Prospect Profiles 2008: Preston Mattingly

Overview-Taken in the first round of the 2006 draft, the Dodgers saw an extremely athletic player that they thought would soon develop into an outstanding hitter after being fully immersed in baseball. Unfortunately, that plan has not worked out at all, and Mattingly is no longer close to being a top prospect. There's not one part of his game that currently stands out, and he's giving people more reason to doubt than believe.

Hitting-He was expected to develop into an elite hitter, but he's still very raw at the plate. His pitch recognition and plate discipline are poor, he doesn't consistently use the whole field, and he's constantly chasing breaking balls. He has good bat speed, and flashes raw power, but he's at his best when he sticks to spraying line drives from gap to gap and avoids swinging for the fences.

Fielding-For a guy who's so athletic, he's quite a butcher with the glove. He has poor range in the infield and has bad footwork. In addition, both his throwing accuracy and arm strength are average at best. The Dodgers are trying Mattingly at shortstop and second base, but neither seems to suit him very well.

Baserunning-He has above average baserunning instincts, and he has good speed.

Mental-By all accounts, Mattingly is said to have a good mental makeup.

Health-No problems that I know of.

Performance-In short? Not very good. After a very promising rookie campaign, Mattingly regressed signficantly. His poor BB rate did not get better, his K rate increased, his ISO dropped, and his LD% also dipped.

So Mattingly was not flashing better plate discipline, he was making hard contact less often, his power regressed, and he was still swinging and missing far too much to be offensively relevant. Statistically speaking, there's almost nothing positive to report.

Other-A three-sport star in high school, Mattingly is extremely athletic. He's also the son of Don Mattingly.

Projection-Some used to believe that Mattingly would develop into a big bat that a team could stick into the middle of the lineup. However, he's shown absolutely nothing of the sort thus far, so it's quite hard to be so positive about his ceiling. Given his tools, there's a distinct possibility that he could put it together and develop into a solid major league regular, but if he continues at this rate, he would be lucky to end up as a utility player.

The Dodgers will make him repeat A- ball in 2008, and unless he shows improvement, he could remain there for the foreseeable future. I'm not going to even begin to speculate on an arrival date, because he hasn't shown me anything that would lead me to believe he'll ever make it to the majors.