craig

Nothing good for Donaldson's numbers thus far, overall. But his BABIP is only .235. If he was hitting your standard .300 on BABIP, without otherwise changing his HR/BB/K rates, he'd be sitting at .265 with an OBP in the .310's. Certainly not good, and routinely BABIP reflects the quality of contact a hitter is making, so it probably stinks for a reason. But sometimes there's some luck element involved as well. Obviously none of his numbers are good. But 3 HR/11XBH in 112 AB's, that's fine. And his K-rate, 20K/112 AB, that's not good but it's not scary either. His walk rate is likewise poor but not scary. Point being, I think he's got a chance to get his numbers straightened out in time. He's not going to be the dominant star hitter that AzPhil was projecting, and to be competing but not dominating in A- at age 22 isn't that great. But I don't see his numbers and peripherals indicating as much hopelessness as goes with Tony thomas and Tyler colvin, who are K-factories without enough power or walks to justify.

I think Dunn only did it for one year, too. And Dunn seemed to be rather universally supported by pitchers he actually coached at AA. Lester Strode was the system pitching coordinator from 96-06. Courtney Duncan was one of the only prospects I ever recall testifying to Strode helping him. I recall thinking it might be a real plus when he got promoted to big-league coach. But, pretty much all of the people have been hired through the Hendry-Fleita pipeline. And a lot of the guys who work in Mesa have been there for a while. Hendry has had a dozen year to establish how he wants things to run in the farm. If you don't like aspects of it, Hendry and his underlings have either established how they do things or hired the people who are doing the teaching, etc..

On Veal, does anybody know what changes he's made? He was an extreme K pitcher who rarely got a groundout. Now he's a fairly low K-guy who gets a normal distribution of groundouts. In A, it was one groundout-per-two-innings. Now it's 1+ per inning. Has he ditched the curve, or what? Anybody know?

I may well end up wrong on this one. Vitters may well work out as bustaroo, and Parker and Porcello may become routine all-stars. But one of the pre-draft arguments that I made (and is hardly original to me) goes as follows: 1. Many really elite position players are drafted straight out of HS and high in the 1st round. If there is good reason to believe that a guy has a good chance to be a premier hitter, give him good consideration. 2. A lot of pitchers have wonderful arms when they are drafted. But pitching is hard on the arm. A lot of guys with awesome arms at time of draft no longer have awesome arms 5 years into their big-league careers. By contrast, stud hitters often remain stud hitters for a long time, and are much less subject to the physical deterioration that a stud pitcher faces. Most of the pitchers who are drafted with extraordinary arms don't have extraordinary arms by the time they hit free agency. Between major injury and just general erosion on the arm, it's the norm rather than the exception that a guy who's arm is exceptional at age 18 no longer has so extraordinary an arm by the time he turns 25. I know there is no such thing as a true "sure thing" when you're drafting 3rd or lower. But if I had a sure-thing player and a sure-thing pitcher, I'd always opt for the player. If both guys are to become stars, the star player is much more likely to remain healthy enough to star into his mid-30's than is the pitcher. Unfortunately such arguments are based on probabilities. So Vitters' tendonitis may be a case where the less probable player injury will occur, be chronic, and perhaps ruin his career, who knows. And obviously it may be that whatever the scouting consensus thought, that vitters was not near enough to a "sure thing" or an equal talent for this kind of logic to be applied as a tiebreaker.

Thanks for the news 08 and others. Very nice. Interesting that he's a LH-hitting SS. Not all that many of those. Sounds like a good prospect, lets hope he works out. To my knowledge, Cedeno is the only middle-infield prospect of note that we've gotten via international signings.

Outstanding outing for Gallagher. So his pitch count has been elevated, bumped up from 80-pitch range up to 100 now, apparently. Man, if he'd been pulled after the 6th his last start, instead of staying in and putting 3 runners on and getting blamed for 3 runs, his numbers would look incredible. It's interesting how he can do it in different ways on different days. Last game it was GB galore. today living off the K, not that many groundouts. The ability to have different ways of winning is crucial to successful starters. peoria, in past it seems Sean has done a lot of experimenting with his breaking pitches. At times it was curveball, slider on the shelf. (Midwest league, that was the story.) Other times, he was getting the slider back in (I think at Daytona that was the story, but then I thought he benched the slider again because it was taking away from his curve, or something.) I thought the word last fall was that he was going back more toward more slider, less curves. And he's used a couple of curves, right, a bigger slower one and smaller one that's easier to locate for strikes. Do you know where he's at in balancing slider, big curve, and slow curve? Does he use all three? Pick which ones feel good on a given day? Basically going with more sliders and occassional curves? Just curious.

