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I can honestly say that I don’t know anything of importance about Gregor Blanco. A quick look at his minor league career line (.265/.367/.364) portrays an outfielder with some on-base skills, but little power. Blanco will be 28-years-old in 2012 and it’s worth mentioning that he was really, really bad this past year in AAA (.201/.350/.327 in 74 games). Over nine seasons in the minors, Blanco has stolen 224 bases to 92 caught-stealings. That’s a less than stellar steal-rate of 71%.
At the major league level, he’s accrued 836 PAs while hitting .258/.358/.324; that’s an OPS+ of 85. He looks like an average-ish defender at all the outfield positions according to the small samples of his FanGraphs page. We can probably safely assume that he’s below average in CF, and an average defender in the corners.
There really is never a bad minor league signing; these guys cost nothing and you might strike gold — or at least something semi-useful once in awhile. Blanco has shown the ability to draw a walk in his career (13% career walk-rate in the minors), and that’s nice, but there isn’t much else to build on. He should be a useful guy to have hanging around in Fresno, but I wouldn’t place him ahead of Justin Christian right now.
UPDATE: Here’s a video of Blanco getting three hits in 2010 while playing for the Royals.
I LOVE that bat-choke. Whoa.
