Robles has hit major league pitching before. He's only 24, is extremely talented, has already raked in the minor leagues, and plays elite defense in CF. This idea that in a lost season we should send him down to play Lane Thomas or Andrew Stevenson is idioitic at best.
Play him every day he is healthy in CF. You want to see what Thomas can do? Sit someone else, like Soto or Hernandez. Thomas isnt going to sustain a .600+ BABIP. At best he's a reserve OFer or a light side platoon bat.
This team has to figure out if Robles can be an everyday player. The only way to do that is to actually let him play every day.
This is silly, ignoring, as it does, that Robles did NOT "rake" in the minors. He had a half-season in Hagerstown when he hit .305...in 2016. He had most of a season in Potomac -- 2017 -- where he hit .289 with .872. In 2018 he had his broken season in Syracuse, where he hit .278 with .742 OPS.
Robles, as best I remember, had an OK first half of 2019 and began to slip.
So, how is Robles "extremely talented"? Sure, somebody rated him as a "five tool" player way back, and he was high on prospect lists made up in various years. So what? He is fast, but a negative base runner according to Fangraphs. He covers ground in CF, but so do a lot of fast guys. With experience, his hitting has gotten worse. Why think that he will learn to hit by going against the best pitchers in the world? They have talent and they and MLB catchers are smart. They ties Robles in knots.
Give the kid a break. Let him play at a level where he might be successful, might learn to hit, and then bring him up. Why push him to do things he can't do?
https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=robles002vic
