Hopefully he's in the lineup tonight so I can catch him. If a guy can hit at AA, you can't ignore him any more, whatever age he is. Of course, Nava's SS at Portland is way too small to conclude anything yet. But by comparison, Burkhart hit in AA pretty much right out of the gate, whereas Natale, another more recent feel-good, longshot story, struggled for the first time at AA as I recall, and never did bowl the league over. It will be interesting to see where Nava fits on the scale.

Welcome to SoxProspects, Guidas.

Nava was discussed in a thread not too long ago, but I think it was a more general thread, not one devoted to him. The discussion at that time was about Nava as an unheralded-when-he-came-into-the-system successor to Morgan Burkhart, another Indy Leaguer, and low draft choice Jeff Natale. Nava (1) is relatively old; (2) has offensive tools, to be sure; though he probably doesn't have enough power to be considered a major league level starting corner OF; and (3) and this is important, seems to have enough defensive tools and savvy to be envisioned as an OF in the majors, which neither of the other two ever really succeeded in showing. Certainly the idea of him being at least a 4th or 5th OF at the major league level is not all that farfetched.

My take on Nava is, since he got a late start, the Sox should push him. There's nothing to lose; he's getting into his prime years, and he can either develop into a major leaguer in the nearer term or he probably never will. Start him in AAA in the spring and see if he continues the string of .900+ OPS he's been putting up in the minors. If he does, and if someone gets hurt or something, you never know ...... maybe he can get a cup of coffee in Boston sometime later in the year.