Bryan Smith will be around to talk about the playoffs tonight, starting at 5 pm.

Tonight’s 6-5 loss by the Texas Rangers was a referendum on old school bullpen management. After 104 pitches, Ron Washington decided to pull C.J. Wilson two batters into the eighth, with the Texas win expectancy standing at a robust 86.5%. He brought in left-handed veteran Darren Oliver to face the Yankees switch-hitting combination of Nick Swisher and Mark Teixeira. Oliver, who had a 2.19 BB/9 this season (compared to the 4.1 mark by Wilson), walked both the patient hitters.

Out came Oliver, and in came sidearmer Darren O’Day, with the one batter responsibility of retiring Alex Rodriguez. He did not. Rodriguez jumped on the first pitch, and hit a screamer to third base. There are fielders in the league that make the play, but Michael Young is not one of them. Out came O’Day, and in perhaps the most shocking decision of the day, in came Clay Rapada to face Robinson Cano. Yes, the same Rapada with the 5.63 career FIP, with less than 40 big league innings to his name, to face the guy that put the Yankees on the board with a seventh inning home run.

Shockingly, after one more pitch, the Yankees had tied the game. And Rapada was then taken out, to be replaced by a different left-handed pitcher (Derek Holland), to face a hitter (Marcus Thames) who much prefers southpaws. While Holland was okay in his two innings of work overall, a hit to Thames gave the Yankees a lead they would not surrender.

Hindsight is 50-50, but then again, Twitter will give you a live account that a lot of people thought Ron Washington was mis-managing today with each move he made. The only move was to leave Wilson in the game to face Swisher and Teixeira, and had he allowed them to reach base, to bring in Neftali Feliz to face Alex Rodriguez. Baseball teams need to put their best pitchers on the mound in the biggest situations. This isn’t theory that should be debatable.

In the course of the five at-bats that happened immediately after C.J. Wilson was pulled – a stretch that included four different Rangers pitchers – the Rangers win expectancy dropped almost 70%. While it’s easy to blame Darren Oliver, or Darren O’Day, or Clay Rapada for the game’s outcome, the Texas Rangers lost a game they needed to win because Ron Washington (and the majority of baseball managers) continues to fail to recognize ideal game theory.

I feel it superfluous to use this review to continue to praise Cliff Lee. At this point, playoff dominance is almost expected, and the American League FIP leader showed why he earned that distinction tonight: impeccable command, and three pitches good enough to keep hitters guessing wrong. He’s excellent, and it certainly appears at this juncture that the Yankees need to play the ALCS as if it were a six-game series.

The far more interesting discussion point from Game 5 were two plays of a scary resemblance:

J Hamilton grounded out to first, E Andrus scored.
I Kinsler grounded into fielder’s choice at first, V Guerrero scored, N Cruz out at second.

On both plays, David Price covered first base, and because he’s left-handed, had his back turned to the play. On the first play, Andrus’ quick decision-making and quicker feet made the play very difficult for Price. The second play should have been an out — both at first base with Kinsler a quarter-step behind Price to the bag — and at home if Price hadn’t complained. Credit due to Vladimir Guerrero for a heads-up play, the guts to take it, and a fantastic slide. It seems cliche to say the Texas baserunning won that game — those two plays were worth just 9.7 cumulative WE — but it helped.

The insurance runs came courtesy of Ian Kinsler, whose home run was just enough to put him over Nelson Cruz as the best hitter in terms of OPS in the series. Both were fantastic, helping to make up for the mediocre (if that) series had by Michael Young, Josh Hamilton and Guerrero.

But let us not confuse the narrative: like the vast majority of Round 1 of these playoffs, today’s game was won on the mound. Throwing out the better pitcher clearly has a bigger influence on a game than home field advantage, as this becomes the first playoff series in history in which a home team did not win a single game. As such it seems fatalistic that the Rangers enjoy home field advantage in their forthcoming series with the Yankees, but with Cliff Lee likely to pitch just one of the first six games, they’ll need home field advantage to make a comeback in Round 2.

More to come on what will be an exciting ALCS in the days to follow, but for now, Texas fans should merely be focused on enjoying their first series victory in franchise history. Congrats to Cliff Lee for the buckets of money he’s making himself, and congrats to Rangers fans for sticking around long enough to know the feeling. This Cubs fan can appreciate that.

Starting Pitchers
Tampa Bay: Matt Garza (R)
204.2 IP, 6.60 K/9, 2.77 BB/9, .279 BABIP, 35.8 GB%, 10.0 HR/FB%, 4.51 xFIP.

