Welcome to the weekend everyone. It\u2019s finally here and now we can all relax. And whoever has all of next week off? You lucky monsters. For the rest of us we still have a couple days left before Christmas so power through everyone. To help you get there we got another Season In Review for you today, and today\u2019s player is second-year Athletic Max Schuemann.<\/p>\n
After three years at Eastern Michigan bouncing around the infield, the Athletics made Schuemann their 20th-round pick in 2018 MLB Draft, one pick after brief Athletic CJ Alexander, who was Schuemann\u2019s teammate for about a week this past season.<\/p>\n
What Were The Expectations?<\/p>\n
After seeing Schuemann play in 133 games as a rookie and holding his own with the bat, Shuemann looked like someone who could eventually develop into a super-utility player, something the A\u2019s haven\u2019t had in a while. While he would never wow with the bat he would at least be able to get near or even crack double-digit homers while playing just about every position under the sun. There\u2019s massive value in that kind of player and the A\u2019s were ready to let him work through things and struggle at the major league level against tough competition.<\/p>\n
As expected Shuemann began the year on the Opening Day roster as the primary backup all over the infield. He wasn\u2019t needed much in the early going with Jacob Wilson dominating as the everyday shortstop, Luis Urias\/Max Muncy splitting time at second and Gio Urshela at third but he was taking advantage of his chances, hitting .295\/.365\/.389 through the first two months of the season.<\/p>\n
Once the calendar flipped to June Schuemann really began to struggle with the bat. He went just 18-for-106 (.170 batting average) from June through August, which wasn\u2019t going to cut it even with his positional flexibility. The club elected to try getting him right again in a less stressful environment when they optioned him to Triple-A on August 22nd, though he would only remain with the Aviators for a week before getting recalled when roster expanded on September 1st. His time down in the minors didn\u2019t seem to work as he went just 4-for-23 over the final month of the year. He ultimately finished his second full season with a dismal .197\/.295\/.273 with just two home runs, though he lined up for the A\u2019s at every position on defense except catcher and first base.<\/p>\n
Schuemann struggled hard in his sophomore campaign but it doesn\u2019t look like the 29-year-old is losing the utility man job anytime soon, though his statistics would indicate that is something the A\u2019s could upgrade on. Adding a super utilityman that can play as many positions as Schuemann is easier said than done. With the A\u2019s not yet ready to step on the gas for the playoffs upgrading over a young Athletic like Shuemann is one of the last things on the to-do list and not a major priority. He could get some competition from in-house in the form of Darell Hernaiz but right now looks likely to be the primary backup at second, third, and especially shortstop. Hopefully he\u2019s spent this winter working on his hitting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to the weekend everyone. It\u2019s finally here and now we can all relax. And whoever has all…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360677,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[170488,363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-360676","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-as-commentary-and-analysis","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}