I recently attended scout day for the University of Florida and while the Gators still have a lot of talent on campus, they lost some major talent in the 2012 draft. Between departing upperclassmen and recruits that signed out of high school, the Gators lost 11 players in the top three rounds of the draft (Michael Zunino, Lance McCullers, Lewis Brinson, Brian Johnson, Nolan Fontana, Jesse Winker, Max White, Steven Rodriguez, Austin Maddox, Avery Romero, Jonathan Sandfort) along with two top notch college players that received six figure bonuses (Preston Tucker, Hudson Randall) and two solid senior signs (Daniel Pigott, Greg Larson).

Even with all that talent departing or not making it to campus, Florida has two potential high first round picks in their Friday and Saturday starters, junior right-handers Jonathon Crawford and Karsten Whitson. Depending on the schedules of Ole Miss righty Bobby Wahl and Arkansas righty Ryne Stanek, the scout day intersquad matchup of Crawford and Whitson may end up being the best pitching matchup in the SEC this season.

Crawford came out of nowhere last season hitting 98 mph often and flashing a plus slider while he slowly integrated a changeup as the season wore on. All systems were go in his two-inning outing, as all three pitches and his location were crisp. Crawford sat 92-94, hitting 95 with above-average two-seam life, backing it up with an 84-86 mph slider with three-quarter break and sharp, late darting action, flashing 65 potential (on the 20-80 scouting scale). His 84-86 mph changeup has improved and turned over consistently, flashing plus potential to give Crawford three plus pitches, among the best stuff in the draft class.

Read the rest of this entry »

Carlos Correa was the recent first overall pick and while I didn’t see him as an amateur, he showed big time tools in the GCL and again in instructs. His projectable 6’4, 190 pound frame immediately stands out with broad shoulders, tapered torso and long limbs. Correa is an outstanding athlete to coordinate his body to play shortstop, which he does well now with a plus arm, solid footwork and good instincts. He’s an average runner that can be a little slow out of the box and will only slow as he fills out his frame, so Correa seems destined for third base, where he would be easily above average.

The real is how well Correa’s big hitting tools will play in games. After seeing number two overall pick Byron Buxton in Twins instructs and as an amateur, Correa is at about the same juncture polish-wise, although is 9 months younger. Correa is fooled too often by professional pitching, getting off balance and jumpy at the plate. At times, he’ll show a bat wrap that he needs to fix and a couple of singles I’ve seen have come on pitches where he was fooled but bat speed and eye-hand coordination allowed him to get enough of the pitch.

Read the rest of this entry »

After some covering the WWBA tournament for ESPN, I fell behind on some instructional league reports, so I’ll roll out the remainder lightning round style over the next few days. Normally, I need a few days to be able to see all the prospects in a camp and have an opinion, but fortunately the one game I saw of the Astros featured all of their notable prospects in camp. I have some history with most of the prospect hitters and while it was only one game, I got a good, updated feel for the players, so I’ll run through the roster in two parts.

I covered Lance McCullers a lot as an amateur for ESPN as the supplemental first rounder played his prep ball just down the street from my house. He started the instructs game I saw and continued to show progress in what ended up being a huge developmental season for him. I’ve seen McCullers hit 98 and despite the longest season of his career, he still worked 91-93, hitting 94 with some life and mixing in a two-seamer at 88-89. His curveball was it’s usual self, showing plus potential at 79-82, though he would get around the pitch and give it ¾ tilt at times rather than the preferred 11-to-5 tilt.

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier in the regular season, I got a message from a pitcher asking about how his slider rate compared to that of a teammate. It seems they had something of a friendly wager. I checked and replied that, while his slider rate was high, and higher than his teammate’s, neither was close to the league lead. Way up top were guys like Luke Gregerson and Sergio Romo, who threw sliders with nearly two-thirds of their pitches. Romo, for example, threw sliders like Clayton Kershaw threw fastballs. Romo’s got a pitch, and he’s especially got that pitch against right-handed batters.

Now let’s take a step back. Between 2007-2011, Tim Wakefield posted a roughly league-average ERA over nearly 800 innings. The overwhelming majority of his pitches were knuckleballs, a very small minority of his pitches were curveballs, and just over ten percent of his pitches were fastballs. His fastball had the average velocity of another guy’s slow curve. It was, in isolation, a very bad major-league fastball. Yet, on a per-pitch basis, between 2007-2011, Tim Wakefield’s fastball was one of the most effective fastballs in the league. You don’t have to do much research to figure it’s because hitters were taken by surprise. The fastball seemed faster than it was, and it was often simply unexpected. Nearly three in four Wakefield fastballs were strikes. There was nearly an equal ratio of called strikes to swings.

Read the rest of this entry »

You think of the Tigers and first and foremost you think of Justin Verlander, Prince Fielder, and Miguel Cabrera. You think of the Tigers on a day that Verlander isn’t pitching and you think of Fielder and Cabrera. There are other guys on the roster — lots of them! — and some of them are good, but Fielder and Cabrera are the big offensive guns. They’re the players the Tigers most want in the spotlight in important situations.

The Tigers lost Game 3 of the World Series on Saturday, and now they have to win four in a row if they want to take the title. They lost not because the Giants lit them up, but rather because they very much didn’t light the Giants up. The story right now, depending on your perspective, is either the Giants’ run prevention or the Tigers’ miserable run production, and Saturday saw the Tigers blow what opportunities they generated. Worse, opportunities were blown by both Fielder and Cabrera. The Tigers got the bats they wanted up in the situations they wanted, and still they got shut out by Ryan Vogelsong and the San Francisco bullpen.

Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s face it: try as you might, you can’t really help the things that stick with you. What I remember most vividly from visiting the Acropolis so many years ago is an Offspring song I was listening to. What I remember most about attending a Montreal Canadiens home game is the in-arena Youppi! exhibit. And something I can’t shake from Thursday night’s Game 2 of the World Series is a fastball that was taken by Marco Scutaro for strike three in the bottom of the eighth. Plenty of things happened in the game and Scutaro’s at-bat was of little ultimate consequence, but I keep seeing that pitch over and over. Forgive me, but now I’m going to write about it.

I think I’ve established that I have something of a fascination for Marco Scutaro, and how difficult it is to get him to swing and miss. At no point on Thursday did Scutaro swing and miss — he hardly ever does — but he did strike out, and that’s also weird, if less so. Weirder still was how he struck out. Dave Cameron expressed surprise, too, in the live chat, so I know I’m not the only one. Let’s review the events.

Read the rest of this entry »

For a while, there was every reason to believe the Giants would look forward to having Madison Bumgarner start in the playoffs. Bumgarner was a very good starting pitcher, and teams like to have very good starting pitchers start for them come playoff time. Then Bumgarner started to wear down, or — if you don’t like that explanation — Bumgarner just started pitching a lot worse. His repertoire got worse, his results got worse, and there was a question of whether Bumgarner would start at all in the World Series. He was ultimately given the start in Game 2, but nobody really knew what to expect. The Giants had talked about a promising mechanical tweak, but Bumgarner was still coming off some lousy performances at the wrong times.

So, naturally, Bumgarner was terrific Thursday night. His box-score results, at least, were terrific, and though it was thanks to an impressive relay that Bumgarner managed to keep the Tigers completely off the board, even a slightly worse performance might’ve meant a Giants loss. Instead, in large part thanks to Bumgarner, the Giants hold a commanding series lead as everybody transitions to Michigan. Bruce Bochy, they say, can’t do any wrong right now. Everything he touches turns to figurative, strategic gold.

Read the rest of this entry »

I think my favorite fun fact Wednesday night came from Sam Miller on Twitter. The Giants, of course, hit only 31 home runs at home all season long, far and away the fewest in baseball. Only three Giants players hit at least three. Granted, those totals were seven, seven, and five — not three, three, and three — but this provided some context. It was more or less within this context that Pablo Sandoval went deep three consecutive times to start off Game 1 of the World Series. And he did it in late October in a game started by Justin Verlander. Maybe a little more impressive than Albert Pujols homering three times in a playoff game in Texas in a game started by Matt Harrison. Apparently I’ve decided to support Sandoval’s performance by denigrating other, similar performances.

In a game where the story was supposed to be about the mismatch between Verlander and Barry Zito, it was Sandoval who completely stole the show, and it was Sandoval who seemed to get Joe Buck legitimately excited with dinger number three. He hit one out to center, he hit one out to left, and then he hit one out to center again. Sandoval would finish 4-for-4, singling off Jose Valverde, but if anything, considering the rest of the night, Valverde successfully kept Sandoval in check. It might’ve been the highlight of Valverde’s Game 1 appearance.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the past week I’ve seen some amateur events (UF Scout Day, Florida Diamond Club) that I’ll write about here and I’ll be covering the WWBA tournament in Jupiter for ESPN. I also still have lots of instructs reports and extra regular season minor league reports to offload. So, before I move on to all these new topics, here’s the final notes from Yankees instructs, starting with some power arms.

I saw two outings from 20-year-old righty Gabe Encinas, a 6th round pick in 2010 out of a California high school. He sat 93-95 in the first outing and 94-96 in the second outing, getting plenty of swings and misses from his plus-plus velocity. He’s got a clean arm but his delivery is a little rough as he’s throws across his body due to the angle he takes on the mound. This makes him tougher on right handed hitters and creates a little more deception, but also makes his delivery much more east-west than is necessary, costing him command. The arm is electric enough that a straight-on delivery would probably be a better fit and his velocity, arm stroke and high three-quarters slot mean he isn’t a matchup specialist type that needs to create deception to succeed.

In addition to his four-seam heater, Encinas throws a 78-82 mph curveball that has some trouble staying on top of with tight, short rotation and average potential. He also throws a firm changeup at 85-87 mph that he also can lose up and to his arm-side and has average potential when he can command it in the zone. I’d simplify things as much as possible to see if Encinas can be a starter long-term, but he has the look of a potential late inning reliever if he continues to progress.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve seen Yankees catching prospect Gary Sanchez as much as any other prospect this season and while I have a good feel for what he can do, I’m still not certain what he’ll become. I saw him in spring training, at Lo-A Charleston, at Hi-A Tampa and again recently in instructs; he’s shown the same tools each time but has also been making some adjustments, mostly at the plate.

Sanchez has a number of things that command your attention: a $3 million bonus at age 16, present 70 raw power to all fields and a 65 arm. He’s still just 19 and these kinds of tools and accomplishments as a teenager put him in rarified territory. The list of players who have that resume is littered with stars and even Hall of Famers. Therein lies the problem: Sanchez has always been the best player on every field he’s been on until this season, so his tools alone could dominate and he hasn’t had to make adjustments.

Read the rest of this entry »