craig

Ackerman with a good outing. He had a bad first inning in his earlier start, and Garcia let in one of his runners in the fifth, so his ERA looks bad. But 11 K's in 7.2 is pretty good, and maybe 5 hits? Lots of walks thus far, though. Nice to see him having some success. Maybe what the scouts saw in him will be vindicated, and at 20 from a small college background, it might be that he was far from a finished prospect when drafted. Anyway, at least for the night I'll hope for him.

Yes, I'm big-time concerned. He's shown no progress in this area and has gotten much worse this year. After his draft summer, I'd hoped that some mechanical corrections or whatever that he coud become more adequate as a contact guy, and that between his HR's and walks it would more than offset. He's got some BP HR-power, and some game HR power too, but there is limited indication that his HR-rate is enough to really counterbalance SO many K's. If the only skill is walking, and he hits a decent but unspectacular number of HR's, and his defense is CF-OK/average while he's young but he really needs to play corner to be a defensive asset, I don't think he projects very well at all. He's kind of relied all along on a super-BABIP to keep his average afloat. That might be a true reflection of a patience approach, swing only at pitches I can whack, so when he does both to put the ball in play he whacks a lot. But I admit I'm kind of afraid he's just going to be a contact-challenged low-average hitter who won't have enough special HR power or defense to justify the low-average. Hopefully he makes some adjustments and gets better. I am somewhat afraid that when guys are giving away AB's to the K all the time, that one of the adjustments is to be more aggressive. So that eventually in an attempt to keep his average anti-awful, he may end up sacrificing a lot of the walks that are currently his one asset.

Thanks. I hadn't realized he was so slow, that's too bad. If he's not fast, so that he doens't actually project as a CFer or a base-stealer, and he doesn't have a frame the projects any power, then he's a pretty limited prospect. If he's Theriot offense who needs to play LF defense, then he just isn't much of a prospect. I don't doubt that if they were both on the same A-ball team, that Na would be a faster and jazzier CF. But Na's defense isn't that relevant since guys who can't hit don't make the majors. So I view Na as strictly a minor-league roster-fill type guy. When you whiff like Brett Jackson but have Pierre power, you're a long-shot to become even Joey Gathright.

Na may be similar, but he can't hit. Na K's like a big slugger. As a pro, he's got 75K/0HR/271 AB. Chen has 25K/211 AB. I'd take my chances with a hitter over a non-hitter. And I'd probably take my projection chances on a 6'1" guy adding some muscle and adding at least some more snap to his swing than on a dinky 5'9" kind of guy.

Chen was on my list to watch at Boise, and he's off to a nice start. I agree, he's an interesting prospect. He's got the most important tool of them all: he can hit the ball for contact. He's got speed and a good arm, so I think he's yet another in the legit CF prospect pool. He doesn't walk a lot, I don't think. Not bad, but it's not like he's profiled thus far as a high-walks guy. I'll be curious to see how his SB work goes. Is he fast enough and quick enough so that SB will be a big-league virtue? Otherwise it's not that hard to pick your spots against crummy catchers and pitchers who have no moves in short-season. Chen lists at 6'1", and he's still only 19. My hope is that in time he will grow into some power. If Chen was to eventually grow into 10+ HR power, then he might be a very significant prospect. But if it's Theriot-ceiling, makes it tough.

That's some really encouraging info, Cal. Thanks for posting it. If these guys both throw in the 90's, Cruz with good movement, and both with some physical projection left, both would seem to have pretty high ceilings. Lets hope it works out that way.

Between the $6+ spent on draft (including Szczur), and the high spending internationally, I'd assume their overall spending last year was probably around 10th, plus or minus a couple. Hardly cheap. We'll never know about the draft, but I still think that Simpson was signed because wilken liked him, and he happend to be cheap. My guess is that had he been a half million pricier and still wilken's favorite pick, then our draft spending would have been a half million higher and been at 13th or whatever. May be wrong, of course. Perhaps the half million or whatever saved on Simpson is exactly what opened up funds to sign Beeler and Harman and Geiger and Reed to their overslots. But we'll never know. What we do know is that their overall procurement spending last year was high. Or at least well above average.

