Arizona Diamondbacks Prospect Peter O’Brien Busts Out the Boom Stick

After a brief stint with the Arizona Diamondbacks, Peter O’Brien has returned to Triple-A Reno and the rest of the Pacific Coast League is begging for mercy. 

This weekend my wife and I took a quick trip to nearby Tahoe to get out of the frigid weather that is summer in San Francisco and enjoy some time in the sun up north. My wife wanted to go to the beach, and I wanted to see baseball. So we did both.

The Reno Aces are about an hour away from Tahoe, and across the border into Nevada. On Friday night, we went to our first Aces game, and by no means will it be our last after the amount of fun we had at Greater Nevada Field. At the center of the experience was D-Backs seventh-ranked prospect Peter O’Brien.

Coming into the game, O’Brien was already having a good week, going 6-for-15 at the plate with a home run and eight driven in through three games. On Friday night, he went deep twice and drove in another four. The first homer was just to the left of the 410 mark in left-center. His second shot in the sixth went right over the 435 mark in right-center, so in case you were still on the fence, the 25 year old has some serious power. O’Brien struck out in the first on soft stuff in the 70s from Mets farmhand Sean Gilmartin. The lefty attempted the same tactics in their second match-up of the night and suffice it to say, the strategy didn’t work.

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Add in the night O’Brien had on Saturday (2-for-5, HR, 4 RBI) and Sunday (1-for-3, two RBI) and his week will certainly earn him PCL Player of the Week honors. In six games played, he has recorded fewer than three RBI in a game twice, and has brought home 18 in total while going yard four times. His 50 RBI on the season leads the league by two over T.J. Rivera of Las Vegas (Mets), and his 16 homers are also tops in the PCL, three ahead of Sacramento’s Jarrett Parker who is currently enjoying a stint in the big leagues with San Francisco.

O’Brien made it to Arizona for a three-game stint at the end of May, getting just one at-bat, which ended in a strikeout. His strikeout rate has been the knocks on O’Brien as a prospect. Through 197 at-bats, O’Brien has K’d 58 times, seventh-most in the PCL.

The other knock on O’Brien is that he is a player without a position. Although he typically mans left field, he was getting the majority of his playing time early in his pro career behind the plate, but a lack of defensive skills have removed the mask and placed him in the outfield more often than not over the last two seasons.

He is still adjusting to life in the vast expanse of the outfield grass too, which is why the Diamondbacks have stuck with Yasmany Tomas in left, even with fewer outfielders in the way of a more permanent promotion due to the subtractions of Ender Inciarte in an offseason trade, A.J. Pollock to a season-ending injury and David Peralta with a wrist injury early in May.

It seems as though O’Brien and his immense power are destined for the American League, whether that is as a designated hitter or as a team’s first baseman, where defensive prowess isn’t necessarily a prerequisite. Obviously the D-Backs can’t make use of a DH and already have a pretty darn good first baseman on their hands in Paul Goldschmidt, which hinders the path of O’Brien as a fixture at the Major Leagues, barring even more depletion of the team’s outfield options.

If he were to be on the move this trade deadline or this offseason, the Houston Astros come to mind since they tend not to mind high strikeout rates as long as a player can rake. The problem is that one of the top prospects in baseball is their first baseman A.J. Reed, who should be ready for his debut shortly. They’d still have a DH spot open, but Evan Gattis is currently getting the majority of the reps there, and he has another two seasons under contract with the club.

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One team that could take a stab at O’Brien, though likely in the offseason, would be the Toronto Blue Jays. Both Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion are set to be free agents following the 2016 season, and the likelihood of Toronto signing both players seems highly unlikely. O’Brien could take over the DH role that Encarnacion has donned, or he could potentially replace free-agent-to-be Justin Smoak at first.

Whether O’Brien stays in the Arizona Diamondbacks system or finds himself elsewhere, when he steps to the plate he makes sure that all eyes are on him.