It was long, long drought from Eric Chavez to Nick Swisher to 2016, with a sad assortment of position players to point to as “draft and development” successes. Kurt Suzuki has had a nice career and all, but where was the influx of appreciable talent worth getting excited about?
Suddenly, there are signs of life beyond the Cliff Pennington “well he did hang around an awful long time...” threshold of judging talent.
It starts with a first round draft pick (2014), Matt Chapman. Yes, Chapman has had contact issues in the minors that persist into his first 22 big league games, but to my eyes this guy is a star in the making.