Texas: Colby Lewis (R)
201.0 IP, 8.78 K/9, 2.91 BB/9, .292 BABIP, 37.9 GB%, 8.2 HR/FB%, 3.93 xFIP.

If Carson Cistulli Had His Druthers: A (Not-All-Inclusive) Retrospective
• April 28: “Colby Lewis would just get it over with, and admit to everyone that he’s the Son of Man … Colby Lewis would soar like an eagle — into my heart.”
• April 30: “Colby Lewis would steal fire from the gods and give it to humans … Colby Lewis would fashion all humankind from clay … Colby Lewis would continue to pitch out of his mind, thus validating my continued presence on this, the internet’s clearinghouse for baseball nerdom.”
• May 21: “Colby Lewis would found a fast-food chain … The featured item on menu of said chain would be sliders … Get it? Sliders!”
• August 13: “Someone would design a plane or something modeled after Colby Lewis’s dynamism.“
• September 27: “I’d write a “season with”-type book featuring Colby Lewis and Andres Torres and maybe Manny Parra … It’d mostly be about all of us playing volleyball together.”

Other Quotes Emphasized in Mr. Lewis’ Restraining Order Claim
• April 12: “I’ve been seduced by the righty’s optimistic CHONE projection and have heralded him — on this site, to my mother, wherever — as a Person of Interest for this here season.”
• May 5: “Even though it’ll probably seem like it most of the time, Colby Lewis will not, in fact, be the only guy on the field this afternoon in Oakland. In fact, there are a couple-few players who — despite lacking Lewis’s direct connection to the godhead — have actually managed to distinguish themselves as worthy of the baseballing enthusiast’s attention.”
• On May 21:

What You, the Reader, Are Saying to Me
Hey, Carson: did you ever consider for even one second in your life that maybe Colby Lewis isn’t some kind of deity?
What I Am Saying Right Back to You
Yeah, I actually did think that for a second, and it was the darkest, loneliest second of my life, you jerk nut.

• May 28: “Watch For: Colby Lewis, Duh.”
• June 18: “Colby Lewis is in my heart and he’s in my soul. Also, he’s probably gonna be my breath should I grow old. So, back off.”
• July 16: “To my sabremetric brothers and sisters, I’d like to inform you that the Most Reverend Colby Lewis will be preaching the Gospel of Joy tonight from the Fenway Park mound. Here’s what you can expect: lifted spirits, charismatic gifts, and a slightly regrettable soul patch.”
• August 13: “Colby Lewis is dynamic. That’s it: he’s just frigging dynamic.”
• August 19: “Colby Lewis is a Colby Lewis among men.”
• August 24: “And also, I SCREAM FOR COLBY LEWIS.”
• September 9: “Ask not what your Colby Lewis can do for you; ask what you can do for your Colby Lewis.”

Why I Didn’t Give You a Link to All These Articles
If you put “Colby Lewis” and “Carson Cistulli” into Google, you get 704 results. In fact, if you do it right now, you’ll probably get 705 results.

The Time Cistulli Offered Real, White-Hot Analysis: April 30
In the hours before Lewis’ first complete game shutout, and the months before they would become teammates, the prophetic Cistulli wrote this:

Five Bizarre Connections Between Colby Lewis and Cliff Lee
Put away those Ouija boards, kids, and prepare to get your minds freaked. Behold these five bizarre connections between tonight’s starters.

1. Both pitchers have two first names.
2. Both have the initials C.P.L. (Colby Preston Lewis, Clifton Phifer Lee.)
3. Both pitchers have pitched in the East: Lee in the NL East, Lewis in the Far.
4. Owing to the fact that they’re both so nasty, neither Lewis nor Lee has ever, in fact, kissed his mother with that mouth.
5. Lewis’s secretary was named Kennedy; Lee’s, Lincoln. Don’t even look it up, it’s true. You’ve got the Cistulli Guarantee on that.

Tonight’s ALDS Game 3 Preemptive Review

1. Josh Hamilton will mash a tater.

2. The tater will be cooked by Matt Garza.

3. Colby Lewis will throw stinky cheese on top of his sliders.

4. Other Rays players will be there tonight, too.

5. And all of them will probably strike out.

/Cistulli’d.

