Texas fans, I'm at the Corpus Christi hooks game tonight to support them as well as Amarillo sod poodles star Ivan Melendez.

 

Safe to say Ivan was kind and courteous to me. I'll have to give photo credits to @Sarah O

 

Hook Em always Ivan, come join OTF for a coffee and football episode sometime. 

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Great stuff!

We went up to Amarillo for a weekend after he was moved there and watched a couple of games.  Didn't get a chance for an autograph but enjoyed being at their stadium and watching their games.

Great idea for him as a guest. Let me see what I can do. 

Also, that’s awesome! Very cool experience for sure. 

How cool is that! What a night!

Ivan was a heckuva college player but wonder if he at some point will make it to the Majors.  Any predictions?

2 minutes ago, TexasMDcoach said:

Ivan was a heckuva college player but wonder if he at some point will make it to the Majors.  Any predictions?

The problem I see is that he won’t play 1B in the league. Defense is going to be where teams ding him.

If anything he is a DH imo. 

Edit: needs to be really disciplined at the plate for that (DH) to happen. 

I am a big Ivan fan and hope he can tweak some things enough to keep progressing.  Making the transition and moving up to the big leagues is extremely difficult, even for very good college players.  His hitting, especially power, has carried him, but he had too many Ks in college and does not seem to have improved that too much in the pros.  To get to the bigs he probably needs to improve on at least one of those.  As Blake mentioned, it probably won't be his D that helps him. 

 

I worry about our current players for the same reasons.  If you can't hit a curve and always chase them you are doomed.  A little bit of power and a bad batting average won't get you far unless you are excellent in the field- and that partially depends on the position.  Even if you can hit for a reasonable or good average, without some power or an excellent glove and arm for the right position or really good speed it still can be hard to make it.  

I agree with Blake. The power will be there, and so will the strikeouts, which means the walks need to be there for Ivan to keep ascending to the show.