About Clement

Two things about ex-Rattler Jeff Clement that have been sitting around for a while.

The most recent is this post over at Bleacher Report.

In 2007, Tacoma Rainiers catcher Jeff Clement was one of baseball's top prospects, especially when ranked with other minor league catchers.

When Kenji Johjima showed Seattle that his 2008 season was going to flirt with a .200 average, Clement got the call to play for the Seattle Mariners.

Many people thought Clement was a lost cause after the season but I think he is a found gem. Batting .298 after the All-Star Game in his rookie season, Clement showed us his amazing potential.

The other post was this community projection of his 2009 season at Lookout Landing.

Disastrous seasons aren't supposed to coincide with a 1.131 OPS in AAA, but I think it's fair to say that a disastrous season is exactly what Jeff Clement had in 2008.

After turning the corner and coming on strong in Tacoma in 2007, Clement kicked off 2008 hotter than vintage Eliza Dushku in a hockey jersey, collecting twice as many walks as strikeouts through the first month and batting nearly .400 on his way to a late April promotion. Having made the move while still hovering around .500, the Mariners intended to use Clement's scorching bat to ignite a slumping offense in need of new blood. Instead, though, Clement struggled to produce, collecting only eight hits in 15 games without a single home run before getting sent back to the minors in May. Whether or not the demotion was justifiable is an open question - at the time, Jose Vidro was just as big a pile of crap - but that's a separate matter, and the bottom line is that, when given his first trial, Jeff Clement didn't take advantage.

So Clement spent another month beating the snot out of the ball in Tacoma. Where his April was partially inflated by a high BABIP, over 109 PAs in May and June Clement slugged a legitimate .670, clubbing nine homers while hitting 50% fly balls. Once again he demonstrated that he had nothing left to learn at the plate in the minors, so once again he got promoted to the big leagues, this time in an effort to introduce more youth to a ballclub going nowhere.

Sorry. Zoned out after Eliza Dushku in a hockey jersey.