Mephistopheles

Yeah I am going to ask Goldstein about that for Veal, and especially for Sean Doolittle in his next chat.

Kevin Goldstein said that Veal may move into the Cubs top spot for prospects. It looks like he thinks Pie, Pawly and Veal are the top 3 in no order. http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=5232 He also said Gallagher has been 92-94 this spring and then just had some tidbits on others.

Some notes from this article: Risers: Michael Main - clocked upper 90s at PGN. Also showed a good curve and change -- all of which have the potential to be plus pitches. He's staying on the mound. Michael Burgess - compact big league power stroke, and apparently he is now the best HS position prospect, narrowing out Justin Jackson and John Tolisano, after an impressive performance at PGN. Justin Jackson - showed all five tools and played outstanding at shortstop at PGN. Neil Ramirez - Sat 90-94 at PGN. Showed good polish and pitchability. Possible first rounder now. Tanner Robles - Sat 89-93 topping out at 94 at PGN. Great hammer curve as a southpaw, high upside. Scouts fell in love with him. Paul Demny - Unknown HS prospect before hitting 94 at PGN. Lacks quality secondary pitches at this point, but has raw arm strength. Madison Bumgarner - Touched 95 from the left side at PGN. Big frame (6'5" 220) gives him excellent projectability as a potential dominant ace from the left side. Lots of life on his electric fastball. Hunter Morris - Like Demny burst onto the scene at PGN. Impressive power potential. Big fram 6'5" and good arm. Very raw, but has become one of the elite HS offensive prospects in the draft. Rick Porcello - Compared to Verlander due to his size. Sat 92-96 with his FB at PGN. No average breaking pitch at this time, but his projectability may be the highest in the class. Josh Horton, UNC - Looking very advanced as a college SS and should be an excellent line drive hitter. Taylor Harbin, Clemson - Polished, and showed he could hit the best pitching in the NCAA Tournament. Fallers: Kentrail Davis - Before PGN was seen as one of the best HS position players, but now the upside of a 4th OF has been given. Erik Goeddel - Wasn't really bad at PGN, sitting 89-93 and quite projectable, but others simply passed him. Still inconsistent with his command of his secondary pitches. Todd Frazier, Rutgers - Struggling on the Cape thus far. It's only a few games, but for a guy playing at Rutgers who shows problems in a league with premeir pitching and wooden bats is not a good thing. Brad Chalk, Clemson - Statistically speaking he has hit well in the post season, but many of his hits have been balls slapped to the opposite field which many would not be hits with a wooden bat. He still has not shown that he can turn on a good inside fastball. Wow, I also got linked to this from the PGN message board. It's the SPARQ scores from PGN. Essentially measuring athleticism. Pretty neat stuff.

Dont't forget Matt Garza. 5-1 1.42 ERA in High A 4-1 1.26 ERA in Double-A 100:20 combined K:BB in 80 innings.

Does anyone know when Veal's first start in Daytona is supposed to be?

I didn't make it. I picked it up from "38Special" using it to follow Yankee prospects at NYYFans.com. I modified it considerably. I added home/away splits, level splits, month splits that are automatically calculated, nonconference and conference splits for NCAA players I followed, xDIPS, BABIP, GB%, IF/F and LOB%. The format wasn't mine, so I can't take credit although a lot of the formulas were inaccurate. I fixed those. I want to add opponents EqA and normalized stats, but that's a lot of work. I'll do it eventually. Probably when I am at school and have a lot more free time on my hands.

That top 100 list was constructed before this, but at PG National Michael Main topped out at 98 or 99 MPH depending on which scouts' gun you trust. All of the games will be put up on baseballwebtv.com soon. There were something like 15 pitchers who touched 94 and 50+ who touched 90. Justin Jackson also had a great showing there. Information on what happened there is hard to find, but I do what I can.

Scout.com released their initial Top 100 prospects for the 2007 draft. I won't list them all, but here are the top 25 1. David Price, LHP 2. Michael Main, RHP/OF 3. Joe Savery, LHP/OF 4. Sean Doolittle, LHP/OF 5. Robert Stock, C/RHP 6. JP Arencibia, C 7. Erik Goeddel, RHP 8. Andrew Brackman, RHP 9. Matt Weiters, C 10. John Tolisano, SS 11. Wes Roemer, RHP 12. Jason Heyward 13. Nick Schmidt, LHP 14. Beau Mills, 3B 15. Michael Burgess, OF 16. Danny Rams, C 17. Freddie Freeman, OF 18. Brad Meyers, RHP 19. Josh Smoker, LHP 20. Cole St. Clair, LHP 21. Justin Jackson, SS 22. Jake Arrieta, RHP 23. Todd Frazier, OF/SS 24. Hunter Ovens, OF 25. Damon Sublett, 2B Italicized players are high school products. Wes Roemer's gotta be way too high on that list. He looks like the classic college finesse pitcher. His fastball rarely if ever hits 90 MPH. Nick Schmidt's power stuff from the left side in college has got to be better. Other notables: 37. James Adkins, LHP - His potential should keep him higher. 41. Josh Fields, RHP - 96+ closer 45. Ken Kasparek - Former Cub draftee 53. Adrian Ortiz - Former Cub draftee 90. Wade Korpi - ND

so Samardzija is worth 3/4 of Mark Prior coming out of college? Interesting.

