With cameras and microphones and cell phone ameras and recorders everywhere, it’s a rare player who will say anything bad about a teammate. In addition to that, you open your mouth today, and tomorrow you might be the guy who stinks. Managers might say a little something if they think that’s the vehicle to use to reach a player, but the old days of managers raking players over the coals publicly are few and far between, and players are a lot more complacent because life is good and going to the World Series is no longer the difference between taking it easy in November or having to get a job selling cars.

For someone (me) who is all about plate discipline, and who is generally pessimistic, I am strangely relaxed about Delmon’s future. First overall picks with his talent…I just think he’ll emerge.

The issue is this: he’s been so famous for so long that it’s easy to forget he’s 22. Take a look, for an anecdotal example, at Adrian Gonzalez, first overall pick by the Marlins in 2000. He didn’t get a taste of the majors until 2004, and didn’t emerge as a regular until he was with the Padres in 2006, at age 24, after 2 trades. He’s been excellent since, in a brutal park for hitters.

Gonzalez always walked more than Young in the minors, but he didn’t slug .500 until a half season repeating the PCL at age 23 in 2005. Young, in contrast, moved much more quickly, and slugged more, throughout the minors, and is in his 2nd full major league season at age 22. He may not emerge this year, but I’m pretty confident there will be some all-star seasons in his career.

The truth of the matter is that I’m pretty optimistic also. I’ve seen him hit balls on both sides of the plate hard. He was actually just as bad this far into the year last year, and ended up with a pretty decent year ( besides, of course, the OBP). It’ll be a few years before he “replaces torii hunter” in the lineup, but I think that it will happen.

Young can play left field. He gets to balls quickly and has a hell of an arm.

Also, he is running the bases with aggression.

So, he is more of an all-around ballplayer than I realized.

That all said, last night, he kind of wimped out on a fly ball that landed on the track. Go and get the ball Delmon.