Led by a typical Cliff Lee playoff pitching performance — 10 K’s, 12 retired in a row at one point — the Texas Rangers jumped off to a 1-0 series lead with James Shields and two home games still left to play. With just one run versus 10 strikeouts in seven innings, Lee helped avenge his 0-3 record against the Rays this year, including an August 16 loss in a match-up against David Price. The Rangers offense also had much more success than that night, as home runs by Ben Molina and Nelson Cruz, and a near-home run by Jeff Francoeur, fueled the Rangers offensive output.

In that August 16 start, the Rangers saw as David Price started the game with 18 fastballs in his first 19 pitches. The same formula was used today (with much less success), with Price using fastballs on all of his first 19 pitches. While they couldn’t use that advanced scouting to their advantage in the first inning, it paid off in the second, when Jeff Francoeur hit a bad first-pitch fastball off the centerfield wall to plate Ian Kinsler. Bengie Molina then muscled the third consecutive fastball he saw to right field, giving the Rangers a 2-0 lead. It was all they would need.

It didn’t feel that way early, as Cliff Lee came out firing almost exclusively fastballs, keeping his plus (or plus-plus) cutter, curve and change all in his back pocket. It almost back-fired in the first, as Lee loaded the bases with one out and Carlos Pena at the plate. After falling behind in the count 2-1, Lee threw an inside fastball up and in. Home plate umpire Tim Welke looked as if he was going to call the pitch a ball, but after Carlos Pena argued that the pitch hit him, Welke called a foul tip strike. Rather than plating the game’s first run or at least gaining a 3-1 count, Pena fell behind 2-2, and would strike out on the seventh pitch of the at-bat.

What followed was a Cliff Lee clinic, with 62 strikes in his last 83 pitches, and the use of all his pitches. Lee struck out Jason Bartlett to end the second inning on a vicious cutter, and caught Carlos Pena and Rocco Baldelli looking on a pair of nasty looping curveballs in the fourth inning. Lee didn’t have his usual plus-plus change today, but the curveball was good, and the command of his two-seam fastball was very good.

By the numbers, it would appear that Cliff Lee (76 strikes on 104 pitches) had equal control to David Price (77 strikes on 107 pitches) on the day. But, the Rangers had a lineup that came to Tampa ready to hack, bailing David Price out of any walks. This was also because Ron Washington granted the middle of his order a green light on 3-0 counts, a managerial decision that paid off in a big way. In the third inning, Nelson Cruz crushed a grooved 93 mph 3-0 pitch 430 first to centerfield, lowering the Rays win expectancy to just 23.8%. In the fifth inning, Vladimir Guerrero knocked home Josh Hamilton with a double to the center field warning track on another 3-0 fastball.

While Neftali Feliz gave reason for the Tampa crowd to get on their feet in the ninth inning, starting his inning with two walks, the combination of the Rangers fastball hitters and baseball’s best southpaw created too big a gap. Texas now stands in a great position to upset the Rays, with a favorable pitching match-up in Game 2, two games in Arlington, and another Lee appearance scheduled in a potential Game 5.

One of the more contrived areas of prospect analysis, in my opinion, is throwing a numbered starter grade on a pitching prospect. Scouts are the most consistent offenders of the trend: you’ll see a variation of “future no. 3 starter” in a lot of scouting reports. In a sense, it has become more philosophical — “a future ace” has non-contextual meaning, and so too does “middle of the rotation” or “back-end guy.”

I’ve advocated that we must think about prospects in terms of the WAR they will produce, and for pitchers, we must consider their potential strikeout, walk, home run and groundball rates (essentially, xFIP). Since the numbered starter grade has so much popularity behind it — I literally get “will X prospect be a #2 or #3” question every week in chats — it makes sense to put those designations in actual context, given the peripheral statistics we want to consider with prospects.

With that said, I will reinforce what Marc Hulet wrote earlier this year: essentially, the idea of a “#5 starter” doesn’t exist. Teams don’t use a #5 starter — they use a variety of replacement guys, generally — so if you’re projecting a prospect out as a #5 starter, you’re doing him a disservice. He’s either a reliever, a replacement-level player, or worse, a career minor leaguer. So, in this piece, we’ll be concerned with the 2010 statistical definitions of what #1-4 starters were. To get the appropriate number of players, I used 130 innings as a cut-off. This gave us 115 players, all of whom (except Brian Duensing) spent the vast majority of their season in the rotation.

Control (BB/9)

#1 Starter: 0.76 – 2.41 BB/9.
#2 Starter: 2.44 – 2.92 BB/9.
#3 Starter: 2.95 – 3.41 BB/9.
#4 Starter: 3.47 – 4.74 BB/9.

