craig

Poster on my other board has seen him a couple of times. He was faster than Mateo and Parker, considerably faster than Coleman, and way faster than Chen.

I agree that Samardz should go down and learn how to pitch. Last year he put together 3-6 good weeks before his recall, and then stayed effective for a couple of weeks before struggling in September. This year he was lousy in spring, lousy his first Iowa start, then after only two good outings he was up and now he's struggling again. I'd like to see him go back and put together months of success if possible. I admit I'd like to see Ascanio get several months to lock in that it's not just a sample-size fluke, but that he is really a good pitcher. I think it's possible; he just turned 24 on Saturday, and after some injuries and pitching relief he really hasn't thrown all that many pro innings. I wouldn't mind letting him lock into his success for 3 months and 100 innings instead of a few weeks and 25 innings. That's probably unrealistic and I suppose one of them needs to be up. To some degree I'd rather have Ascanio stay down; I think he'll be out of options after this season, so I want him to be able to lock in and show enough at Iowa so that when he comes up, he doesn't lose it all with one bad game or one week in which he doesn't get used. I want him to show so much at Iowa so that it will be hard to give him away. Again, maybe it is too hard to have them both down at Iowa. Some possibles: bring up Waddel or Stevens or Fox instead. Chad Fox has done pretty well, actually. And/or if Z can come back after only a few weeks, and if Wells does well in his window of opportunity, perhaps Wells could just stay.

There are five position prospects of interest on the team: in addition to the four Cal mentioned (catchers Castillo and Clevenger, 2B Thomas, CF Guyer) there is also SS Barney and outfielder Ty Wright. 3B Smith was also in BA's top 30. I've mentioned some observations one poster at my regular board made, and I'll pass on a couple of those. He's been two two (both?) Mateo games, including yesterday. He sat by the players from the two teams who do their speed guns, so his gun readings are not stadium weirdness. He said that Mateo was again in the 91-93 range (considerably faster than Coleman and much faster than Chen, and not that much slower than Perkins). Said he threw some hard sliders as high as 86, which both of the gun players said was nasty. He was surprised mateo didn't K more people. Obviously said he was wild. I asked him about Clevenger, and he said that he hasn't really noticed him defensively in any of the games he's seen: which is a good thing. Said he didn't appear to have any problem with Mateo's hard sliders. He said that Thomas had a grounder go right through his legs, not the kind of error you hardly ever see in the majors. Last game he said that Thomas threw a Steve Sax crazy wild throw to first. So he said he's seeing why scouts who would see some really bad errors like that question his defense. Said that thomas has looked very good at the plate, looks balanced and has hit hard stuff. I'd asked him about how he does versus breaking stuff, and he said it looked like he waits back pretty well, doesn't look bad, although he doesn't recall ever seeing him hit a breaking pitch out of the infield. In one of the games he said that Guyer went 0-3 but hit the ball hard several of those times. If you could, I'd be interested on your observations on: 1. Thomas: defense, and how he handles breaking pitches. 2. Barney: how does his arm look, how does his range look defensively. And how does his plate discipline look. 3. Ty Wright: do you think he could hit for any power? And does his OF arm look too weak for anything but LF? Or does it look basically OK? 4. Any impressions of Clevenger as a hitter? 5. Any impressions of Castillo, either as hitter or defensively? For pitchers, if you got a look at Gaub, Coleman, or Jackson that would be fun to get reports.

Wells throws 3 hitless innings, then gets removed for Matthes. Makes it pretty obvious he's lined up to take Z's start on Friday. Wells' ERA is 2.77 after this his 5th start, with decent peripherals. He's 26. Dolis carried a no-hitter into the 5th. Archer makes a throwing error and walks a couple of guys while allowing a run in the first. Then he's pulled after only two innings. That doesn't sound good.

Last year Ridling was 50K/8 BB in 165 Peoria AB, rather Harveyesque. Thus far he's a more acceptable 12K/9BB/54AB. Still pretty high K-rate for a guy in low-A who's almost 23. But it's progress.

