texascub

None of the pitchers for Las Vegas particularly impress me. Miller is young but it seems like his control has been off, and I don't think he's nearly as valuable out of the bullpen. None of their starters have particularly good K/BB ratio's and all of them have WHIP about 1.5. As far as a bat goes I'd be extremely surprised if LaRoche is anywhere near these talks. One of their young OF would be nice, though both Young and Guzman appear to have strike zone judgement problems.

Well I didn't get to watch as much of the game as I had hoped to. It was a National Guard sponsored game and since I'm in the guard I had to walk around for most of the first half of the game (missed most of the scoring) handing out promo stuff and trying to talk other people at the game into joining (atleast I got free suite seats out of the deal, right?). Yung Chi Chen and Travis Buck are on the DL so I didn't get to see them. For Midland, Kurt Suzuki called a nice game behind the plate and did a good job of blocking pitches and keeping the ball in front of him. At the plate he had a good eye and was patient, but he was getting on top of the ball alot and I believe all of his outs were soft grounders. At second Melillo had good range up the middle and a strong, accurate arm. He made a good stop up the middle on the first play of the game; he ranged back behind second to get the ball, then he had to jump, turn, and throw to get the out. At the plate he looked to have pretty good pitch recognition and was making solid contact, he could turn out to be a solid contact/line-drive hitting utility man at the big-league level. Feierabend got the start for San Antonio and wasn't too impressive. I never saw a radar gun but I'd guess he was only topping out around 90-91. I was sitting off to the side so it was a bit hard to judge to movement on his pitches but when I started walking around he looked to have decent movement, though he struggled with his command all night long. Wladimir Balentin was not very impressive last night. He did make solid contact a few times, both his pitch recognition and strike zone judgement were poor. He also misplayed atleast 2 balls in RF, the last of which allowed the winning run to advance to third and then the relay throw went into the dugout to allow him score. This was my first minor league game, but the thing I was most impressed with was that every single fan at the game was really into it. The best part of the game was probably the awesome fireworks show afterwards and I think every single person that had watched the game stayed for he show. The ballpark didn't seem very big or very packed, but the announced attendance was over 6,000 people which seems pretty big for a minor league game too.

I don't know how this is possible, but the worse my team gets the worse my standing gets. My team's ESPN is up to 296, but my rank is down to 308.

I'll be going to the Midland-San Antonio game this evening so I'll miss both Petrick and Sean as well, hopefully the hotel will have free wireless so I can get on after the game to see how they did.

If you define Maddux's prime as 1992-1998, his K/9 was 6.91 and his K/BB was 4.78. Definitely not what Truffle is talking about, he had a great K-rate during his prime. To the point of the thread, Wang will succeed as a 3-4 starter, but a groundball pitcher who doesn't get too many Ks will definitely be more at the mercy of his defense and balls finding holes. Maddux didn't have a great K rate, but it was certainly good enough, given his great control. I think Wang's career K rate is just so low (3.13 per 9 IP) that he cannot continue to have this same success in the future unless he figures out how to miss more bats. There are always a few examples of pitchers with low K rates that have some success, but the odds are a guy like Wang will struggle. He's already 26, so his K rate is unlikely to jump significantly, and his strikeout numbers in the minors were mediocre. Here are Wang's comps from baseball-reference.com by similarity score. Younger or more sensitive viewers should avert their eyes. 1. Oyster Burns (992) 2. Andy Replogle (990) 3. Ben Harris (989) 4. John McCarty (988) 5. Billy Gumbert (988) 6. Edgar McNabb (987) 7. Tom Carroll (986) 8. Tex Covington (984) 9. Bob Gilks (984) 10. Emil Frisk (984) Just glancing through it looks like those players' careers averaged about 2 years, and Wang is already in year 2 and still doing pretty good. Also since almost all of those players played in the 1800's or early 1900's I think the comparisons are quite off.

The money would make things pretty tight. Abreu and Lieber would tie up $22.5 million of next year's budget, and by my count we've got about $30 million coming off of the books at the end of this year, and we've got both Z and Prior going to arbitration and both will likely get pretty good contracts.

