Minor League Season Opener Discussion & Boxes 4-9-15

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Theo throwing a bad pitch on purpose? Definitely in character.

[TruffleShuffle]

south bend won 2-1 on a cael brockmeyer walk-off. good way to start the new affiliation! brockmeyer also had 2 doubles, jeffrey baez homered and jake stinnett threw 5 solid innings.

[Guest]

Jonathan Martinez came out of the Myrtle Beach pen, that's a bit of a bummer.

[Tangled Up in Plaid]

anyone have that link where it puts all the box scores of the affiliates on one page?

[Guest]

anyone have that link where it puts all the box scores of the affiliates on one page?

 

http://www.milb.com/scoreboard/index.jsp?sid=milb&org=112

[Guest]

Almora walked(!!!) and Schwarbs tripled (!!) him home

[toonsterwu]

Jonathan Martinez came out of the Myrtle Beach pen, that's a bit of a bummer.

 

I wonder if he's a "wait until someone gets called up and then you are in the rotation" guy. Of course, I really hope Stinnett does so well that he forces his way to MB.

 

_____

 

Total side note - finally got on TCR, and completely did not realize that Scott Frazier came down with the yips. And AzPhil's response indicated Ben Wells was yips as well. Bard, that wasn't surprising.

 

_____

 

Very happy with

 

Stinnett's and Underwood's starts

Amaya with 3 walks - yeah, he should be fine there, but it's still nice to see

Jeffrey Baez cranking a homer - his power seems like it should talked about a lot more than it is

Penalver slapping 3 hits - any offense from him, and comparisons to Jose Igelsias aren't ... ridiculous ... of course, a long way to go

Schwarber's 2 walks

 

Still hate CJ Edwards in the pen ... the save bullets talk seems like BS ... that said, his frame has long been an issue

 

Fun start to the year.

[Guest]

Jonathan Martinez came out of the Myrtle Beach pen, that's a bit of a bummer.

 

I wonder if he's a "wait until someone gets called up and then you are in the rotation" guy. Of course, I really hope Stinnett does so well that he forces his way to MB.

 

_____

 

Total side note - finally got on TCR, and completely did not realize that Scott Frazier came down with the yips. And AzPhil's response indicated Ben Wells was yips as well. Bard, that wasn't surprising.

 

_____

 

Very happy with

 

Stinnett's and Underwood's starts

Amaya with 3 walks - yeah, he should be fine there, but it's still nice to see

Jeffrey Baez cranking a homer - his power seems like it should talked about a lot more than it is

Penalver slapping 3 hits - any offense from him, and comparisons to Jose Igelsias aren't ... ridiculous ... of course, a long way to go

Schwarber's 2 walks

 

Still hate CJ Edwards in the pen ... the save bullets talk seems like BS ... that said, his frame has long been an issue

 

Fun start to the year.

 

Almora's walk tho!!

[vance_the_cubs_fan]

Went to Mississippi and saw the Smokies. Almora looked good at the plate. Not only did he walk, on one of his outs he hit the ball hard with a line drive. It was hit right at the Braves outfielder.

 

Schwarber still looks like he has some issues at catcher. He had trouble fielding one bunt and made a really weak throw on a stolen base.

 

My son enjoyed the post game fireworks the best.

[Guest]

Myrtle Beach highlights: http://bit.ly/1FpSUf5

[craig]

Went to Mississippi and saw the Smokies. Almora looked good at the plate. Not only did he walk, on one of his outs he hit the ball hard with a line drive. It was hit right at the Braves outfielder. Schwarber still looks like he has some issues at catcher. He had trouble fielding one bunt and made a really weak throw on a stolen base.

 

Thanks for first-hand observations, Vance. Would sure be great if Almora was able to put things together.

[craig]

Jonathan Martinez came out of the Myrtle Beach pen, that's a bit of a bummer.

I wonder if he's a "wait until someone gets called up and then you are in the rotation" guy. Of course, I really hope Stinnett does so well that he forces his way to MB.....

 

I'm guessing Martinez is about #7 or so on the rotation depth chart, until perhaps Stinnett and perhaps Null and Norwood get promoted to bump him down further? That makes sense to me, he's a relative soft-tosser and probably has less ceiling than any of the other six guys at Myrtle, I'd think, or about 8 guys at SB and below. .

