Alen Hanson Your Future Starting Shortstop

Not to often do I get real excited about much of anyone when their performing well at the Low-A level, but for me Alen Hanson is a different story. Hanson is currently y playing shortstop for the West Virginia Power, if you are not aware West Virginia has been the Low-A affiliate of the Pirates since 2009. The awesome thing about Hanson though is that he is not performing at a Low-A level, he is performing much higher.

Hanson was born in October of 1992 making him just 19 years old. Hanson started his professional career in 2010 when he made his presence felt in the DSL where he hit for a 324/383/447 triple slash in just 244 at-bats, he added two home-runs to the mix as well. Hanson made his first trip over to the states in 2011 where he had another successful year playing for the half season GCL Pirates. Hanson hit two home-runs once again hitting for a 263/352/429 triple slash earning him a very late season promotion to State College where he played in just three games for the Spikes.

Another one of Hanson's major features is his speed. Hanson had a combined 44 stolen bases in his first two year playing professionally, and as I say you can't teach speed. Hanson is well on pace to steal over thirty bases this season at West Virginia already swiping 18 to this point. For all we know Clint Hurdle probably wants this guy on the team right now just so he can sit on the bench and pinch run every once in awhile, but that's a subject for a different time.

You know that little bit of power I was talking about earlier? Well that little bit of pop in Hanson's bat has turned into more then just a little pop, Hanson now leads the Power in both slugging percentage and home-runs so far this year. Hanson has registered 10 long balls and has hit for a .564 slugging percentage so far this year, and did I mention he's a shortstop? That's what gets me more excited then anything about this kid is that he is a shortstop! The Pirates can't seem to find a shortstop at any level of the system, at this point Jordy Mercer would probably be considered the teams top prospect on the left side of the infield but he has only had nine at-bats all of June due to hideous managing by Clint Hurdle.

I hate to say anything bad at all about Hanson but his one big downfall is his fielding at the shortstop position. Hanson is fielding the ball at just a .891 mark so far this year which is just terrible to say the least. If Hanson ever wants to have a chance at making the majors this must improve his defense. I think that fielding is something that is much easier to improve then hitting though so I think that Hanson can do it. I think this is the only reason Hanson is still playing in Low-A ball and not a level higher. Hanson has committed 27 errors so far this year which actually makes me sick just thinking about.

I think why I get so excited about Hanson is because he gives me some hope. Hope that one day the Pirates might actually be solid at shortstop sometime in the near future something that I thought would of needed to be addressed by the draft at the beginning of the year, but now I think we have our solution sitting in West Virginia. I just seem to love this guy for some reason and I can't even tell you why I love him so much but I do, I just have this good feeling that Hanson is going to solve all of our problems, and that we are never going to have to see a guy like Ronny Cedeno or Clint Barmes attempting to hit baseballs ever again. I would love to see Hanson get promoted to Bradenton at some point this year because frankly I think he deserves it, and I would love to see how he would perform against just slightly higher competition but I truly have no idea what the Pirates have planned for him.

Hanson is up for Minor League free agency in 2016 but I don't think that this will ever be to much of a problem for the Pirates because I think that they would hope he would be in the major leagues by this point anyhow. I don't know how Hanson will end up but one thing I can tell you is that if Hanson ever has a Major League debut you can find me where ever that might be wearing his jersey.