I think if a guy is rated as the best prospect in the minors, or pretty close (Corey), "uber" probably wouldn't be hyperbole. Nice to see Jackson having a good game. Interesting what a new season can do, though. Last year he was 72K/50IP. Even today, when he's on, he still doesn't have K's going. He's got the fly-ball thing working for him today, though. Ty Wright started slow but he's been doing very well lately. Hit .300 last year, he's been around 1.000 OPS over the last 10 days. Overall OPS is still under .800, but he's got his average up to .284. I'm always interested in a guy who can have 8 K / 6 BB / 67 AB. If you K that little, it means you can hit the ball and won't need an inordinate BABIP or an inordinate number of HR's to sustain a decent BA. If you K that little, it also suggests to me that you don't have major holes in your swing, so you are less likely to get exposed by better pitching following a promotion. Without real HR power or a CFer's arm, it's hard to see him projecting as an impact starter, obviously. But its sometimes useful to have a Reed Johnson-type hitter available in case of injury or whatever.

Howard was up at age 24, hit 22 HR's in 348 AB at age 25. Nice to have good outings by Archer and Carpenter. Too bad for Coleman and Parker. Chad Fox is doing well for Iowa. I wonder if he might not be a guy to call up is Samardz isn't actually contributing, or if/when they dump Patton.

My friend wrote the following: "My mph numbers came from the gun of whoever was charting pitchers that night for the Smokies, so this wasn't a case of the slow gun at Pringles." He also added that Chen only managed to get it into the upper 80's a couple of times, most were mid-80's. Here are most of his notes from Coleman's game yesterday. You will note the higher velocities of the relievers and the opposing pitcher, so Coleman's modest velocity is relative to AA pitchers, not a product of a slow gun. Anyway: "The hitting star for the Smokies was Tony Thomas, and he really looked great tonight, going 3 for 5 with a homer and a steal. He had two solid opposite field singles on 92 mph pitches and then crushed a 91 mph fastball over the left field wall for a no doubter home run. ... Casey Coleman pitched a solid game for the Smokies. His fastball was 88-91, with a pretty decent mid 70's curve that he can throw for strikes and it looked like he flashed a low 80's slider on occasion. He seems to have good rhythm on the mound and works fairly quickly. I really don't have a good feel if his fastball has any kind of good sink to it. He got three very timely double plays tonight, and I think each of those came on a different pitch. He does seem to mix his fastball and offspeed pitches pretty well. His best inning came in the 6th where he struck out the side, mostly throwing his curve. Jayson Ruhlman pitched the 7th. He was also around 88-91 and mixed in a mid 70's breaking ball. The big surprise for me tonight was Vince Perkins, who was throwing gas. 93-95 mph fastball and a good mid 80's slider. He gave up a couple of scratch singles to start to load the bases with no outs, and then he struck out the next two guys, one on a 93 fastball and another on an 83 slider. A liner to Barney that ended the threat was on a 95 fastball. Blake Parker closed the game. His fastball was 91-93, and he threw a couple of 81-83 sliders. He struck out the first two without much of a problem and gave up a long fly to center to end the game. "

My friend went to the Tenn game yesterday to check out Chen, and was less impressed. Obviously it wasn't Chen at his best (he allowed 5 runs). Here is what he wrote: "craig convinced me to go check out Chen today, and he's really not anything special. His fastball was basically 84-87 most of the game, hitting 88 and 89 a couple of times. He's also got a good mid 70's curveball that got some guys fishing. His first two innings were pretty solid but he started losing the strike zone in the third inning, falling behind several hitters, and paying the price for it. The key hit in the third inning for the Jaxx was an 86 mph chest high hit me fastball that was nailed to the RF wall and doubled in two runs."

Hi, Nate, thanks for the feedback. Peoria looks like it could have a lot of really good prospects, potential major leaguers. Not sure how that will play out for W-L record, but it's probably fun to see guys with a chance to become big-leaguers. Question on Huseby: Huseby was a wildman last year, but in his first several outings he's got zero walks. And he's K'd 6 guys in his last 2 outings/3 innings. What can you say scouting-wise? 87-89 fastball with a nice curve that goes for the strikes? Or on the outings when he's getting guys out and K'ing people, does he touch up into the 90's? How about Archer? Any scouting thoughts on him?

I'd actually forgotten about huseby after the winter, given how hopelessly wild he was last summer. Now he's back, promoted, no walks in three outings, and 6 K's in his last two innings. I know the report on his first outing was that he was slow, 89 or so, and he wasn't good that game. Hopefully the better outings means he's letting it fly more comfortably and throwing a little harder. If we got some 91-92 reports, with a K-curve, and at age 21 still having some possible velocity projection left, it would be a fun story if he got back onto the prospect map. Sooner or later Shafer is likely to get promoted, if he keeps on pace. If Huseby keeps pitching well in relief,maybe he'd even get a rotation shot. IIRC, his scouting when signed was as: 1) a control pitcher 2) a curveball guy, and 3) the frame to possibly someday throw hard. He may be back to that, on his good days.