I wonder if Reed hasn't been very good. It's seemed he got some buzz last year from Az Phil, and he had a couple of eye-catching games which led to good small-sample numbers. But from Phil's game reports this spring, he's seemed to have pitched poorly in most of the box scores that I've seen. I wonder if he isn't a guy who came in with a good arm and some good stuff but inconsistent wild, and he's been more inconsistent wild than improved this spring. We'll see. Hopefully his stuff is good and his control gets better.

Makes perfect sense. Obviously not many guys do sit 93/94, few do so with control and movement, and a guy can be a meaningful prospect without doing so. But obviously the shorter the velocity, the better the movement, location, and breaking stuff need to be to make up for it.

Welington Castillo had gone 12 for 17 with 4 HR, 3 doubles, and 13 RBI over a 5-game stretch before K'ing his last two AB on Saturday. Breaking a totally un-Castillo-like 6-game streak without a strikeout. He sat out yesterday, and is not playing today either. Just an unusual 2-days-off-in-a-row rest? Or an injury? Or has he gotten called up or something? He's been the only reason to check the Iowa box scores for a while. (Although I do check to see how Colvin is doing, and he may be starting to get going a little...) Castillo has a 1.02 OPS at Iowa after 29 games, with 9 HR's.

The reports on Wang that I recall had him in the low 90's, 90-91 area. It's hard to imagine that he has substantially improved upon that, so I figure it's probably low 90's still. Thanks, guys. 90-92 sounds good to me. NOthing special, but not inadequate either. A large fraction of the good pitchers in the majors don't really throw much harder than that very often. If Wang has control and knows how to pitch, he can be a meaningful big-league prospect with 92-mph velocity. Of course, it may be that the radio 92 was the one flukish 4-seamer that read that high, and that the actual fastballs that he was using effectively were mostly 87-89 types, who knows. And granted also that most of the guys who are getting big-leaguers out with 92-or-less velocity could throw harder than that when they were minor leaguers. If Z was a 20-year-old prospect given his current velocity, he wouldn't be the prospect he was back then when he threw 98. Toonster, why do you say it's "hard to image that he has substantially improved" upon low 90's? I assume because he's short, listing at 6'0"? If he was 90-91 as a teenager, and now he's 20, apart from his limited height it seems fairly believable when guys add some speed when they turn 20, 21, and 22.

I'm hopeful that Dolis will eventually become an effective big-league reliever. But his splits in relief are 28H/11BB/14K/24IP. So that's a 1.6 WHIP with low K's and a lot of hits. Seems to me like his traditional profile: hard heavy fastball but not very good control and not much else.

Wrong day, but do we have any idea how hard Wang, who pitched so well yesterday, throws?

nice to see him pitch well, because he sucked last year, and a lot of our far east pitching signees have been flops. He was bad at Boise, but I thought he pitched quite well at Mesa after getting sent back, although granted small sample. 19K/6BB/18 IP. IIRC, he was good in like 6 of those 8 games, but had one or two poor games. Gave up 19 hits in 18 innings, so I had wondered whether his stuff was just so-so. He's 20 now, we'll see.

