the Astros being the Astros, they said. It was what happens when a pro baseball team provides career training in a realtime environment.
Paredes, 24, played 20 games at third base for Class AAA Oklahoma City and just nine in right field before joining the Astros on May 6. He’s played second base, third, left field and right during 80 games in the majors.
Thirteen days ago, Paredes was called up from OKC as a replacement for Rick Ankiel, who on a good day is still one of the top defensive outfielders in the game. Monday, first-year manager Bo Porter said Paredes had become one of three young outfielders who would receive extended evaluations as the Astros attempted to get a better feel for the prospects they can truly count on during year two of a massive and multistage rebuild.
Before Saturday’s game, Astros third-base coach Dave Clark joked he didn’t want to discuss a dropped popup in shallow right field that instantly became the low point of a season already filled with them. Then Clark acknowledged what was obvious. The Astros are playing games that count at the same time they’re evaluating the future. It isn’t easy and it isn’t ideal. But it’s the 2013 Astros.
“You’ve just got to take the good with the bad because he’s going to make mistakes just like the rest of these guys here, and we knew that going in,” Clark said. “If you come out and see this kid track balls off the bat during (batting practice), all the extra work that he puts in, you know that this kid wants it and he’s going to get bet- ter at it.”
Clark highlighted Paredes’ promising 6-3, 200-pound body, soft hands and athletic makeup. But it’s the outfielder’s heart that stands out most to one of the Astros’ main teachers. During a postgame interview Friday, Paredes quietly searched for words and appeared on the verge of tears as he attempted to explain the unexplainable.
Paredes, who wasn’t in the starting lineup Saturday, was still hurt and embarrassed by his collision. But teammates had reached out to him and comforting text messages had helped ease the sting. When Paredes finally went to sleep Friday, he tried to put the drop behind him.
“It’s hard because you’re thinking a lot about that situation. We want to win games. We don’t want to lose,” said Paredes, who’s 6-for-30 with four doubles and a .576 OBP in 10 games with the Astros.
J.D. Martinez also is receiving an extended outfield evaluation. And he also was publicly embarrassed after being removed from an April 22 loss at Seattle. Martinez took Paredes aside postgame Friday, delivering a message that said as much about his teammate’s painful E-9 as the state of the Astros.
Paredes has been instructed a fly ball in shallow right that forces a second baseman to backpedal is his. In any other inning, the catch likely would have been made. But in the ninth with two outs, a 3-2 count, the bases loaded and a victory on the line, an Astros team currently committed more to talent development than big league victories was forced to pay for its long-term vision.
“He felt bad about it, and I felt terrible for him. I was like, ‘It’s not your fault. … Nine out of 10 times, that’s your ball. But that one time (Friday), where it was maybe if you see (Elmore) and he’s going to catch it, you just lay back,’” Martinez said. “It’s stuff he’ll just learn — he’ll learn through it.” brian.smith@chron.com twitter.com/chronastros