Nate, what can you tell me about Lambert and his arm? A friend was at the Daytona game yesterday, and he was very impressed with lambert, and suggested that to his amateur eye "he seemed to be throwing harder than Ceda". That's totally opposite my expectations. Based on BA draft stuff and scouting reports, all I've heard on Ceda is power-power-power, while the charicature of Lambert has been as little soft-tossing lefty. I'd thought he was strictly an 80's guy. Again, this viewer had no gun. But is it possible that Lambert has added some velocity? (he's 22 all season.) Or does he have a delivery that has some deception and that makes his fastball look faster than it actually is? Or is my understanding of his fastball velocity perhaps inaccurate, and he was already in the 90's last year, he never really was a soft-tosser even last year? Thanks in advance if you have a chance to comment.

Also, I think the Ceda-for-relief stuff made sense last year: he was coming off arm problems. So it made sense to keep his innings down. And his stuff (big arm, small control; two-pitch guy if that) is typically associated more with relief than rotation. As you say, Cal, go with the rotation and see how he does. Certainly the higher you go, the more being a wildman will bite you. So he'll need to improve the control, obviously. That he was walking everybody during camp and during his first two starts, but has now gone back-to-back walk-free suggests that for those two games at least, something was different. Hope it sticks.

My friend on other board has a close scout friend in the Baltimore organization. That scout said that Ceda's low-90's fastball had much better movement than when he throws it harder. I thought the difference between 91-with-movement and 96-with-less-movement-and-little-control might not be a self-conscious choice between different grips, but might just be a matter of overthrowing. So the fact that Ceda calls it a sinker is good news, suggests it is a different grips with predictably different action. Whether we call it a "sinker" or a "two-seamer", same difference, it's a good pitch. It's interesting that all of the buzz scouting reports focus on the fastest fastball ("Ceda may have touched as high as 100mph!") and on what a power dude he is. But when it comes to actually getting hitters out, it's possible that he'll be throwing in the same 90-92 range where hundreds of other RHP actually work. According to this scout dude, Ceda's slider is also above average. But it's not enough slower than the fastball(s) to keep hitters off balance. Supposedly he hasn't had good success with a third pitch to function as an off-speed. He had trouble with the change, with both release point and arm speed, plus of course control. So supposedly they wanted him to try replacing the change with a curve this spring, as the off-speed slow pitch. Supposedly that also was very wild. So apparently he's perhaps dropping the curve and going back to trying the changeup. This scout's view was that the Cubs really want Ceda as a starter. I think that makes sense, given how few high-ceiling rotation prospects we've got. But I assume the view is that his fastball/slider combination is good enough that it could be successful in short relief. But that to pitch rotation, he'd need to have some kind of functional off-speed pitch, whether that be a changeup or a slow curve or a splitter or whatever.

"Rhee experienced some soreness after his win on Monday against West Michigan. With an off day last Thursday, the rotation was juggled to give Rhee an extra two days rest. "I think he's young, and this is all new for him," Sandberg said. "It's just precaution. He was 60 percent better (Wednesday than Tuesday)." http://www.pjstar.com/stories/042008/KEV_BGCNITA1.075.php

On the "things that don't walk" topic: 1. Clevenger's average has been lousy and he's K'd more than last year. But the good news is that he's walked a lot more, 8 walks in 49 AB. Last year he had a very low walk rate; not so thus far. 2. I was concerned that Clevenger wouldn't catch, and that with Reed on the roster Clevenger would mostly 1B/DH. But good job Jody, that appears not fully true. Clevenger seems to be getting pretty good action at catcher. If he's to become a useful major-leaguer, it won't be as a 1B/DH power hitter. Given his little power, what he needs is to be a high-OBP guy offensively, and a satisfactory catcher defensively. He'll need to get back to getting hits, but adding some walks makes that seem somewhat possible, at least on the offensive side. His upside might theoretically be somebody in the Kendall-type mode.

I think this will be fantastic, great, and fun..... if Vitters is able to hit. If he runs a .115 OBP, and has more errors than total bases, it might not be fantastically fun. Either way, will be nice to have box scores so we can see how he's actually doing, without needing to depend on periodic AZ Phil reports.