i really don't understand this. a difference of as little as 6 home runs is going to affect his batting average that much? I figure that each HR is worth about 10 points in OPS, all else being equal. (Which I know is often not the case...) 15 HR versus 25 HR, that can easily be about 100 points OPS difference. I'm just doing math on the fly, so pardon the ramble. I'll use 500 AB rather than 600 AB for simple calculation purposes. Extra 6 HR: = 6 extra hits = 12 extra points in batting average and in OBP. Extra 6 HR = 24 extra bases = 48 extra points in slugging. 12 extra OBP + 48 extra slugging = 60 extra points in OPS. A .275BA/15HR/.770 OPS Vitters (not very useful) becomes a .287BA/21HR/.830 OPS Vitters, average at 1B, in the top bunch at LF or 3B. At 25 HR's, .295BA/25HR/.850 OPS Vitters is bumping the top 3 even of first basemen. HR volume matters.... a lot. Obviously those are just ballpark calcs. At 600 AB, the numbers don't calculate quite so roundly. If you're selling out to add the HR's and overswinging, so that getting the extra 6 HR's means you take on 20 more K's and it costs you a dozen other doubles/singles and costs you loads in BABIP, then obviously nothing is gained. But if K-rate and BABIP is constant, adding one or two handfuls of HR's adds a non-trivial chunk of OPS. It's one of the reasons I think that projecting young hitters is so difficult. Because it's just so very difficult to project how many healthy-approach HR's a guy will be able to hit. you can kind of see whether a guy is going to be a contact hitter, or a walk-taker. Those profiles emerge pretty early. But whether Vitters is a 25 HR or a 14 HR guy, can't tell. Whether Bour is going to be a 30HR or a 13HR guy versus mlb pitching, who knows? Lemahieu a 5HR or an 11 HR or an 18 HR guy as he matures and settles in? He could end up at any of those spots, really. Same for Szczur. Golden might have the strength to hit 35 HR, but will he have the contact skills to hit more than 5? I have no idea. If Darvill grows into 18+ HR's, he might be a really good-hitting infielder. If he hits HR's like DeWitt, who'll want him? If Ha is a healthy contact hitter and hits 10 HR's, probably 4th outfielder or non-asset starter. At 18+ HR's, he might be a nice asset offense/defense combo. Flaherty with 10 HR's, probably mediocre average and not much of an asset as a hitter, and not a rangy athletic defender, probably not a very good starter. But if he's hitting up towards 20 HR's, then his average will be pretty solid, his OBP will be pretty solid, his OPS will be solid, and as a reliable low-errors defender he can be an asset regular. I just think that often a 6 and 12 HR jump can be the jump from below-average-I'd-like-to-replace to solid-average-above-average-asset to strong-asset-well-above average. Jumps of 50 or 100 OPS points, more or less, can do that. Likewise jumps of 50 or 100 OPS points can decide whether a guy's hitting is enough to justify average/sub-average defense.

Wellington Castillo is hotter than anything. I'm sure there have been hot prospects before, but other than that week Vitters had in Peoria, I'm not sure I can remember many or any as blazing as Castillo has been. He's up in the .330's now average-wise at Iowa, and has 9 HR's in 30-some games at Iowa. He'll still be 24 when next season starts, so he's not a fossil. Given his physical tools for defense and throwing, I think he's got some value if he can hit.

I expect Vitters will be below-average defensively no matter where he ends up, probably significantly so. So he'll need to hit better than positional average to have average positional value. To be an asset, I assume he'll need to be an .800+ guy, and if he ends up at 1B, probably at least an .840. I do think the value of anti-awful is underrated, though. It doesn't get my heart racing, but an average 1B instead of needing to go spend $10/year on Pena would have been nice. An average LF instead of spending $136 on Soriano might have helped? I think the HR's are key. He's got 7 HR's in 200 AB or so. An everyday hacking regular would get around 600 AB, so he's already homering in the neighborhood of a 20-HR. My thinking is that he'll need to be a 20+ HR guy to be an asset. As a slow, bad-fielding low-walk guy, if he's <15 HR, I think it will be hard to keep his average or his slugging high enough to give the OPS needed to justify him as a defensive liability. But if he's hitting 20+ HR, I think his average should be pretty good, .280+ and perhaps a bunch higher. He's not going to be an asset, I don't think, if he doesn't hit HR's. But I think at 21, giving his contact gifts, his bat speed, and his current HR output, I think it's plausible to project him ending up as a good HR hitter. That's my hope, at any rate. Obviously he may have simply peaked out with a hot streak, and he's due for a 6-week low, and he'll end up at .265 with 11 HR's and a .758 OPS and a brutal defender this season, and I won't be feeling as hopeful. We'll see.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/batting/split/79/sort/OPS/order/true OPS by position. Half of the teams in mlb have left-field OPS of less than .710. Only two have LF OPS over .817 (Milwaukee and Cardinals, of course). Only five teams other than the Cubs have LF OPS above .790. Sixteen big-league teams have 1B-OPS of less than .780. Only nine teams have 1B-OPS higher than .832. I think it's within the range of plausibility that Vitters will improve his power or production so that he become an asset hitter relative to LF, perhaps even relative to 1B. Other positional notes: 2B: Only 5 teams with OPS over .760. 3B: Only 4 teams have ten 3B HR's. Only two have 3B OPS over .780. 21 Teams have 3B OPS below .720! 19 Teams have 5 or fewer 3B HR's. Given the poverty of 3B hitting and power, I think it's with the range of plausibility that Lemahieu could become an asset hitter relative to 3B, even if his HR power never evolves past 8-10 per year. Obviously what's plausible and what actually happens gor Vitters and Lemahieu may differ. But I don't think their hitting potential is unsuited to LF and 3B.

