Those of you who kept tabs on my old site, TheSportsIdiot.com, know that I love to talk about prospects.  Nothing gets my juices flowing better than a guy who can mash like hell against competition beneath his ability level.  Well, almost nothing.  One thing I try to do is keep you informed about guys who are phenoms and guys who could impact the current fantasy baseball season.  That brings me to Michael Stanton.

Stanton, whose full name is Giancarlo Cruz-Michael Stanton according to his MiLB.com page, is simply mashing for AA Jacksonville in the Florida Marlins farm system.  He plays right field, which is currently occupied by Cody Ross for the Marlins.  So far this season, dude has racked up nine homers already to go with his 21 RBIs and 20 Runs.  His OBP is sitting at .500 and his SLG is .806.  That math thing tells me his OPS is 1.306. 

The deceiving thing about all of this is that five, yes, five of his homers came in two, yes, two days.  Obviously five of his runs came then too, as well as 11 RBIs.  On Sunday Stanton drove two balls over the outfield walls, and then he followed it up with three round trippers on Monday.  The good news is that dude also leads the minors in walks as well as long balls.  This is significant because last year Stanton was promoted to AA Jacksonville and it resulted in a spike in strikeouts as he simply was not patient at the plate.  This season, he has 20 walks already, although he does have 18 windmills to go with them.  If Stanton can continue to work on his plate discipline while honing that power stroke, he could become a late season call-up candidate.

Personally, I do not see him making the jump to the Bigs this season.  He is only 19 years old (11/08/1989 DOB, allegedly since his name is funky?) and there is no way the Fish want to start his service time clock this season if they can help it.  If they continue to see Ross struggle (and his backup is Brett Carroll right now, so nothing blocking Stanton there) they might not have a choice but to bring the kid up.  His AAA competition 33 year old Jason Lane, who is not setting the world on fire.  Bryan Petersen is the only guy in the OF in AAA that is hitting, and he is not the same caliber prospect as Stanton.  Unfortunately, I do not have my trusty Baseball America Prospect Handbook to provide better information on Stanton, so look for a follow up in the coming days.