A friend attended the Iowa game on Monday (and also saw them earlier.) He's seen a number of AA games last year as well. Monday was the game when Holliman was at his best. I thought I'd pass along his scouting comments. "JR-01 - Apr 14, 2008 8:07 pm (#326 of 344) I got to watch the Iowa game from the 4th inning on tonight. ... Holliman really was outstanding tonight, probably the best I've ever seen him. His curveball was really biting and from my amateur eye was as nasty as Gallardo's tonight. And it looked like his fastball had good movement on it, as the hitters were generally off balance and swinging through a few of them. I talked to one of the scouts holding the gun, and he had Holliman at 88-90 mph on the fastball. He was efficient, threw strikes, and had about as good of stuff as I've seen from him. Ascanio: 2-1-1-1-0-2, HR, BS Ascanio served up a first pitch, game tying homer to Russell Branyan to lead off the bottom of the 9th. I guess it probably wasn't too horrible of a pitch, since Branyan had to hit it to the opposite field power alley, but it was a true no doubter the moment he hit it. Still, I wonder why he'd serve up anything close to a guy who either hits a homer or strikes out, when there's no one else behind him who can do that type of damage. Otherwise Ascanio was showing off filthy stuff again tonight. His slider truly is one of those pitches that just falls off the table, and he was blowing his fastball past people. I didn't quite get the sense that his stuff was quite as electric during his second inning, but the Sounds still didn't hit anything good off of him in the 10th." I thought that was some helpful info. In college Holliman was touted as throwing well into the low 90's, last year not so much. Perhaps interesting that even at his best, his fastball was in the 88-90 range. Not very fast, and I assume there will be nights when he's not as on or when it's July and he's got 100 innings on his arm when he'll be slower. Still, how much difference is 88-90 versus 90-93? Better movement and location would clearly make the 88-90 fastball more useful. Still, I felt a bit mixed; if he'd surprised me and said his velocity was clicking 89-93, I'd have liked it better. But Holliman seems to know how to pitch. I wouldn't rule out the possibility that he might be able to be kind of Lieber-esque someday, or an alternative to bad Marquis. JR also watched Ascanio earlier, and was very impressed. So the note from AZ Phil that he might be having some arm trouble earlier this spring seems to not be a problem. And some former BA scouting reports that all he uses is his fastball also seems out-of-date, based on JR's comments about how sharp his slider is. Given Howry's problems, given that Wuertz has had a couple horrible outings straight, and given that hart has been decent but not great thus far, I think it's fair to assume that sooner or later one of the existing relievers will end up on the DL or be returned to the minors. If Ascanio's arm is humming, hopefully he'll be able to put himself into position where he can be a good option if/when the need arises. And hopefully Holliiman as well as Gallagher can position so that if/when a rotation need arises, it won't be the end of the world. Nice to have some anti-awful candidates.

The spring has been dominate by negativity regarding the farm. (If Vitters wasn't en-route to busthood, he'd be ready for Peoria. Colvin and Donaldson can't hit. Ceda and Veal are wilder than ever, Huseby is a bust, Hernandez is on drugs. None of the farm teams have any hitting whatsoever, etc..) I understand all the negatives, but as an optimist by nature I thought I'd comment on a couple of positives. The staffs have all gone through two rotations now, so I thought it would be fun to notice some of the ERA's. Early ERA's for some top-15 prospects.: Gallagher: 1.00 Samardz: 0.75 Rhee: 0.90 A bunch of other guys who have often not been highly touted or highly paid or highly drafted also have some nice ERA's through two starts: Berg: 2.61 Maestri: 1.93 Acosta: 1.86 Atkins: 1.80 Siegfried: 1.80 Ashwood: 1.08 Harben: 0.90 Russell: 0.82 To my knowledge none has an extraordinary arm or a 98-mph fastball. None has the "could become an ace" potential that I associate with Farnsworth, Wood, Cruz, Zambrano, Hagerty, Brownlie, Guzman, and Veal. But I think some of them have good enough arms so that if they learn to use their arms well, they couldn emerge into servicable, useful major leaguers. Certainly most of these guys will have flaws or limitations exposed as the season wears on. But I think it's also possible that one or more (add Caridad to the list, too) may prove no fluke, and will emerge as a guy to watch. For example, Ashwood is 6'4", 21, and lefty; would he be the first tall lefty who wasn't a great prospect at age 20 but became a usable major-leaguer later on? Here's hoping that as the season continues, that at least some of these guys will continue to throw well and will start to sustain their sample size of success. Hopefully several of them will emerge as significant prospects. [Again, just to forestall the justifiable negativism about them: camp is short, so hitters are still finding their groove; weather has been often cold, so bad pitches that will result in HR's later are making easy flyouts now; two starts is no sample size; with low K's you can get lucky for two starts, but if the K's are low you must not be missing bats so your stuff must stink and stinky stuff will prove to be inadequate later if not sooner. So certainly none of these early ERA's proves much of anything.] But still it's kinda fun.