No. I am not talking about GO/FO. I am talking about all balls hit off the bat. Each batted ball is classified as one of three things, a flyball, groundball or linedrive. HRs allowed are essentially a function of park and outfield flyballs. The pitcher really does not have any control on how far outfield flyballs go. This is especially true in the low minors where a majority of the hitters are weaker than in the upper levels, thus FB pitchers generally have deflated home run rates outside of the Cali League. A pitcher does have some control over infield popups, but that's not how something like xFIP calculates HRs. They only use outfield flies. I've tracked each start made by Donald Veal thus far in the season and came up with this chart: http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f189/kctigers23/DonaldVeal001.jpg As you can see Veal has given up a lot of outfield flyballs, but only 6.3% of them have gone for home runs. League average in the pros is about 11.5% and at Wrigley it's a bit higher. This is certainly an issue considering he will pitch half his games here. He can be great despite the HRs because of his K rate, but he will need to do a lot of work on that walk rate in order for that to happen.

Yeah but the parks really do not have much to do with G/F rates.

Generally I like to look at xFIP or some sort of modified form of DIPs that accounts for G/F and a league average BABIP. After that it's K:BB, stuff (not stuff score) and K/9. Stuff is a lot more important in the lower minors. This affects a guy like Sean Gallagher, and more infamously Ian Kennedy. Raw hitters have problems with average to above-average curveballs. A lot of pitchers with fringe-average fastballs and good curveballs have inflated K rates in the low minors, thus deflated ERA and RAs. I think stuff can be a very good indicator as to how much a pitcher's ratios will degrade as he progresses through the minors. Sadly a guy like Sean Gallagher or Mitch Atkins rates lowly on something like this whereas a guy like Veal ranks highly on it. You also sometimes see inflated G/F in the low minors, but that's a different story entirely. Anyways to go off on a tangent to Veal. Im quite worried with him. His control sucks, that's no secret. The underlying theme in his stat line is that he is an EXTREME flyball pitcher. This is quite rare in the low minors where HR rates are low due to weaker hitters and a more GB and speed oriented game. The formula is quite simple: Flyball Pitcher = HR Pitcher HR + BB = Runs, lots of them

Using W's to analyze SPs in the majors is pretty worthless. Using it to grade pitchers in the minors is even worse. The jump from A+ to AA is considerable.

Neither are 23 and under.

I still don't see Gallagher being better than a #3 or so starter. Sure he's improved, but he still does not have projection.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=5139

I believe there is a DH there. Weiters will also see time as their closer, of course. By the way, where in Texas do you live? Im up in the Woodlands. I got to catch all the Rice games this weekend and last.

I was looking through some of the Cape Cod rosters and noticed that JP Arencibie and Matt Weiters are on the same team. That's one hell of a catching tandem.

I'm sure they could have gotten a better player who would have signed for the same money Colvin would want.

Terrible...absolutely terrible.

A KC TV station is reporting that it's pretty much a done deal for Lincoln to the Royals.

because the cubs have a lot of cash, and the cubs dont have another draftee to shell out until the fifth round (that's about 3-4M total give or take supplemental picks) so theyd be the only team whod think about giving him the 10+M

No one said anything about basing our choice on what another GM likes. It's no secret Riccardi values plate discipline and it's no secret Riccardi doesn't choose HS players. Logically, if he does like a HS player, that player must be very good at what Riccardi likes.

Yeah but that comparison was relative to Travis Snider. When JP Riccardi is linked to a HS hitter in the first round, you know damn sure he has plus patience.

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f189/kctigers23/e5828b0a.jpg Almost every stat you wanted to know about Carlos Marmol this season. The R/L splits can be found at Brewcrewball. Anyways, I sure as heck didn't think Marmol would get the call. He's still very raw. I guess when you suck anyone with an arm sounds good. I guess calling up Marmol instead of Guzman may mean that they see Marmol's future as someone in the pen, not a SP. Of course that's what I see, but just speculating. Brownlie will probably stay in the West Tenn rotation, although Gallagher certainly deserves the callup.