Aug 30, 2015; St. Petersburg, FL, USA; Tampa Bay Rays hat, gloves and Major League baseball lays in the dugout against the Kansas City Royals at Tropicana Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
The Tampa Bay Rays acquired SS Lucius Fox in a deadline trade with the San Francisco Giants. What sort of player is he?
Who Is He?
Not the Batman character who becomes one of Bruce Wayne’s closest allies, Lucius Fox was signed by the Giants for a signing bonus of $6M in July of 2015. He was attending high school in Florida, but he utilized the fact that he was born in the Bahamas to establish residency in the country to go through the international market and get much more money than he was likely to get in the draft.
The Giants started Fox right in full-season low-A ball in Augusta of the South Atlantic League. That sort of jump in level with no time in rookie league or short-season ball led to struggles, and his numbers have shown it. He has put up a slash line of .207/.305/.277 with 25 stolen bases. He has walked a tremendous 11.2% of his plate appearances, a great rate for a player in his first pro experience jumping into full-season ball, but on the flip side, he’s also struck out at a rate of 23%, so he’s still striking out plenty.
He was traded as part of the Matt Moore deal to the Rays. This gives the Rays the top-rated prospect of the 2014 international class in Adrian Rondon, who they signed for just under $3M, and the top dollar signee in 2015 in Fox.
Next: Fox's scouting report
No, not THAT Lucius Fox. Get to know @RaysBaseball's newly acquired prospect.
Fox turned 18 the day of his signing. He is listed at 6’1 and 175 pounds. He’s a switch-hitter and throws right-handed. He is definitely long and lean in his build, and while he very possibly is done growing in height, he has the frame that could add another 25-30 “good” pounds without hurting his athleticism.
Hitting
Fox stands tall in the box with a short stride to the ball in his swing. He does have some motion in his hands in his set up, and in the games I saw, he ended up with his hands out of position when a guy came with premium velocity or had a hard breaking pitch that he wasn’t prepared for. He may need to calm his hands in the future to help his consistency in swing.
The swing is incredibly fast, and his wrists and hands have incredible speed to them. The bat path is solid, though he seems to swing as hard as humanly possible on every swing, and while that’s all well and good, part of maturing in the game is recognizing which pitches to go all out on and which to poke into right field, for instance.
One of the unique parts of scouting a switch-hitter is trying to find enough games of both sides of the plate to get a good review of both sides of the plate. Fox definitely is a guy with two different swings. From the right side, he leverages his swing and tends to dip his back elbow quite a bit, looking to get power. From the left side, Fox seems to understand that being in the lefty batter’s box allows him to utilize his incredible speed, so he has a more contact-oriented, level swing.
It’s also obvious in his pitch recognition from each side that Fox is a natural right-handed hitter. He has good pitch recognition, but his attempted leverage ends up costing him some hits. From the left side, his swing would allow him to handle pitches so well, but he seems to struggle with pitch recognition, especially hard breaking stuff at this time. His zone recognition is similar from either side of the plate as his walk rate is nearly identical. He strikes out more from the right side, but I would say that a lot of that has to do with the leverage in his swing, and going for the fences too much right now.
Base Running/Fielding
Here is where Fox currently shines, well above his first year in the league sort of maturity. Fox has 70- or 80-grade speed, depending on who is writing the scouting report. Regardless, that’s blazing fast. What I was most impressed by when watching Fox for this report was his maturity in using that speed on the base paths. Many speedsters just run wild and get caught stealing frequently due to their recklessness, yet Fox has been successful around 80% of the time he’s attempted a steal all season long. Watching him, he has great natural reads of pitchers, especially considering that he’s facing most of these pitchers for the first time when he’s on the bases, so it’s not as if he’s going on experience with a particular guy.
Fox also reads his teammates’ hits very, very well. I saw one play that absolutely blew me away where he scored from first on a slow-rolling single to center field where the infield was in, expecting a bunt, and the ball got past the middle infielders, who were drawn in and slowed significantly in the grass of the outfield. Even then, it’s a pretty remarkable jump and remarkable speed that can get all the way around from first to score on that play. The throw was high and the catcher didn’t have a chance at a play, but he beat the throw regardless, and I noted that as the ball bounced over second base, he was one step away from second base and at full speed. That means he got one heck of a jump on that ball. That was one example, but it was a frequent occurrence watching Fox on the bases.
In the field, Fox has an arm that I’ve seen rated from a 55 to a 65. I’d put it as a solid 60, but he’s got 65 arm strength for sure, but he has a bit of Rafael Furcal disease in that he knows he has that strong arm, and therefore, he launches a lot of balls that should just be put in his pocket. His arm will play up a lot once he makes those better decisions with the balls hit to him. He does use his long legs and speed to cover a ton of ground at shortstop as well. Outside of putting on bad weight or an injury, I certainly wouldn’t see a reason he’d need to move off of shortstop, in spite of a LOT of errors (32 in 75 games) this year, most of which I would attribute to the maturity issue I mentioned previously of trying to do too much with the skills he has.
Fox’s natural skills reminded me very strongly of a couple former players I remember seeing, and then I watched the Braves play the Brewers recently and watched Jonathan Villar. I then remembered seeing Villar coming up, and I went back to find more of his minor league video. The similarities are ridiculous!
Villar is a guy who got to the big leagues for the first time at age 22 after being signed at 16 out of the Dominican Republic. He is a switch hitter that has a bit of power and a ton of speed that has had to battle the urge to swing for the fences all through his minor league career as well. Due to a lot of other reasons, Villar was mired on the bench in Houston and never really got a shot to start until he was traded to Milwaukee for a minor league pitcher.
With Milwaukee this year, I think you’ve seen the best of what Tampa can hope for with Fox as Villar has gone .302/.386/.443 with 9 home runs, 28 doubles, and 45 stolen bases on the season while playing a solid shortstop. He’s led the league in stolen bases until a recent surge by Billy Hamilton bumped him from that top spot, and he absolutely should have been a member of the All-Star team.
Villar has moved recently to third base to accommodate super-prospect Orlando Arcia coming up to shortstop. I could see a similar move for Fox due to Tampa’s depth at shortstop, though he might actually work best in the outfield with his excellent speed and solid arm.
Fox is now part of a Rays system with three legit elite shortstops in the pipeline with Willy Adames, who is a top 50 prospect in the entire game and already in AA, so he’s closest to the majors. They also have Rondon, who is actually behind Fox in the short-season Appalachian League. The team also just acquired Matt Duffy, who came up as an excellent defensive shortstop in the Giants system before getting to the majors, in the same deal as Fox. Add in Daniel Robertson, who plays a very solid defensive shortstop and can hit a little as well and is at AAA, and you begin to see the backlog that the Rays have.
Fox moving positions may be his fast track to the big leagues, but for right now, he’s got the mentioned things to work on at the plate to worry about before we get too much into a position switch.