Thanks, cal. Yeah, the fact that they haven't replaced him on the roster with a different catcher probably indicates that it's nothing longterm. Good news.

I'm interested in all starters (except Keisler), today no exception. Will take some time, but figuring out whether we have anything in harben, Ashwood, Atkins, or Veal is interesting. Hope we get some good games from some of them. Question for cal or others: Wellington Castillo came into the season as one of our top prospects, and after having a stellar camp and getting 5 hits in the first two games, while many of the top-ten prospects have had depressing camps/early season results, Castillo had moved into my top-10. But after two games he's disappeared, and we're stuck with Mark Reed catching for Daytona. Do we know what happened to Castillo, how serious it was, and if/when he'll be back this season? Thanks in advance if anybody knows anything. Nice to see Maestri getting through 5 shutout innings, and starting to put the "can't-pitch-rotation, only relief" viewpoint to sleep.

MiLB box score says 3BB in 5 IP. :? It was 5 yesterday! I swear I'm not going crazy. Cal, I noticed that too. At first they listed the bad 6th inning outing by the bust we got for Pagan onto Maestri's line. His line looked a lot better after they removed that. Maestri has yet to get cruising comparable to what he was doing last year. His K/BB and WHIP were great last year, and that hasn't been the case in his two starts yet. at the same time, he hasn't confirmed the "ill-suited-for-rotation" view, either. Hopefully he'll continue to put up zero's in rotation, and will increasingly match that with the K/BB/WHIP magic that he had last year. I'm pretty interested about him. Really, other than some of our more gifted prospects (Veal, Ceda, Cabrera), the rotation pitching has been very effective thus far. Will be interesting to see how dudes like Berg, Russell, Maestri, Siegfried, Harben etc. hold up as their arms get more ware, as the weather warms up, and as the opposing hitters start to find their strokes. I'm not that concerned about the Peoria situation. One of the principles is that good prospects are supposed to be able to outperform bad prospects. That guys like Rundle and the guy we got for Barrett can't really hit with Lalli or Rosa, that just means that they have no future. If they did, in due time they'd be able to beat out those guys. May also reflect on Ryne, like many managers he probably likes to win. If these alleged prospects really aren't any good, it's natural to want to play guys who have a chance to get a hit now and then.

Samardz K'd a guy in the first inning. Then he mowed them down into the 6th. He then K'd the last out in the 6th and K'd the side in the 7th. So his last four outs were K's. 5th and 6th also had 3 flyouts, two line singles, and a walk. 4 popouts during the first four innings. I think the GO/AO ratios can sometimes be a bit misleading for Samardz, becauase when he's going good he gets a lot of popouts. He must have really been throwing strikes and getting some fast outs during his GB/pop-out innings. In only his second start his pitch count must be pretty low; to have gotten seen innings in under the early pitch counts is pretty extraordinary. Perhaps his pitch count isn't quite as restrictive, since he was in camp with the major leaguers and started earlier than the true minor-leaguers, maybe. But I thought that the pitch counts are usually on the order of 75 pitches or so at this point. Nice start for Sammy.

http://www.suntimes.com/sports/blogentries/index.html?bbPostId=B5tV7ajsXBBqCzEqCdEVo1xgQCzBIjI11n6B2WCz9hnEArgZOsH&bbParentWidgetId=B7hKffsuorcGDKIZK9SoYtK Az Phil on the signing of Hams and on one of the final intrasquad games before XST Cactus League starts. Was singularly unimpressed with most of the 9 Latin pitchers he saw, the exceptions being "Yohan Gonzalez (big dude with a power arm) and Antigua (more of a "crafty" lefty with a plus-sinker and breaking ball and excellent control)". Interesting to get a scouting report on Antigua. I'm a bit disappointed that he sounds more like a finesse Lilly-type than a good stuff guy, but a sinker, breaking ball, balanace, and control can take you a long way if the fastball is at least semi-average. "Cubs 2007 #1 draft pick 3B Josh Vitters continues to look sluggish in all aspects of his game, although he had a decent final BP round (about ten swings) during pre-game BP. Then he proceded to bounce out weakly 6-3 and 4-3 and fly out to CF, before finally roping a line-drive RBI single. Then he grounded out weakly 6-3 again in his final AB. He also had a throwing error (he is wearing a pressure-sleeve on his right elbow). He appears to be pressing. " Sigh.

