Has there been a Bay League player with the kind of pressure placed on
Ben McAfee? It's not the sort of pressure that a consensus top prospect like
Ty Fuchs or
Ryan Traore gets, though McAfee has the tag of "top prospect" in the Whales organization. No, McAfee has a different kind of worry on his 21-year old shoulders.
McAfee got 93 at-bats for the Whales last season as a backup outfielder, hitting .280/.324/.387 with 8 steals in 8 attempts, popping a pair of homers. He's probably best suited as a center fielder: though he plays a great right field, he doesn't have the strong arm expected of that position. So when the 2018 season started, it looked as though he would be backing up once again.
Jacob Leslie held the center field job, though mostly by virtue of his defensive abilities (.218/.281/.377 career line), and
Josh Sowder was entrenched at right field. Sowder holds the record for highest single-season batting average, and while he's never come close to that .398 mark he put together in 2015, he's still a valuable player at the plate (.308/.345/.486 career line). If the Whales were going to clear space for their up-and-coming youngster, Leslie would've seemed like the logical choice.
Until
Josh Sowder decided to challenge Bay League finances by demanding a raise in pay from notoriously prickly Whales owner
Michael Hernandez.
Sowder soon found himself packing his bags for Allison, and a spot opened up for McAfee. With the heavy gaze of his team's owner resting very heavily on him. Not to mention the rabid following the Whales have built up over their brief history.
What's McAfee done with the opportunity? Not even the most starry-eyed of Silver Beach optimists could have predicted a .322/.406/.504 performance, but that's just what McAfee has delivered. Maybe the most encouraging sign is the fact that he's walked 17 times and struck out just 11, giving him an opportunity to wreak havoc on the basepaths. While he's stolen just 5 bags in 8 attempts, McAfee is drawing raves around the league for his understanding of the game and his smarts on the bases, with a seemingly instinctive sense of when to go for the extra bag.
Are we looking at the breakout season for a worthy successor to such outfield notables as
Tega Smith and
Mario DeGray? It's the first basemen around the league that have been drawing a lot of the notice and all of the postseason award hardware, but if McAfee can hold up this level of performance, that might be changing.