Cal, I think you jinxed all three of Chen, Carpenter, and Wells today! Nice to see Carpenter having some good innings, though. I don't recall really any very impressive outings last summer, and I admit I was worried that he was going to be a bust, a guy with good-stuff reputation but who was way too wild and whose stuff really wasn't all that great anyway. He had a mediocre K rate (25K/33IP isn't all that special in short-season), a horrible walk rate (23BB/33IP/25K is awful), and it wasn't like his ball was moving around so much that guys couldn't hit it: his hits-allowed rate was also more than one per inning. I thought he was the draft pick most likely to bust. But now at 18K/8H/14IP his K's look good and his stuff looks hard to hit. I get the impression now that when he's on, he's very good. But that perhaps he can fall out of his groove fairly quickly and lose it. 4 perfect innings, then two walks and a hit in the 5th. Last game it seemed like he had a couple of good innings, but lost his control in other innings. Hopefully he'll increasingly lock into the good control, be increasingly able to avoid losing it and/or become better able to get out of trouble, and will look like a great pick as the season progresses.

Whoever imagined Colvin with 11BB/7K/40AB and a .151 IsoD? Small sample, so he'll probably go 0-8 over the next couple of games. But this is the first time that he's combined good average (.300) with the walks. Kind of fun. He's 23, so he's not totally a fossil yet. If he were to show similar (or with better power) production at AA following a later promotion, who knows. Oft Would be nice if Marques Smith could sustain his current type of hitting for a while, and perhaps do so even after a promotion. Searle is an unusual no-K groundball guy. Must have a pretty good sinker. Often younger guys develop a breaking pitch over time. So if he's basically got a sinker that can get it done even when the hitters know it's coming, it's interesting to imagine who interesting he might become if over the next several years he were to come up with an average slider and an average change, such that he could get some K's. The way Russell is going at AA and Mateo at Daytona, I don't imagine Russell will hold that rotation spot for a lot longer. I wonder how Cashner is coming along? Might be fun in a week or two if Mateo could move up and get replaced directly by Cashner. Might also be that a Mateo promotion might link with Shafer moving up to Daytona.

Not sure I have this exactly right, but I believe Parker and Gaub each have 4.1 innings pitched. In their 8.2 innings, they've combined for 18 K. Both appear to have brought stuff to AA that is hard to hit. Lambert, by contrast, who was a strong K pitcher in past and whose curveball was supposedly quite good, has like 1 K in 9+ innings. Gaub is pretty raw and I have little confidence in his control, or consistency. But the way Cotts is going, if Gaub keeps going well and Cotts keeps struggling, Gaub could come up a lot sooner than I ever imagined.

With Cotts being so bad, and Samardz having some good outings, I could also see Samardz coming up to replace Cotts, with Marshall moving to pen.

I think Gathright was signed when Hendry wasn't sure if Fuku would be able to stay in lineup, either defensively or offensively. Low-grade insurance, so to speak. I may be misremembering, but I also think he signed before we'd gotten Bradley. Now with Bradley, and with Fuku looking like he's going to justify his spot, Gathright insurance is no longer as useful. He's the 6th outfielder. Five other guys have started at least twice out there, now that Hoffpauir has gotten a couple, and with both Fuku and Reed doing fine. So as the 6th OFer and the 3rd CFer, Gathright's contribution is limited. One of his roles is as a PH, at which of course he is not good. So I think the more settled circumstances in CF might make it easier for Lou to replace him with Fox. I wouldn't be surprised to see that happen. Especially with Miles doing so poorly as a PH. If he was hitting .300 like last year, it might look different. But with Gath and Miles as auto-outs, and Hill relatively unused because Lou is worried about Soto's health and the possible need to sub in for him, Lou is left with essentially only two PH weapons. He might welcome Fox.

4th or 5th guys in the rotations, not the best pitching night thus far. Dolis in Wildman mode, 4 walks and he's out after 3, although he allowed only one hit and one run. Hatley through 3, a run and 4 hits. Jackson not quite as awful as last time, but he's still getting hit hard. Two doubles and a triple, as well as a single and a couple of runs through 4, and 5FO/1GO. So he's not keeping the ball down or sinking his fastball and his signature slider isn't getting any groundouts. Hopefully we'll see the good Samardz tonight.

