Minor League Discussion & Boxes 8-10-2008

[Guest]

Nate, if you get a chance to read this and respond, any thoughts on Samson's defense? I know he's made a ton of errors. Is he really that bad? Does he look professional, and does he have quickness/range, or a good arm?

 

Just curious whether he has any chance to be a good shortstop at a higher level, or will need to switch to 2B soon enough. What do you think?

 

Samson is fine defensively. Think David Eckstein. He'll be just fine at SS especially as he continues to get bigger. Remember is just 20 and playing at 150-155 pounds.

 

Could you lock him in the weight room please?

[Guest]

Ryan Searle with 2 scoreless. Struck out the side in the 2nd inning, all 3 of them on nice sliders: 2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 3 K

 

Vitters is 1 for 1 with a double. He scored on a Ryan Flaherty single.

[Guest]

Searle: 3 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 5 K

 

His FB has nice movement, slider looks good.

[Guest]

Chris Huseby gets the start for Mesa.

 

Searle: 4 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 5 K, 5 GO-1 FO. Vitters: 1 for 2, 2B

[Guest]

Ryan Searle's final line: 5 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 6 K, 6 GO-2 FO

 

He probably could have gone another inning with his low pitch count. Israel Camacaro in for Boise.

[craig]

Samson is fine defensively. Think David Eckstein. He'll be just fine at SS especially as he continues to get bigger. Remember is just 20 and playing at 150-155 pounds.

 

Thanks, Nate. That sounds encouraging. Obviously his future depends on both the offense and the defense. He's shown he's a strong contact guy, with barely a 10% K rate. If Wilken is correct in projecting him adding some meaningful muscle over the next few years, maybe he'll add at least a little more power to his otherwise nice numbers. If his defense ends up fine, that would make it a lot more realistic for him to become a useful major leaguer.

[Guest]

Israel Camacaro left the Boise game with an injury.

[Guest]

Josh Vitters with an 8th inning single, he's now 2 for 4 with a single and double.

 

17 game hitting streak.

[Guest]

All boxes posted!

[TruffleShuffle]

searle is looking pretty interesting. 36 IP, 27 H, 10 ER, 10 BB, 43 K, .193 BAA, 2.50 ERA in Australia; 17.0 IP, 8 H, 1 ER, 3 BB, 16 K, .136 BAA, 0.53 ERA. nice to see a guy from a place that's not exactly a baseball hot spot showing this much polish this early. and so far he is showing nice sink on his pitches too.

[rawaction]

Colvin is now 14 for his last 35, 8 of those hits have gone for extra bases (3 dbs, 2 tps, 3 HRs). In his last 8 games, he's hitting:

 

.400/.417/.857 for an OPS of 1.274.

 

With an August start like this, anything under an .850 OPS this month will be a disappointment. A good month to end the season can go a long way to salvaging this season for him. His ISOP is at .240 since the break. But his ISOD has been non-existant since then.

[craig]

Colvin is now 14 for his last 35, 8 of those hits have gone for extra bases (3 dbs, 2 tps, 3 HRs). In his last 8 games, he's hitting:

 

.400/.417/.857 for an OPS of 1.274.

 

With an August start like this, anything under an .850 OPS this month will be a disappointment. A good month to end the season can go a long way to salvaging this season for him. His ISOP is at .240 since the break. But his ISOD has been non-existant since then.

 

Yeah, he's gotten very hot. Great to see. If he could sustain this for a while, the half-full view will be a guy who finished strong and whose overall numbers weren't really all that poor for a 22-year-old in AA.

 

But it may not be a coincidence that his rebound coincides with dumping the walks. He may find the take-home lesson to be that he should hack, and the only time he can hit is when he hacks, that taking any walks doesn't work for him and he's proved it.

[Little Slide Rooter]

Tyler Colvin seems to continue to get on track.

 

How come I havnt heard any Rich Hill updates?

[NCCubFan]

How come I havnt heard any Rich Hill updates?

Because he's on the 7-day DL (I believe with back spasms).

[Guest]

BA's Daily Dish[/url]"]SOUTHERN LEAGUE

 

Prospect Of The Day

 

In Tyler Colvin’s last six games, he has five multi-hit games. The 22-year-old left fielder/center fielder exploded yesterday, going 3-for-5 with two doubles and a home run. Yet through 118 games, Colvin is batting just .247/.307/.410.