The notion that Rhee is the first guy to pitch at age 19 since maddux is wrong, obviously. I may not remember well, but Hernandez didn't make the team last spring. He went to XST, IIRC, and only got called up after one of the Dolis/Muldowney/Albuquerque/Ceda original starters got hurt. So while Hernandez was significantly younger age-wise, perhaps one could finesse that it's one thing to get called up by necessity and another to clearly earn a spot right off the bat. According to list birthdays, Z made the low-A rotation right out of camp at age 17, and didn't turn 18 until June of his Midwest year.

Nice to see an effective start by Cabrera. Peoria has gotten some strong rotation pitching. Although a lot of the good outings have been relatively low-K, Peoria and elsewhere (Cabrera, Siegfried, Russell, Samardz).

Nice find, cal. Hope Hams turns into somebody. Sounds like an interesting development prospect.

He did have TJS in '06, but he showed good velo in '07. Probably sits 89-90 can touch 93, doesn't have much of a slider or change at the time of the draft. I wouldn't consider him someone who slipped to the 20s based on that. Thanks, ping. If he could touch 93 last year, and had TJ in 06, then I'd imagine he might have the arm to be a prospect. If he ends up getting guys out, then I can figure that he has enough arm to keep an eye on, and that he must be coming up with some kind of breaking pitch. I did read that he was a walkon at LaSalle, and actually went there for football, or a football scholarship, or something. If indeed he was a football guy and not that big a baseball guy, and then had TJ as a sophomore, I'd guess he probably hasn't had scouts watching him for years. Would seem to have a chance to be a good scouting find and a diamond in the rough, perhaps? Nice start for Rhee thus far.

Sorry to interfere with today's stuff by talking about yesterday's, but often once the night is done nobody reads or discusses it anymore. 1. That was a very nice start by Caridad. The AZ Phil stuff and most of our rotation speculation had never really talked about him. He's 22, they said he has a good arm, said he has good life, some sink, and has three pitches. The Cubs paid some solid money to get him. I was actually surprised he started in high-A. Anyway, here's hoping he emerges as a genuine meaningful prospect. 2. Castillo started off with 3 hits, nice start. I know, it's just one game, and they were all singles. But when they discuss him, it's always with defense discussed. Would be cool is his offense progressed in the right direction. You could have a serious prospect in that case. 3. What if anything do we know about Muschko? I know he's RHP, he's already well along into age 22, and he pitched for LaSalle, and was drafted like round 22. Do we know anything to suggest that he's got more upside than your ordinary 22nd-round college pick? (Which normally isn't much). (For example, was he converted from catcher or infield, so hadn't actually pitched that much? Or had he had arm trouble as a sophomore, so people weren't sure where his arm was at, or anything?) Unlike most of the college pitchers, I notice that he pitched last year in rookie league, not Boise. That's often the case for guys who are viewed as raw, or who need more instruction, or who had been hurt and have more need for the Mesa facilities and medical stuff.

This will seem like a Cub apologist. But be that as it may, I think there is some reason to be optimistic and/or to justify some of the assignments. 1. Peoria's opening rotation is extremely young for their level. Rhee, Cabrera, Acosta, and Hernandez, that's four teenagers, probably at least three and perhaps four of which will be in the rotation. I'd be extremely surprised if any other Midwest-league team has three teenage starters in their opening rotation. I think all four of those guys have the potential to be good major-leaguers. 2. There are other elements to the game besides hitting, especially for catchers. Clevenger hit well last year, but he's caught 15 games in his pro career. Doing Daytona to develop his defense, that seems completely justifiable to me. (Although I do have a fear that by keeping the busted Mark Reed there, that Jody Davis will play the experience Mark Reed and instead put Clevenger and his bat in at 1B and DH a lot, so that he'll again be lacking in games behind the plate. Obviously Castillo will play a lot. So I expect Castillo to play every-other-day, with Reed/Clevenger splitting up the other half of the games. I really wish they'd just released Reed and made it a straight Castillo/Clevenger tandem.) 3. There are other elements to the game besides hitting, especially for catchers. This also applies to Donaldson. Based on bat, obviously they'd have skipped him to Daytona, as they did with Thomas, Wyatt, Wright, and Barney (as well as pitchers Russell and Lambert.) But with only two years of catching experience (and I think even his first year didn't he do some 3B/C split duties?), all accounts suggest that while Donaldson has the tools to be very good defensively, that he's still raw and needs some polish. So I'm not sure that isn't an appropriate and justifiable assignment.