W Castillo is VERY hot. 8 HR in 28 games at Iowa. He's always been a hitter who lives to strike out, but somehow he's gone six straight games without striking out. A composite season can be built pretty heavily one one or two hot weeks like the one he's having.

http://media.scout.com/Media/Image/91/917564.jpg I might be crazy. But from the pictures, it certainly looks like del Valle is certainly the guy on the left, as the caption suggests. Either those other guys are really short and dinky, or else it looks to me like del Valle seems both taller and heavier than any of them. Not sure he looks like 165 pounds in that picture.... http://images3.listindiario.com/image/article/263/460x390/0/581FD689-C0C1-4926-A487-97431E9532DB.jpeg http://media.scout.com/Media/Image/91/917564.jpg

Az Phil has a note about him today. Said he's formally on the roster, but that he's actually staying at the European baseball academy, or something like that.

Frank DelValle has signed with the Cubs, according to BA. http://www.baseballamerica.com/blog/prospects/2011/06/minor-league-transactions-june-8-14/ In the note you linked, he looks to be the biggest of those four prospects in the picture (assuming the listed names are in order with the pictures players. But the translation article was kind of confusing, so maybe not even the caption is quite like I'd expect...) Cal, do you know anything about him? Young, old? I know we've signed some Cubans, but Smelly Borges and this 27-year old Valdes (?) who's roster-filling at Daytona, these weren't actually meaningful major-league prospects.

I hope so too. But I've always considered Arizona to be a pretty good place to hit, too, and every spring we hear reports about how breaking balls can't break in Arizona Cactus League, etc.. But from Az Phil's box scores, which I did not read faithfully so I may have a very coincidentally and selectively unfavorable batch, but I got the impression that Golden was kind of the Soriano/Ryan Harvey of XST, K-K-K-K-K. Maybe I just saw some box scores from a couple of his worst games, and he's ready to roll now. http://www.idahostatesman.com/2011/06/16/1690851/hawks-raw-prospect-seeks-return.html Limited by a hamstring injury, Golden played just four games in rookie ball last year. He hit .333, but struck out seven times in 15 at-bats. This year, he has worked on developing a better approach at the plate, more consistency in his swing and taking better routes on fly balls in the outfield. “This year, I’ve learned more than twice as much as I had in my whole life,” Golden said. “I’m starting to feel myself when I do bad, when I do wrong. In high school, I really didn’t have an approach.” At 5-foot-10 and 210 pounds, the 19-year-old Golden has the look of a powerful running back. Instead, his combination of speed and power should play in right field. Hawks manager Mark Johnson compared him to Hall of Famer Kirby Puckettand current Chicago Cub Marlon Byrd, both outfielders with thick bodies and all-around games. “He’s going to be really fun to watch. He can do it all. He’s an exciting player,” Johnson said, while singing Golden’s praises off the field, too. “He’s a great kid with a great work ethic. I can’t say enough about how respectful and how good a kid he is. He just needs to play.” Nice to get the enthusiastic comments by the manager. The great kid, great work ethic, respectful, how good a kid he is, that's encouraging to read from the manager. AsPhil hasn't painted that picture for us previously. The article includes a picture of Golden in a Boise uniform, so I assume it's current and from this week. (He didn't play at Boise last year.) He could well have a little blubber underneath the shirt, but he certainly doesn't look fat, as Phil had described him earlier this spring. Hopefully he'll be able to hit. It would sure be refreshing if he could. Read more: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2011/06/16/1690851/hawks-raw-prospect-seeks-return.html#ixzz1PTVBn2ZX

