I’m so glad he’s both getting love and making such big strides. Gives the Dodgers another potential young outfielder for the (near) future, OF depth seemed to be lacking. Great piece.

I also liked this part:

Oh, and there’s one other big difference at Double-A. “Guys had beards there—nobody had those in the Cal League.”

Wait til he meets Casey Blake!

just a great story with some great quotes.

It hasn’t always been fun for Robinson. A 10th-round pick in 2005 out of Crenshaw High School in South Central Los Angeles, Robinson started playing sports at an early age, and not necessarily by choice. “My mom forced me and my brothers into sports—football, baseball, basketball, everything,” said Robinson. “It gave us something to do and helped us not take the bad route,” he added, referring to one of the country’s most notorious areas for gang violence. Robinson excelled in all sports, but never really considered a professional career until fellow Crenshaw alum Dan Nelson (now in the Nationals system) was drafted by the Tigers in 2002, and again by the Cardinals in 2004 out of a Los Angeles community college. “That changed everything for me,” commented Robinson. “I saw someone else get there and I thought that if he can do it, so can I, and it made me take the game far more seriously.”

While difficult-but-challenging describes Robinson’s pro debut, in 2006, he hit rock bottom. Beginning his first full year, Robinson was struggling to learn how to switch hit (a move he now credits much of his prospect status to) and then learned that even in Florida, it was tough to escape from South Central, when he learned his best friend, Ben, was murdered in a carjacking back home. Robinson admits that things got so low that he almost left the game, at least temporarily. “I’m in Florida, thousands of miles away, things aren’t going well on a baseball level, and then I’m just sad and confused,” said Robinson. “I didn’t want to give up and quit, but I wanted to take some time off and go home.” Robinson stayed in Florida, however, and it was because of his friend’s death. “I couldn’t walk away because I knew that he wanted me to play ball,” he said.

Asked for a scouting report on his game, Robinson pauses, stammers, and finally says, “Look, I don’t know anything about those 20-80 scores or anything like that. You find a guy that has seen me the whole day, from the time I show up to practice to the game, and I want him to tell you I play hard—unbelievably hard—every second I’m out there.”

It really is amazing how well he’s picked up switch hitting.

Shane Victorino comp seems like it could be a low end projection

But awesome. If you watched him in previous years, you would think he was horrid. :o