The Atlanta Braves have a Vaughn Grissom problem.
The talented young hitter, who came up straight from AA in 2022 when Ozzie Albies missed time with foot and hand injuries, has shown over his 64 Major League games that he's not going to be a reliable infield defender.
(Grissom committed ten errors in those games, including four in only 168 innings at shortstop. He was worth -6 Outs Above Average at short, a bottom six mark in all of baseball for shortstops. Every other player below him in OAA put up at least 525+ innings at the position, with three of them over 1000. He's...not good.)
So Atlanta's moving him to the outfield, sending him to winter ball in Puerto Rico to learn the position.
But there's one problem: His winter ball team's not playing him there.
Grissom reported to the Puerto Rican Winter League on December 6th, and has played in six games so far for Cangrejeros de Santurce.
Only two of them have been in the outfield. The other four have been at third base.
(UPDATE: Grissom is slated to play left field on Sunday night, his third start there of the season.)
MLB teams can't force winter ball teams to put their players in certain positions, a power they have over other partner leagues like the Arizona Fall League, for instance.
And that's a problem.
It's a problem for Grissom, who is trying to break into an infield mix that includes reigning NL MVP Ronald Acuña Jr, 2022's Rookie of the Year Michael Harris II, and the newly acquired Jarred Kelenic, formerly of the Seattle Mariners.
It's a problem because Grissom's never played in the outfield in his career prior to this winter ball stint, leaving him way behind the learning curve to a player in Kelenic that's not only logged over 4000 professional innings in the infield, but can capably handle right and centerfield as well as left.
It's a problem because Grissom already projected to be the short side of a platoon, at best, in left field, getting starts against lefties since Kelenic holds a career 73 OPS+ against left-handed pitching (although he outperformed that in 2023, putting up a 107 in 92 plate appearances.)
And it's a problem for Atlanta, who doesn't have another outfielder ready for platoon duties on the roster. That can be rectified in late February, of course, by the signing of a veteran (or the promotion of Forrest Wall into the 4th outfielder role), but there's not an alternate option as of now.
Without enough playtime in the outfield for Atlanta's front office and coaching staff to trust him to hold his own, Grissom might be faced with spending more time in AAA Gwinnett next season, playing left field every day to better learn the reads, routes, and reactions that are needed to playing on the grass.
And that's not helpful for his bat. As evident by last season's final line, Grissom's not being challenged by minor league pitching.
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