Yeah, that does sound awfully good. Will be interesting to see what jackson shows up tonight. But the Coleman case, and the good jackson before his bombardment last start, kind of remind me of how the drafting and development of pitchers is so unpredictable. Last year entering the draft, I recall the buzz being that the draft was way below average for pitchers. And often to read the draft board, if they draft many college players who aren't already great, their is complaint that they aren't taking any high-ceiling guys. As if a college pitcher who gets past round three must not have enough arm to be any good. But here we see guys like Coleman, McDaniel, and jackson being taken in the mid-teens or round 8 who end up looking like they do have enough arm after all.

From another bleacherbums poster who attended Ascanio's game at Albuquerque. This poster doesn't post often, so I don't have any filter whether he gushes up everybody or whether he disses anybody who isn't absolutely dominant. But this is what he said about Ascanio, regarding the game in which he had 4-3-0-0-1-4, 1 HBP, 54P-34strikes, and 7/1 GO/AO. (A line that I thought looked pretty impressive, especially in Albququerque which is often a homer heaven.) "Ascanio was getting hit pretty hard though. His FB was hitting 94 (on a slow gun), but the 'Topes weren't fooled. He threw some sort of offspeed pitch, but not very often and without much sucess. In my opinion, he won't survive in the bigs without a solid offspeed pitch. Think of Farnsworth." Not sure exactly what to make of that. It seems negative. But if I thought he had Farnsworth stuff, that isn't exactly a washout. Not sure two singles, a double, and one flyout sound like he was getting hit all that hard, either, but perhaps the groundouts were all rockets, too. The 94 on a slow gun sounds good, I think. Doesn't really seem to jive with the report that Ascanio, when he's good, has his slider as his signature pitch. Again, not to doubt the poster, but I think sometimes an amateur watcher can distinguish a slider from a fastball when the hitter lets it go; but sometimes slider is hard to distinguish from fastball, so sliders resulting in ground outs seem like they are just down fastballs; or sliders that don't break a lot just seem like somewhat low-velocity fastballs?

From a BleacherBums poster who watched Tennessee last night, and has watched tons of AA games over recent years; "Casey Coleman looked real strong last night... His fastball was 91-93 but he has a damn good slider that's 85-87." That sounds like legit stuff.

Good question. I went back and looked at his Gulf Coast website page for last year. It's true that he has played a lot of 2B/SS throughout his college career. But it's not like he hadn't pitched before. He was 1st-team all-state as a pitcher in HS (class 5A in Florida, whatever that means. But his school averages over 100 students per grade, so it's not total small-school competiton.) He pitched some as a closer as a Freshman, leading Gulf Coast in saves and with an ERA below 3. He pitched 70 IP as a junior, 62 as a soph; so it's not like he just started pitching. His ERA's were 4.34 and 4.11, or something like that. But he K'd more as a soph in fewer innings. So I'd guess he underperformed to some degree as a junior. So I think to some degree perhaps we got lucky and were able to draft him in a buy-low mode. It is interesting: he has about as many IP as a pro as he did as a junior (67pro, 70 junior). But his pro K/BB is 54K/15BB/67IP, versus junior 58K/35BB/70IP. His K-rate is about the same, but his walk rate is much reduced. Clearly a guy with 35BB/70IP in small conference college isn't likely to be getting in 7 innings on 74 pitches in AA the next year. Pretty remarkable. His walk rates were lower as fresh/soph than as junior, so that appeared to be a down spring for him control-wise. Or not: I think his school was not D1 fresh/soph, and they just joined D1 last year. So probably the worsened walk-rate reflected facing better opposition? In either case, he's gone within 12 months from a 35BB/70IP guy in small D1 conference (not impressive walk control) to a guy who's performing as a low-walk control pitcher. Several thoughts: 1. I think his low round may be significantly impacted by signability, not entirely by how scouts saw his stuff. I believe he said that he hadn't expected to sign and hadn't planned to sign with a less than $100K offer. Cal can probably detail that better. But I suspect the Cub scouts saw enough stuff to justify 5th/6th round kind of cash, to superslot. Perhaps others would have been taking him in rounds 7-10 if they'd expected him to sign for slot. 2. You know this much better. But college stats with aluminum bats and the sometimes extremely short outfield walls can sometimes be misleading. 3. He's young. He's 21 and will remain 21 for most of the season. A 21-year-old in AA, that's pretty good. And a lot of 21-year-olds would be juniors now. So if last year had been his sophomore year and he was elevating his game this year as a junior, that wouldn't be all that unusual. A little stronger, a little faster, a little more consistent, a little better control, that kind of improvement happens often. 4. I have the impression that his fastball is improved. In the scouting report at draft it mentioned him having touched 94, which looked promising; but the impression I had was that was a max, and he probably was more an 88-91 guy in normal mode. I seem to recall last summer a Peoria report that also suggested that he has mostly around 88-90. The impression I got from camp this spring was that he was more regularly resting 90 or better. I'd be surprised if that weren't true. I doubt they'd have bumped him up to AA if he looked like a finesse guy with a sub-par fastball. I don't think you zip through 12 innings in AA with as few pitches and walks as Coleman has used in these first two starts unless you've got a pretty usable fastball. 5. A lot of $100-K signing bonus type pitchers who have a chance: if they add several more mph; if their slider gets more consistent and sharper; if their fastball command gets better; if they can improve their change some. For most, some of those ifs don't come through. For the moment, it looks as if most of them might be coming true for Coleman. We'll see if they stay true. I agree, I'm rather a control prioritizer. Which is why I'm pretty interested in Coleman and Shafer, either though neither probably has exceptional stuff. It's rare for guys as wild as Archer to ever have the control needed to be consistent big-leaguer assets. But, it's equally true that there are plenty of good-stuff big-leaguers who have useful careers without all that special of control. Archer's stuff seems pretty hard to hit. He won't need the control that Coleman or Shafer will to get a shot. He's a teenager. If he can show that his stuff is very hard to hit, that he has legit big-league stuff, I'll remain hopeful for a while that in time he'll perhaps improve his control enough to become useful. Sometimes wild guys do end up learning to harness good stuff. Hopefully he'll be one of them.

