They fear his ability to hit it over the fence. Mickey Mantel was probably the most walked person in baseball. They would rather he get to first base on walks as opposed to bring in a couple of runners via a home run.
He may have had a .648 obp early on but it didn’t hold up.
“They fear his ability to hit it over the fence.”
I don’t think so....he has a terrible slugging average...and walks are not counted in that average. He probably has a good eye for the pitch, but getting the bat around is another thing altogether.
He’s got a long, long way to go in a short period of time. It could be that he is incapable of correcting his flaws...that was his big problem in the NFL; he would just reflectively go back to his bad form; they couldn’t train him out of it.