First impressions: Dwanya Williams-Sutton
Heading into his 2017 season at East Carolina, Dwanya Williams-Sutton’s coach asked him to play right field.
“It’s uncomfortable,” said Dwanya, “but if he needs me there, I’m gonna be ready to play.”
The results?
Hey uh, Dwanya: crashing over the top of the wall to rob a homer might feel uncomfortable, but it looks awesome.
Joining the Dust Devils as 2018’s #141 overall pick, it looks like Dwanya will indeed man right field.
He’ll bat in the heart of the lineup as well. Because he doesn’t seem satisfied enough with merely robbing home runs, he absolutely crushes them, too:
In their draft recap, Fangraphs said Dwanya Williams-Sutton is “a solid athlete with big raw power and huge exit [velocity] with just okay numbers.” (Exit velocity is effectively how hard a player hits the ball—harder hit balls are harder to defend, especially when they go over the fence.)
That “just okay numbers” line refers to the surprisingly rate of home runs and doubles given his strength and athleticism. But there’s just no doubt the potential is there for Dwanya to drive a lot of balls out of the park, as seen in that 400-foot blast from his first at bat of the season in 2017.
During his time at ECU, he batted a nice .330 over three years, with very good on-base percentage (.449) despite striking out at a pretty high clip (26%). He also caught scouts attention in high school by hitting safely in 42 straight games.
Speed is definitely part of Dwanya’s game. His stolen base numbers took a big jump in this past year, averaging roughly a base stolen every other game in 2018.
Overall, Dwanya looks like a really fun player to be able to watch with the Dust Devils this year. On my first skim of the Padres draft picks, he was one of the players I was most excited about getting to see in action because of his power and speed.
When reading up on him, I noted that Dwanya Williams-Sutton was previously drafted by the Reds in 2015, which is probably a very confusing notion to any folks unfamiliar with some of the odd workings of the major league draft, minor league compensation, bonus pools, signing negotiation, so I’ve gone ahead and done my best to explain that here.
