Minor League Discussion & Boxes, 7-24-22

[CaliforniaRaisin]

Scheduled Games (All Times Central):

 

Iowa at Omaha, 5:05 pm

Tennessee at Chattanooga, 1:15 pm

South Bend vs Quad Cities, 1:05 pm

Myrtle Beach at Charleston, 4:05 pm

DSL All Star Game, 9:30 am

 

All rookie league teams have the day off

 

Probable Starters:

 

Iowa: LHP Matt Dermody

South Bend: RHP Kohl Franklin

Myrtle Beach: RHP Tyler Santana

[itisallpartoftheplan]

Canario 3/3 with and rbi double and Dong.

[Bertz]

Yeison Santana with a dong, I believe his first in full season ball for his career

 

The South Bend box score is nearly as meh as it could possibly be for having 9 runs through 5 innings

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Boy when Canario gets hot he does not mess around, this is a Soriano-level heater

 

Elsewhere at Tennessee, Riley Thompson's on a good run. His last 5 outings: 12.2 IP, 8 H, 3 R, 12/6 K/BB, 1 HR

[Bertz]

[itisallpartoftheplan]

Made with a tie breaking Rbi triple in the 8th. 3-5 today.

[Bertz]

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Mervis also added a triple (!) off a lefty (!!), all of his Iowa hits are for extra bases

[Bertz]

[Bertz]

 

I'm pretty sure over the last decade the worst CFer who averaged 20+ bombs annually and was actually a legitimate defender at the position is Randal Grichuk. He's been a slightly below average everyday player.

 

Given that PCA's purported to be more like a +10 defender, the plate discipline is going to really need to become a problem as he moves up the ladder to not end up an everyday player.

[CaliforniaRaisin]

Jefferson Rojas snuck in a 2/2 day at the DSL ASG. Only Cubs there (who played) as far as I can tell

 

Goood stuff from Canario and Mervis. Beyond the power I really like Canario’s versatility and patience on a farm that doesn’t draw too many walks

 

Gueri Lubo and Gabriel Agrazal also got into the DSL all-star game.

[craig]

 

I'm pretty sure over the last decade the worst CFer who averaged 20+ bombs annually and was actually a legitimate defender at the position is Randal Grichuk. He's been a slightly below average everyday player.

 

Given that PCA's purported to be more like a +10 defender, the plate discipline is going to really need to become a problem as he moves up the ladder to not end up an everyday player.

 

The Prospectus suggestion that PCA's South Bend K's look to be a league-transition anomoly seems factually incorrect.

 

1. He's played two months for South Bend, all of June, and now July.

2. June was 13K/59 AB. So, if there was a league-transition-anomoly month, it should have been June.

3. In July, it's 22K/65 AB. So for this month, now that he's kind of settled in and established his equilibrium, he's K'ing a little over 1/3 of his AB.

4. He's had at least 2K's per game for each of the last four games, so if anything it appears the K-rate has been increasing.

5. He's had only one game this month without a K.

 

I don't say this to rag on PCA.

 

But I think we may need to be reaching a new perception, that the present version of PCA is not the low-K contact-hitting guy the pre-season scouting reports described. For now, his present equilibrium is as a high-K power hitter.

 

Guys are always trying and tweaking and trying to find their best equilibrium. I'm not suggesting he won't make some adjustments and come up with some new balance in the remaining weeks, or next season. This is what getting hundreds of AB's in the minors is for. I'm just suggesting that for now, he is what he is, and that's a high-K guy who keeps his stats afloat by mixing in some homers with the lots of K's.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

I agree that PCA's new norm is that with a K rate north of 20% instead of the above average rate he had at Myrtle Beach. Where I think the author's intent is more accurate is that even though the K rate has ebbed and flowed(and there's other factors like his hand injury and future's game/All-star layoffs that probably factor in), it's become detached from other signs of success and failure. By that I mean that to start out with pre-injury, PCA not only was striking out more, but he wasn't hitting or walking either. As the weeks have gone on, both of those things have improved, so while the nominal K rate for a week in July may look similar to his first week, it represents less in terms of how troublesome it is given the rest of the profile and what it portends(e.g. getting overwhelmed vs. selling out for power vs. having exploitable zones vs. K's as a product of patience, etc)

[Bertz]

 

I'm pretty sure over the last decade the worst CFer who averaged 20+ bombs annually and was actually a legitimate defender at the position is Randal Grichuk. He's been a slightly below average everyday player.

 

Given that PCA's purported to be more like a +10 defender, the plate discipline is going to really need to become a problem as he moves up the ladder to not end up an everyday player.

 

The Prospectus suggestion that PCA's South Bend K's look to be a league-transition anomoly seems factually incorrect.

 

1. He's played two months for South Bend, all of June, and now July.

2. June was 13K/59 AB. So, if there was a league-transition-anomoly month, it should have been June.

3. In July, it's 22K/65 AB. So for this month, now that he's kind of settled in and established his equilibrium, he's K'ing a little over 1/3 of his AB.

4. He's had at least 2K's per game for each of the last four games, so if anything it appears the K-rate has been increasing.

5. He's had only one game this month without a K.

 

I don't say this to rag on PCA.

 

But I think we may need to be reaching a new perception, that the present version of PCA is not the low-K contact-hitting guy the pre-season scouting reports described. For now, his present equilibrium is as a high-K power hitter.

 

Guys are always trying and tweaking and trying to find their best equilibrium. I'm not suggesting he won't make some adjustments and come up with some new balance in the remaining weeks, or next season. This is what getting hundreds of AB's in the minors is for. I'm just suggesting that for now, he is what he is, and that's a high-K guy who keeps his stats afloat by mixing in some homers with the lots of K's.

 

Dan Szymborski had a bit about this in his writeup on Armstrong during the Future's Game. Essentially he doesn't worry about K rates when guys are hitting the hell out of the ball, because they're incentivized to keep swinging.

 

There’s still a ways to go until he’s in the majors, but his top comp list has all sorts of fun names, including Carlos Gómez, Ray Lankford, Rondell White, and Marquis Grissom, among others. Crow-Armstrong’s plate discipline has suffered a bit since being promoted, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it, considering that he’s still slugging above .500; players hitting well are incentivized to be aggressive.

 

(He had similar comments in a subsequent chat but I'm not going to dig around for those)

 

PCA had an 11.5% swinging strike rate at MB, which was ~70th percentile among A-ballers, and that's climbed to a 14.5% swinging strike rate at SB, about 30th percentile among A+ hitters.

 

I'd say we're still in wait and see mode on PCA's plate discipline trajectory. Plenty of guys hit when they're hot and walk when they're cold, and PCA has practically been swinging Mjolnir since he got off the IL (13 of his 25 hits have been for extra bases). Like TT said I'd lean against the sub 20% K rates being a thing for him moving forward, but I'm not ready to say he's a high strikeout guy either. We're still deep in the throws of small sample size.