Cliff Lee was the king of command this year, with a walk rate almost 30% better than his next closest competitor, who just happened to be Roy Halladay. Guys like Shaun Marcum and Doug Fister took the next step this season by exhibiting ace-level command. It’s important to point out that BB/9 doesn’t always measure command, as a guy like Kevin Slowey can rank top five in the Majors in the category, but by missing on 21 pitches that ended up in the cheap seats, his xFIP was just 4.48. On the opposite side of the ledger was C.J. Wilson, who succeeds despite his proclivity for walks. He has success pitching consistently low in the zone, so he’s an example of a guy with command, but not control.

Swing-and-Miss Stuff (K/9)

#1 Starter: 10.95 – 7.86 K/9.
#2 Starter: 7.84 – 6.87 K/9.
#3 Starter: 6.86 – 5.44 K/9.
#4 Starter: 5.43 – 3.80 K/9.

What Cliff Lee was to the walk column, Brandon Morrow is to the strikeout column. While his control leaves something to be desired, Morrow’s raw stuff is off the charts. He was one of 13 starters this year that struck out one batter per inning. Since this happens so often in the minor leagues, I think we might forget just how rare it is for a pitcher to accomplish it at the highest level. Minor league strikeout kings like Wade Davis aren’t necessarily strikeout artists in the bigs. Without strikeouts, it’s a tough path to success: Carl Pavano had the most success with a terrible K/9, but his command had to reach career-best levels to achieve it.

Movement (GB%)

#1 Starter: 64.1 – 49.6 GB%.
#2 Starter: 49.4 – 44.9 GB%.
#3 Starter: 44.7 – 39.8 GB%.
#4 Starter: 39.5 – 28.3 GB%.

Movement isn’t quite described by GB%, but I think it does a fairly good job: good movement leads to weak hits, which keep the ball in the park. Tim Hudson was the only person this season to eclipse 60%, and he did it in a big way. The power of ground balls is maybe best exhibited with Ricky Romero, who was drowning in the minor leagues, looking like a bust, as a flyball pitcher in 2006 and 2007. Then, the former first rounder reinvented himself, and started focusing on ground balls. Success soon followed, and this season, he was one of 31 players to reach four wins above replacement. Staying east, Daisuke Matsuzaka’s inability to record groundball outs has been one of the largest factors in his failure to live up to the hype in Boston.

Overall Rate Value (xFIP)

#1 Starter: 2.92 – 3.80 xFIP.
#2 Starter: 3.81 – 4.18 xFIP.
#3 Starter: 4.19 – 4.51 xFIP.
#4 Starter: 4.56 – 5.62 xFIP.

Now, these numbers are a little misleading — you wouldn’t call negative WAR guys like Javier Vazquez or Scott Kazmir “Number Four Starters.” Not in terms of how they’ve performed this season. While the scale falls off at the end, I think it does a good job at the beginning: I struggle to argue with calling anyone that had a 3.80 xFIP or better this season an “ace”. I laughed when I saw Trevor Cahill and Bud Norris back to back in the xFIP column — it’s a perfect description that there isn’t one way to succeed as a pitcher in the big leagues. Some pitchers, like Josh Johnson of the Marlins, can succeed in all three of the columns above. But whether it’s standing out in one category (Pavano), or consistency across all three (Randy Wells), there are a lot of paths to the same destination.

These numbers aren’t hard-and-fast cut-offs for discerning whether we’re going to call John Lamb a future number one starter, or a future number two. They are useful numbers for us to store mentally to put the distinctions that others insist on using into context. And, they serve as a nice tribute to the aces of 2010: Roy Halladay, Francisco Liriano, Adam Wainwright, Josh Johnson, Tim Lincecum, Cliff Lee, Felix Hernandez, Jon Lester, Mat Latos, Yovani Gallardo, Cole Hamels, Roy Oswalt, Jered Weaver, Ricky Nolasco, Hiroki Kuroda, Brandon Morrow, Derek Lowe, Dan Haren, Wandy Rodriguez, Justin Verlander, James Shields, Ubaldo Jimenez, Jaime Garcia, Jhoulys Chacin, Ricky Romero, Zack Greinke, C.C. Sabathia, Clayton Kershaw.

