http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/s ... id=6309758
Connoisseurs of the baseball prospect landscape can remember when Wallace was really hot stuff. In June 2008, the St. Louis Cardinals picked him out of Arizona State with the 13th pick in the first round. After becoming the first player to win two Pac-10 Triple Crowns, Wallace raised the stakes with a .337 batting average in his first two minor league stops.
"Wallace has an elegant and refined approach," Baseball America wrote in 2009. "His balanced, level swing creates consistent line drives, and he isn't easily fooled because of his keen eye and quick adjustments."
Wallace has since gone on a head-spinning, Carmen Sandiego-like baseball odyssey that tested both his self-confidence and his equilibrium.
The final inventory: Three trades in a span of 371 days. Four professional franchises by age 23, and an accompanying move across the diamond from third base to first. It's enough to give a young player a complex.
Wallace, meanwhile, is putting up numbers that bear little resemblance to the carnage he inflicted in Springfield, Quad Cities and Las Vegas. After going 3-for-4 with a home run in a 4-3 loss to Florida on Friday night, he's hitting .225 with 11 walks and 55 strikeouts in 58 big league games.
Although Wallace's fluid swing is easy on the eyes, some scouts and personnel people have grown dubious: Can he handle the hard stuff inside and hit with sufficient power to be a long-term asset at first base? The Astros plan to give him time to figure it out.
"A lot of people in this game try to fit everybody into a box. Wally is more of a hands-type of hitter, with very good power, and his legs have him grounded. He's not the prototypical weight shift type of hitter, but that doesn't bother me at all."
As super models and Sumo wrestlers can attest, stereotypes spring from body types as well as performance. Wallace has a low center of gravity at 6-foot-2, 250 pounds, and it's hard to find a personality profile that doesn't make reference to his "thick lower half." Wallace weighed 11 pounds at birth and has always been stocky, so he's learned to live with the critiques.