Happy St. Petrick Day! Here's hoping that he has a great start in Daytona, and to Sean regaining his control in West Tenn!

Wasn't it Baylor who did that? And wasn't that the game that Lieber completed in something like 80 pitches?

Second tier if the Yankees take all of what those players are owed. Abreu is still owed $15 million for next year and there's a club option for $16 million on 07 or a buyout for $2 million. That alone is pretty steep, and they're wanting us to take a pitcher along with him. Lieber is still owed $7.5 million for next year. Lidle would be slightly more interesting since he's a FA after this season and he's got a smaller contract for the rest of this year, but that much money better make them come almost for free. That'd really handicap our try to bring in another quality pitcher.

I made that comparison back when he was drafted in one of the Draft forum threads. An average power, average speed, okay average type of CF who can hold his own...I'd take it. .290/.340/.450 with 15-20 HR and 15-20 SB...not a bad player. If this stretch is any indication, he could definitely be one of those "late bloomers" who ends up doing much better than initially projected. I think that would be pretty good, but don't forget he's still playing at 190lbs. Kotsay is at 205, if Colvin adds the extra 15lbs to get up to that I think he'll add some power and quickness.

Rundle and Andersen still struggling; Rundle went 0-4 with 2K's and a BB, Andersen was 0-4 with 4Ks. Hopefully they'll come around soon, so far it's been ugly for both of them.

That joke was never funny. I know, Dusty wasn't laughing when he said it either....but he was being serious (in his mind atleast). I realize Dusty made a comment, but somebody continues to throw it out as though it's supposed to be funny. The comment isn't funny, but it's so stupid that it almost makes is funny.

That joke was never funny. I know, Dusty wasn't laughing when he said it either....but he was being serious (in his mind atleast).

Fixed. Huh? Shouldn't you have changed kept -to- sent? Is that what you are trying to say? No it seems like we keep all of our decent pitching prospects in the NL East. I like to think of the NL East as our pitching farm; they hold on to the good ones for us, and when they're past their prime the get put out to pasture and sent back to Chicago.

Kenny Rogers has had some low K numbers and bad K/BB rates and still had success.

Fixed.

He's probably going to Houston for a bag of balls and a can of Skoal.

In terms of OF defense, it sounds (I've mostly listened to his games, not watched many) like he takes good routes along with those fancy catches. Thus far, he seems to have made the transition to CF after limited time there at Clemson. He should be able to hang in CF in the big leagues. How's his arm? Before the draft I believe it was described as a fringe LF arm at best but he seems to be throwing out quite a few runners. Is it just young players getting greedy or has his arm been better than advertised?

Who doesn't like biscuits? Seriously, why are they called the biscuits? I can't imagine it being a random name for the team. It actually is I do believe. They opened open the name of the team to fans; they wrote in the name they wanted and one was drawn to be the name of the team and it turned out to be the Biscuits. I remember seeing the story on it somewhere awhile back.

Chalk up another one for Tyco. That's 3 on the evening to raise his average to .331. Ah, heck, send him to Peoria. I'm not sure how much more he has to prove at this level. He's hit safely in 16 of his last 17 games and has an 11-game hitting streak. His defense has also been pretty good too from what I hear. He's had something like 3 or 4 OF assists I believe, and he's also made a number of spectacular catches lately. And the fact that he seems to be doing well in CF is also very good.

You ain't kiddin'. His inability to select the right pitches to swing at is really holding him back. Unless he improves there, all the 4 HR games in the world at the High A level won't make him a major league quality hitter. I suspect he knows this, though... Jeff Francouer still doesn't.

Why would we need a 3B? He can play anywhere in the IF, and I don't think he'd be a great fit at 3B; his bat would be nice at SS or 2B though.

On BBTN they were saying the Mets likely have little interest (and most of it is being driven by Glavine). The Padres have cooled on him because their pitching has been good lately, and the Dodgers might be turning off as well due to their recent troubles.

For Willie Aybar and Dannys Baez. EDIT: Source is BBTN, mentioned at the very end.

Wasn't Gourriel primarily their secondbaseman during the WBC and the one that said he'd never defect because both of his parents worked in the government?