At this point, I'd add Jeff Beliveau, Steve Clevenger (and say bye to Koyie Hill), Ryan Flaherty, Marwin Gonzalez, Matt Szczur and Josh Vitters. Obviously, this could change as players emerge the rest of the season. That looks like a good selection, cal. As mentioned by others, plenty of candidates on the 40-man to get derostered, so I don't see much problem. Flaherty, Szczur, Vitters, and Beliveau seem like the only sure things. But hopefully Clevenger's defense is good enough to make him worthwhile and Marwin. I suppose you never know. If they've got easy roster space, and if Lake finished well, maybe. Sometimes good-arm pitchers are surprise roster choices. Smit last year. Mateo a few years back. So it wouldn't be beyond possible that somebody like Hatley might pop in, or even Burke if he was a lefty and was throwing 95 with a promising breaking ball for two months.

Couple of thoughts: 1. Maybe the decline in range is real. Vitters goes to Camp Colvin, he matures a little bit physically and gets a bit thicker and stronger, and in the process he loses just a little bit of quickness and defensive flexibility. 2. Maybe the decline in range and defense is just a coincidental fluke of small sample size. He's gotten about 80 balls this year, maybe some grounders just happened to be a little wider than last year where he'd have had 90 fieldable balls last year; or the pitching staff isn't quite as pullable for RHP as last year so RH hitters aren't pulling as many balls his way. He's got about 4 more errors than would have been last year's pace, he just happened to flub a couple and happened to thorw an extra two away, that can happen. 1B just didn't catch a couple of the throws this year that weren't any worse than some throws last year that the 1B scooped. The AA scorekeeper is just a little stricter, and is used to more competent defense than back in A, so some balls that he's fumbled this year are listing as errors when last year the scorekeeper said they were tough plays, lets give the kid a hit. To me, though, it seems that whether or not he's actually gotten a lot worse or it's just some flukey stats, it's pretty likely that he hasn't' gotten any better. His ability to play 3B has always been iffy. Everybody understood he might not have the quickness needed right from the start, and that even if he did at first he might outgrow it. And everybody also understood that he wasn't very good at first, and that he'd need to improve a lot with practice. So it was always the hope that he'd gett better with time. But I don't see that as having happened or as happening right now. We can wonder whether he's actually significantly worse than last year, or really more or less comparably bad to last year but just small-sample fluked into looking worse. But I guess to me it seems like whether he's equally bad or actually a lot worse, either way he's not better, and he needed to get better by a lot. He's in high minors, he's almost 22 now, it's time to pull the plug on the 3B experiment. We tried and tried and tried and tried, it's not going to work, it's time to move on to the 1B/LF possibilities. He may be awful in LF too, but it's time to give it a try and give him as much 1B/LF experience as possible so that if his bat does come along, there will some position where he can play. I'm still hopeful (obviously not certain) that his bat and his HR power will come along far enough for him to be useful even at 1B or LF. So maybe I'm more willing to pull the plug on the failed 3B dream because I'm more hopeful about his bat and still think he might hit enough to make it at 1B/LF. Just staying equally bad to last year isn't sufficient. We might argue that he may not really be much worse than last year, but that's still not good enough. He needs to get better, and that doesn't appear to be happening.