Wow, it seems like we were just in the high teens, and now we’re all the way up to #6…
[rimshot]
Present Talent – 70.00 (25th)
Future Talent – 85.00 (t-5th)
Financial Resources – 78.08 (14th)
Baseball Operations – 78.33 (t-15th)
Overall Rating – 76.76 (17th)
Although the top of the Yankees rotation should be strong behind CC Sabathia and Phil Hughes, their depth is a bit, well, shaky. And that may be a kind statement – behind those two, the Yankees will trot out A.J. Burnett, Ivan Nova, and the victor of the desperate battle between Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia. Kevin Millwood won’t be able to start the season with the Yankees, as he will have to work out the kinks in extended spring training, but it’s easy to see why the Yankees were willing to drop some pocket change for his services and add him on an incentive-laden minor league contract.
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Yes, it’s a cliché, but statements often become clichés because they are grounded in truth. In the case of Oakland’s chain, the good things going in the organization only serve to cancel out the big glaring flaw – they just don’t have the kind of capital necessary to keep up with the big boys.
Present Talent: 77.50 (16th)
Future Talent: 75.00 (t-20th)
Financial Resources: 69.17 (28th)
Baseball Operations: 85.00 (6th)
Overall Rating: 76.50 (18th)
The rag to riches story of Brandon Beachy continues with the announcement he has won a job as a member of the Atlanta Braves’ rotation to start the 2011 season. Since joining the organization as an undrafted free agent in 2008, Beachy has been on an accelerated path through the system. After starting the ’08 season in rookie ball, he ended 2010 with the big league team. Now he finds himself a week away from his first opening day roster spot.
Beachy, 24, has worked his way quickly through the organization on the strength of fantastic peripherals at the minor league level. Without overpowering natural ability, the right-hander has been a control freak thus far. He allowed just 49 walks in more than 200 innings as a minor leaguer and owns a career K/BB of nearly five.
Introduction
#25-#21
#20-#16
#15-#11
#10-#6
#5 – Conor Gillaspie, 3B, San Francisco
Nominally, Gillaspie joins Team Joy Squad because, despite being considered only a marginal prospect, he was the only batter in the Arizona Fall League to match his strikeout total with his home run total (recording five of each). What that means, specifically, is that he was first overall on the SCOUT leaderboard — that is, the method this author devised for attempting to say something about a player’s performance in the absence of large samples. So, effectively, Gillaspie’s success would be my success; his failure, my conspicuous failure. Gillaspie was 19th on John Sickels’ top-20 Giant prospect list in 2010; he (i.e. Gillaspie) doesn’t appear to’ve made the 2011 version. Still, he’s only struck out in 14.2% of his minor league at-bats and has walked in 8.9% of plate appearances. Really, the thing that he hasn’t shown is power. But, at only 23, it’s entirely possible that his power could arrive — and that his AFL performance is an indication of that.
In the midst of reformatting and updating my retrosheet database, I got re-interested in the game duration field that Retrosheet tracks. I started digging into comparisons, plotting game duration on one axis and various other variables on the other in order to see if anything struck my fancy. Such posts will come at a later date, but while doing that, another thought struck me: How long of a game does the average person find ideal?
An umpire is not supposed to have any influence on any game, but many times they do, especially the home plate umpire calling balls and strikes. Even though the strike zone is supposed to uniform across the league, each umpire has their own unique strike zone. I have gone back over the past 3 years and projected how pitcher or hitter friendly each umpire will be for the up coming season.
At USSMariner, Dave Cameron posted a rundown of his projected Mariners opening day roster. He thinks that the Mariners should (and it appears the team will) start the season with Michael Saunders back down in AAA. Saunders, Cameron notes, has a problem with his swing that make it tough for him to hit the ball to left field, which makes it hard for him to deal with outside pitches. The Mariners are trying to rework Saunders’ swing to address the problem, and that would be best done down in AAA where he can get regular at-bats. I wanted to see if the pitchf/x data backed up Dave’s evaluation of Saunders’ problem.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Cubs wield great financial strength, which gives them an advantage over the bulk of their competition. But as their ranking indicates, they haven’t necessarily put those resources to best use.
Present Talent – 74.17 (t-22nd)
Future Talent – 75.00 (t-20th)
Financial Resources: 83.46 (t-5th)
Baseball Operations: 71.67 (29th)
Overall Rating: 76.46 (19th)