Repeating/adding list of reasons why McD's K's would be down: 1. Starting, not throwing quite as hard. 2. Was throwing 50-50 fastballs/sliders, now he's adjusted that to 70-20-10 fastball-slider-change 3. A+ hitters put the fastball into play before he gets to the 2-strike K-counts. Inferior NWL hitters would miss or foul, leading to more 2-strike counts without which K's don't occur. 4. He's obviously gone heavily with the sinker. Last year he got a lot of his K's on 4-seam fastball. I would guess that both answers 4 and 2 are involved. You don't get K's on 2-seam sinkers, you get them on breaking balls and high fastballs. So if you cut back on both of those, you cut back on K's. And the obvious also factors in: you don't get strike 3 without getting strike 2 first. If the sinker is working so well that you can pound the strike-zone with effective 2-seamers that get groundouts, you may buzz through an inning without ever reaching a 2-strike count. The most common pitch that they push kids to work on is the change, since few kids begin with an excellent change and it's entirely normal for a young prospect to have a good fastball and a promising breaking pitch but to have never needed or developed a major-league changeup in amateur ball. That's almost certainly the case for McD. He was supposedly a 2-pitch guy, just fastball/slider. (Some call it slider, some curve, but it's not like he throws two different ones.) But maybe that was really 3 pitch: slider + 4-seam + 2-seam. Normally integrating a change results in more walks and higher pitch counts, not less. So adding the change certainly doesn't explain why he's throwing less pitches. And given that he has only one breaking pitch, it's certainly not that they are having him not throw it. reduce it possibly, but not shelve it for the year. Some guys had three breaking pitches (slider, and/or curve, and/or splitter), so they'd ask them to focus on one (Pawelek, Ryu, Sisco all come to mind.) In McD's case, I think it's more a case of adding (change) than reducing the range of pitches that he uses. Even if he's reducing the actual number of sliders.

Nathan, Shafer has had a couple of solid, strike-throwing starts. Do you have a sense for where he's at velocity-wise? Would you guess he's mostly in the 87-90 range fastball-wise? Or more 90-93 with perhaps a few faster than that?

Actually he was 11GO/3AO in the box score, so not many fly balls that were caught, at any rate. Thanks for the good report. Of course we've got to ask the scouting questions, to whatever degree you feel confident to answer. 1. Does Peoria show radar readings for velocity? If so, and if you remember, what kind of readings was Shafer getting? (And if you noticed, Huseby?) 2. The report on him last summer was that he had a good breaking ball (curveball), on good days. Did you notice some?

At least through the first four innings of his second start, Ascanio is also on a strike-throwing binge. 4 more shutout innings in thus far, at only 54 pitches. He got his first air-out of the season in the 4th. After Iowa and Albuquerque scored a million runs last night, tonight is 1-0 after 4. After working relief in camp well into March, I wonder what Ascanio's pitch countis up to? I doubt he'll go much longer than the 4 he's already pitched.