Minor League Discussion & Boxes 5-3-12

[Little Slide Rooter]

Over the past 10 games, Dave Sappelt is hitting .278/.395/.500/.895 2HR 7 BB 5 K. Boosted his season OPS to .723. Love to see him get a shot in center or at least share it with Campana and use Mather as a utility bat allowing Reed Johnson to pursue other opportunuties.

[davell]

All in all, I am really disappointed with how poorly our system as a whole, has started out. I'm not going to go player by player right now, but the only guys to have stepped up whatsoever to date, are Burke and Kirk. I expected Rizzo to kill AAA and thought Brett would be fine. But out of the guys I thought could take leaps forward, those two are it. And quite a few are headed backwards.

[KingCubsFan]

Hak-Ju Lee: .233/.294/.319. Someone tell Keith Law.

[KingCubsFan]

All in all, I am really disappointed with how poorly our system as a whole, has started out. I'm not going to go player by player right now, but the only guys to have stepped up whatsoever to date, are Burke and Kirk. I expected Rizzo to kill AAA and thought Brett would be fine. But out of the guys I thought could take leaps forward, those two are it. And quite a few are headed backwards.

I think Szczur's start has been very encouraging.

[toonsterwu]

It's been a fairly disappointing start to the year. Every time a guy looks like he's about to get hot, he slides back down (Torreyes in a 1/25 swing, Szczur going 0/8 the last 2 nights. Granted, Torreyes hasn't struck out in this stretch, but 1/25 is 1/25 - not many ways to make it sound THAT good). There really haven't been many breakout candidates (Rubi Silva's about the only bat that can be classified as a breakout right now), and there really isn't an old-for-level slugger really dominating.

 

- As a side note, Arismendy Alcantara is in a nice 10/28 stretch. Probably just a random in-season hot streak, but it's something positive to talk about.

 

____

 

The mildly positive spin, I guess, is that, relative to AA/A+, there really wasn't much positional talent entering the year, and A+'s pitching, IMO, was shaky to begin with. The AA staff, has for the most part, been steady, and Szczur/Torreyes have both shown some signs of life (and with Torreyes, BABIP can give a bit more hope). There hasn't been anything real shocking in AAA - positive or negative, to be honest, and in Peoria, the pitching staff has enough positives, and let's face it, it's not like we expected everyone to succeed (in terms of Peoria pitching positives, I'd say Jensen/Francescon/Burke/Wells all have performed well enough in the early going as starter/piggyback guys, and Liria/Wang/Reed have been okay-solid in their limited innings. Golden was hurt too early to get a good gauge on anything, so there's really been only two major disappointments for me, guys that haven't really shown any flashes so far to get excited about, in Marco Hernandez and Taiwan Easterling. The former is still only 19 in Low A, and the latter was a raw, toolsy guy, but their K rates have been quite disappointing. (I'm not willing to lump Concepcion into a major disappointment yet because it's so few innings, and the same goes for Zach Cates.)

 

That said, that's more dressing up a pig, or whatever the saying is that I'm trying to think of right now. It hasn't been pretty.

[toonsterwu]

Hak-Ju Lee: .233/.294/.319. Someone tell Keith Law.

 

To mildly defend Lee, who I thought was over-hyped by many last year (especially when Law ranked him as the 7th best prospect on a list, iirc), he has been on a hot streak of late, going .341/.356/.523 in his last 10 (and this includes his 0/10 against the Smokies in the last 2 days).

[PriortoTheoIhadWood]

Hak-Ju Lee: .233/.294/.319. Someone tell Keith Law.

 

Mr. Going to Be Better than Garza is sporting a 26/23 K:BB in 30 innings in AAA. He's still working on finding a place where he walks less than 5 per 9 over a solid sample size. But herpity derpity they were top 10 prospects in a system so the loss is devastating...Yuch.

[SouthSideRyan]

All in all, I am really disappointed with how poorly our system as a whole, has started out. I'm not going to go player by player right now, but the only guys to have stepped up whatsoever to date, are Burke and Kirk. I expected Rizzo to kill AAA and thought Brett would be fine. But out of the guys I thought could take leaps forward, those two are it. And quite a few are headed backwards.

I think Szczur's start has been very encouraging.

 

Someone tell Keith Law

[bukie]

Nobody has mentioned it yet, but McNutt is still broken: 2.2IP 5R 2BB 1K

McNuts.