Hunter Owen

WTM’s PLAYER PROFILE

2016
A-:  257/313/412, 187 AB, 10 2B, 2 3B, 5 HR, 11 BB, 49 K, 4-5 SB

Owen was the primary left fielder for Morgantown, and also started a game at second and five at third.  That last experiment didn’t go well, as he had five errors in the five games.  Owen got off to a fast start at the plate and was hitting .319 with five HRs in 91 ABs as late as July 23.  He hit .198 with no HRs in 96 ABs after that.  Possibly, the pitchers caught on to his lack of patience, as he had poor walk and K rates throughout.  He struggled against LHPs, with just a .585 OPS.

2017
R:  300/364/800, 10 AB, 2 2B, 1 HR, 1 BB
A-:  083/214/333, 12 AB, 1 HR, 2 BB, 6 K
A:  292/388/505, 291 AB, 21 2B, 4 3B, 11 HR, 24 BB, 68 K, 3-5 SB

The Pirates moved Owen to third base and he played regularly there for West Virginia.  He had his issues defensively, not surprisingly, with 16 errors in 81 starts.  On July 17, he got his only start of the year in the outfield, possibly in preparation for moving up to Bradenton to replace Logan Hill, who’d been promoted to Altoona.  As luck would have it, Owen suffered a hamstring injury in that game and was out until the very end of the season.  Owen had a good year for the Power, hitting for good power and getting on base a lot, thanks in part to getting hit by a pitch 24 times.  That was seven more than all but one other player in the league, even though Owen missed nearly half his team’s games.  (The one other player missed nearly two-thirds of the games, so he must have had a very rough year.)  Owen missed time briefly at a couple of points as a result of the plunkings.  On the season he had the exact same OPS against LHPs and RHPs.  Anyway, Owen’s numbers have to be taken in context, as he played the entire season at age 23, which is old for the level.

2018
A+:  262/317/464, 401 AB, 21 2B, 3 3B, 18 HR, 19 BB, 114 K, 4-5 SB

Owen got off to a very rough start, struggling through the first two months, before getting hot for the last three.  His monthly OPS was as follows:

April:  .672
May:  .616
June:  .971
July:  .827
August:  .857

Owen hit 12 of his 18 home runs in the last two months, finishing tied for third in the FSL in longballs.  The big caveats, of course, were that he played the season at age 24, which is old for the level, and he showed very little patience at the plate.  He had a reverse platoon split.  Owen primarily played third, but he actually started only a little over half of the team’s games there.  He served as a DH in over a quarter of his starts and also played three games as catcher, an experiment that the Pirates started in spring training.

2019
AA:  295/369/565, 237 AB, 15 2B, 2 3B, 15 HR, 17 BB, 75 K, 1-4 SB
AAA:  192/297/325, 120 AB, 4 2B, 4 HR, 10 BB, 45 K

Owen adapted quickly to AA and was the best hitter in the Eastern League during the first half of the season.  If he hadn’t been promoted to AAA halfway through the year, he’d have led the league easily in SLG and OPS.  Of course, the very bad plate discipline and the fact that he was 26 were red flags.  Owen’s impatient approach didn’t play well at Indianapolis and he struggled through the second half.  He batted just .152 in August, although he may have been affected by a hand injury that resulted from being hit by a pitch.  He continued playing third regularly at Altoona, but with Ke’Bryan Hayes in Indianapolis he spent most of his time at first or in the outfield corners.

Owen is still three years away from free agency.  He’s eligible for the Rule 5 draft.