Dee Gordon is the skinniest baseball player I have ever seen. The revelation was one of my most profound at this year’s Futures Game, which might tell you a few things: a) I am not a scout, and b) Dee Gordon is really skinny. I’ve searched for the best image evidence I can find — try here or here — but it’s really something that must be seen to be believed. Someone pointed out to me that Eric Davis was probably that skinny, but Eric Davis was also 6-foot-2. He had room to, and eventually did, put on some weight. Gordon is listed at 5-11, and at best, could probably push his generous listing to 160 pounds if he packs on 10 pounds of muscle over the next decade. And even then, he’ll probably actually weigh about 140.

The probably-shouldn’t-have-taken-me-this-long revelation has since really altered the way I thought about Gordon as a prospect. In the offseason, it seemed that Gordon was talked about in prospect circles in the same neighborhood as Starlin Castro. With the value of hindsight on my side, I needed to think about the comparison more thoroughly. It’s important to put Gordon’s size into context.

Since 1990, Baseball-Reference finds 131 player seasons in which a player listed at-or-below 160 pounds qualified for the batting title. It appears some of those listings — like 1999 Deivi Cruz — were generous, but we’ll run with it. After tallying these 131 seasons, I found that, cumulatively, this lightweight division hit .278/.346/.386, which would put their wOBA in the .320’s and their wRAA at a few runs below league average. Their BABIP was .305, and as a group, they stole 2602 bases in 3,620 chances, a success rate of 71.9%. Certainly not too far from the 72.6 mark that Gordon was at this season in the Southern League.

The numbers don’t actually seem terrible, but it’s important to look at upside here. Only 21 player seasons had a slugging percentage above .440, and in that group, 12 of them stole fewer than 15 bases in their season of work. Players like the aged versions of Lou Whitaker and Tony Phillips aren’t good comps for Gordon, and neither are players like Deivi Cruz, Shane Halter, or the bulked-up version of Juan Encarnacion (did the Tigers only scout skinny players from 1980-2000?). Speed is the name of Gordon’s game — he has swiped 144 bases in 324 minor league games — and it should hold true for players to whom we are comparing him. Therefore, I chopped off the 72 player seasons in which the player didn’t steal more than 15 (arbitrary number alert! Selection bias understood!) bases.

Surprisingly, when we take out that group, the numbers improve. The 59 player seasons remaining hit .288/.355/.387, the bump due to an increase in BABIP, which moved up to .316. It should also be mentioned that this group stole bases at a 74.9% clip. Peripherally, they averaged a strikeout rate of 12.0%, and a walk rate of 9.1% versus Gordon’s career minor league rates of 16.0% and 6.5%, respectively. There is clearly work to be done in those columns for the young Dodgers shortstop.

The problem with this group, in my eyes, is one of potential. Considering that Gordon does not possess, nor profile to possess, any power to speak of, he’s not going to have seasons like Lenny Dykstra in 1993, Julio Franco in 1991, or Damion Easley in 1997. The literal ceiling for a player with his skillset is Lance Johnson in 1996: .333/.362/.479, good for a .369 wOBA, and, with +17 runs on defense, a 6.5 WAR. And this is from a guy with a career strikeout rate of 7.1%. For what it’s worth, here are the players that had 3 or more seasons that fit my criteria (1990-2010, </= 160 pounds, more than 15 steals, qualified for batting title) — and next to the number of seasons are their corresponding WAR numbers for those seasons:

Bip Roberts – 3 seasons (5.3, 5.0, 1.7)
Brett Butler – 6 seasons (4.9, 4.9, 5.0, 1.9, 3.4, 1.0)
Jose Offerman – 5 seasons (0.9, 1.5, 2.5, 5.0, 2.8)
Juan Encarnacion – 4 seasons (1.6, 1.2, 2.5, 1.2)
Lance Johnson – 7 seasons (2.0, 3.2, 3.9, 5.1, 1.5, 3.4, 6.5)
Luis Polonia – 4 seasons (2.1, 0.6, -2.3, 0.8)
Ozzie Smith – 4 seasons (3.3, 5.4, 2.7)
Tim Raines – 3 seasons (2.8, 3.3, 6.1)
Tony Womack – 7 seasons (-0.6, 1.0, 1.0, 0.2, 1.4, 0.5, 2.5)

After I saw Gordon in the Futures Game, I wondered what his “perfect world projection” could possibly be. I’ll tell you what: it’s explained somewhere in the players above. But while there are 10 seasons with 4.9 WAR or more, there are also 18 seasons with 1.9 WAR or below. The median strikes a balance at about 2.5 wins above replacement. This is how it is for skinny players — some good upside if you walk a lot (Butler, Raines), strike out a little (Johnson, Roberts), or play defense really well (Smith, Johnson). But if you don’t succeed in those areas, preferably more than one, performance potential slips fast.

