Player Profile: Can Michael Brantley Take the Next Step?

Until I was about seventeen, I was pretty sure Paraguay was an island nation in the South Pacific.  It just sounded so right I never even bothered to check: the Philippines is next to Guam is next to Paraguay.  QED.  When I found out that I was, in fact, horribly wrong and that I could actually drive to Paraguay if so inclined, I was embarrassed.  The moral of the story: It’s never a good thing to be surprised by publicly available facts. This is sort of how I felt when I was looking at some of Michael Brantley’s numbers the other day, but let me back up before we get there. The narrative I’ve constructed in my head says that Michael Brantley is one part of the four-piece bust we got in return for CC Sabathia.  While he’s not as spectacular a bust as LaPorta, that’s mostly due to the fact that he was never all that highly regarded in the first place.  Brantley probably has the skills to be a fourth outfielder on a good team or a centerfielder on a mediocre one, but to expect more th...