 

Presumed Starting 5:

Underwood

Tseng

Torrez

Blackburn

Skulina

 

All look more promising to me, and throw harder (even Blackburn is faster than Martinez, I think, or projects to be so.)

 

I'd also put Conway at #6, ahead of Martinez. Throws harder, and has strong control of fastball. He may just get used in relief, given that they have plenty of other rotation prospects and may not want to mess with piggy-backing in high-A. But Conway is fast, throws strikes, and can locate his fastball. Last year was his rehab year, so I'm sure they didn't let him throw full speed or throw a lot of sharp breaking balls. Usually first year back after injury a guy is very limited, and it's mostly fastballs diet. So this second year is really the potential breakout year, where the K's can go up when you put guys away with the breaking ball.

[TruffleShuffle]

i think almora will have his best season as a pro.

[Guest]

Jonathan Martinez came out of the Myrtle Beach pen, that's a bit of a bummer.

I wonder if he's a "wait until someone gets called up and then you are in the rotation" guy. Of course, I really hope Stinnett does so well that he forces his way to MB.....

 

I'm guessing Martinez is about #7 or so on the rotation depth chart, until perhaps Stinnett and perhaps Null and Norwood get promoted to bump him down further? That makes sense to me, he's a relative soft-tosser and probably has less ceiling than any of the other six guys at Myrtle, I'd think, or about 8 guys at SB and below. .

 

Presumed Starting 5:

Underwood

Tseng

Torrez

Blackburn

Skulina

 

All look more promising to me, and throw harder (even Blackburn is faster than Martinez, I think, or projects to be so.)

 

I'd also put Conway at #6, ahead of Martinez. Throws harder, and has strong control of fastball. He may just get used in relief, given that they have plenty of other rotation prospects and may not want to mess with piggy-backing in high-A. But Conway is fast, throws strikes, and can locate his fastball. Last year was his rehab year, so I'm sure they didn't let him throw full speed or throw a lot of sharp breaking balls. Usually first year back after injury a guy is very limited, and it's mostly fastballs diet. So this second year is really the potential breakout year, where the K's can go up when you put guys away with the breaking ball.

 

The disappointing thing to me is that this is a solvable problem, you piggy back guys you want to get starter's innings. We could quibble on individual order(e.g. why is Torrez starting game 2 while Martinez is not starting at all?), but there's innings for everybody if they want to give them. Skulina and Conway especially aren't going to be jumping to 150 IP with their recent past.

[toonsterwu]

This group doesn't seem to be as heavy on declared piggybacks as the previous regime. I sort of liked the heavy piggybacking down on the lower levels. I mean, back in the Hendry era, we ran 3 declared piggybacks in the Midwest League, and occasionally 4, while I seem to recall a year or two where we had 2 declared piggybacks in Daytona (memory could be shoddy ... could be a situation where some guys simply couldn't go long and they had specific pen roles for situations ...).

 

I guess if I have any point with that is that we should wait and see on Martinez's usage early-on. It's certainly possible, if not likely, that he gets 2-3 innings per outing, and consistently, akin to a piggyback, and perhaps they simply preferred to have certain guys start games.

 

______

 

That said, I guess I'm not too upset or broken up about Martinez in the pen. Admittedly, I'm not sure if he can pump up the fastball out of the pen (I would assume so, but you never know), and so his value, due to arsenal and stuff, might fit better as a starter. Not sure, but it's the start of the year, and I'm not going to be too worried about the early-goings (although ... I guess I'm being somewhat hypocritical, as I am sort of annoyed with the CJ Edwards to the pen role - if they were concerned about innings, they could "start" him and yank him early as well ... more than anything, would love to have Edwards work on all his offerings to keep options available, whereas I worry he may slim down his options out of the pen ... any reports on his outing and what he was throwing?)

[vance_the_cubs_fan]

I didn't pay that much attention to the radar readings. We were sitting first row, but way down the leftfield line so I would turn one way to watch the plate and turn again to see readings, but Black hit 96 on the gun at least twice. I thought it might have been a hot gun, but when Edwards came in, his fb was in 91-92 range, so maybe Black was throwing that hard. Corey looked good as a starter. Edwards was a little more rusty and when he left, he seemed to be disappointed in his performance.