And if this article is guilty of selection bias, it also ignores the much larger sample of sub-160 pound players that never qualified for a batting title, and didn’t make a splash in the Major Leagues. Gordon is facing an undeniable up-hill climb, but admittedly, it’s a little more paved than I previously thought. I refuse to be as bullish as other outlets until Gordon’s peripherals improve, but I don’t want to be guilty of overrating just how much size matters.

September is the perfect time to begin to make plans for the next season, to test prospects and start the process of shoring up holes. Previously, I have written up the Major League debuts of three pitchers: Mike Minor, Kyle Drabek and Brandon Beachy. But the next logical step is to tackle hitters, and those September call-ups are just now getting to the level of proper evaluation. The White Sox have recently been testing Brent Morel at third base, giving him the last seven starts at that position. He’s been a bit over his head, hitting .188/.235/.438, but has mixed in enough to sustain the optimism with two home runs and sure-handed defense. I went through every PA that Morel has had in his 11 games (34 in all), to see if it might help inform the statistics when we think about his future.

Morel hasn’t drawn the easiest assignments in his seven games as starter, going against Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, Gio Gonzalez, Trevor Cahill and Brett Anderson. For what it’s worth, he homered off Scherzer, a flyball to center field that had really good backspin. What’s weird is that you look at that list and it seems to explain his SwStr%, which is above the league average (8.5%) at 12.2%. In total, Morel has swung and missed on 17 pitches this month. Six of those have been fastballs. Yet not a single of those fastballs was from one of the great pitchers above. Four of the seven breaking balls were, but the fastballs came from the likes of Craig Breslow and Boof Bonser.

Morel clearly doesn’t have a problem with velocity. In fact, he doesn’t really have a problem with fastballs at all. Both his home runs were off fastballs, and it’s certainly the pitch he tries to isolate within an at-bat. If you want to know the book on Brent Morel, look no further than Justin Verlander’s approach against him on September 18. Morel had four plate appearances against the Tigers ace, spanning 21 pitches: 8 curveballs, 5 sliders, 5 fastballs, and 3 change-ups. Yes, the pitcher that threw fastballs 58.5% of the time this year, averaging in at 95.4 mph, went to the heater just 23.8% of the time against the White Sox rookie.

Like many young hitters, the key is breaking stuff low and away. If you look at his swings at TexasLeaguers.com, you’ll see four pitches he offered at above the zone, two inside, and 11 pitches low (most low and away). He has no discipline in that part of the zone. On pitches high in the zone, another weakness we often see in young hitters, it’s just the opposite. I could give you numerous examples in the last two weeks of catchers calling for the high fastball with two strikes, with Morel watching the pitch go by. Or, even more often, if the pitch isn’t too far out of the zone, he’ll hit it foul. He does that often, as 21 of the 139 pitches he’s been thrown (15.1%) have been hit out of play.

The youngster earns a plus grade for his two-strike approach, which, with improved performance on the low-and-away slider, should help sustain those better-than-average strikeout numbers we’ve seen in the minor leagues. But I think it will take a couple years to lay off that pitch, so it’s going to be a slow crawl back to 15%. I plug his numbers into this xBABIP calculator, and it says he should be at .312, and yet now he’s at .190. There’s just been some bad luck on batted balls; I have at least three in my notes that were hard-hit balls ending up in a glove, including a particularly hard hit would-be double that landed just foul. That stuff will even out next year, I think.

The real question, the big question, is about his ultimate power. After 16 home runs in High-A in 2009, Morel had just 10 in the minors this year, before recently adding two more in the Major Leagues. I have not seen the kid take batting practice yet, which I believe is necessary in evaluating power, but I do think this is someone that will hit 20 home runs in the Major Leagues. Not many more, but he’s not Dustin Ackley, with an approach that runs counter to hitting for power. Morel’s goal, at every at-bat, is to take a middle-in fastball to left-center field. 

After watching all 34 plate appearances, my grade on Morel would actually be higher than it was entering this article concept. He has one glaring weakness, but it’s one that should improve out of habit and in time. He generally shows signs of good contact skills, an approach conducive to average power for the position, and I didn’t think it necessary today to re-tread the established fact that he’s good defensively. I certainly think he could be worth at least 2-2.5 WAR next year, which is a lot more than you can say of Mark Teahen and Omar Vizquel in 2010.