Family Ties Strong For Greenwell

The minor league season is all about progress. The hope is a player when he goes to camp in early March is a much better, different player by the time the season ends six months later in early September.

One player who showed vast improvement this year in sort of a breakout season is Low-A Lake County outfielder Bo Greenwell.

Greenwell, 20, just put the finishing touches on a solid season where hit .296 with 2 HR, 30 RBI and .766 OPS in 67 combined games at short-season Single-A Mahoning Valley and Lake County this year.

Greenwell opened the season in extended spring training where he continued his education as a baseball player. Because he spent so much time working out for football in high school, he is very raw as a baseball player. When the Indians drafted him in the 6th round of the 2007 Draft out of high school it was the first time he was actually able to develop and refine his baseball skills. As a result, he spent a lot of time the past three seasons in extended spring training before finally getting a chance to play with an affiliate in Mahoning Valley and Lake County this year.

Having logged so many extended spring training games on the backfields of the Indians player development complex or in empty stadiums, having the chance to play in front of thousands of fans in Niles, OH and Eastlake, OH was a thrill for Greenwell this year. In extended spring training or even the rookie leagues he had to really motivate himself to make it feel like a real game since the games had no fans, but in Mahoning Valley and Eastlake it was natural as there was a scoreboard, fans, and he even got to walk to the plate to a song.

"When I played in high school, we played in front of 50 or maybe a 100 people, so it was never a really big atmosphere,