Promotion Watch: Five Names to Remember for June
June is just around the corner and Super-2 arbitration eligibility is going to expire shortly for a number of top prospects. As a result, you could see a few big names in the Majors within the first two weeks of the month. Let’s see how they’re currently doing in the minors.
Stephen Strasburg | RHP | Washington: You know you’re good when people start off a sentence with: “Strasburg actually allowed a run in triple-A…” In nine starts this season split between double-A and triple-A, the right-hander has allowed 22 hits and 10 walks in 45.1 innings of work. He has a 10.42 K/9 rate, as well as a 69% ground-ball rate, which gives a pretty good idea of why he’s been so dominant. The club could definitely use his help, as its best starter (Scott Olsen) is on the DL and Livan Hernandez is not going to keep pitching with a golden horseshoe shoved up his…
Jeremy Hellickson | RHP | Tampa Bay: Brian Joura is looking at the Hellickson situation in a little more depth over at RotoGraphs today. The 23-year-old right-hander has been dealing in triple-A all season long. He’s given up 53 hits and just 12 walks in 58.0 innings. He also has a strikeout rate of 9.64 K/9. A fly-ball pitcher with a 31.5% ground-ball rate, Hellickson has done a nice job avoiding the home-run ball (Just two have left the yard all season). The problem for Hellickson – which is great news for Rays fans – is that there is nowhere to pitch him. The starting rotation is probably the deepest and most talented in Major League Baseball.
Buster Posey | C | San Francisco: The Giants organization and General Manager Brian Sabean clearly don’t think a catcher can improve his defense while playing in the Major Leagues. Either that or it really is about Super-2. This line of thought just might cost the club a playoff berth. Posey’s defense definitely still needs some work behind the plate but he’s not useless back there and he’s hitting .344/.435/.525 with a in 160 at-bats. He’s also creaming lefties to the tune of a 1.222 OPS. Veteran MLB catcher Bengie Molina currently has a wOBA of .332 on the year, which is 14th in the Majors amongst catchers with 100 or more plate appearances (Or in other words, he’s been OK but not great). Why not let Molina catch 60% of the games with Posey handling the other 40%, while also seeing time at first base and/or third base?
Carlos Santana | C | Cleveland: Santana continues to challenge Posey for the title of Best Offensive Catcher in the minors. The Indians prospect is currently hitting .306/.440/.551 with nine homers and five steals in 147 at-bats. He also has 34 walks compared to 28 strikeouts. The switch-hitter swings well from the left side and has a .324 average against right-handed pitching. Santana has also been excellent with runners in scoring position, as his OPS jumps from .875 with the bases empty to 1.269 with men on second and/or third base. Current MLB catcher (and fellow rookie) Lou Marson has a wOBA of .255. Enough said.
Pedro Alvarez | 3B | Pittsburgh: The third baseman caught everyone’s attention early in the season with a power burst but he’s been pretty quiet since that time. Overall, he’s hitting just .248/.333/.497 with 10 homers in 165 at-bats. The left-handed hitter has struggled against southpaws with a .205 average (compared to .264 versus RHPs). Currently third baseman Andy LaRoche hasn’t exactly been an offensive juggernaut. His wOBA is just .311 through 35 games, which is one of the worst rates in the Majors at his position. However, Alvarez’ struggles could keep him in the minors until September.
Marc Hulet has been writing at FanGraphs since 2008. His work focuses on prospects and fantasy. Follow him on Twitter @marchulet.
Out of curiosity, where would Mike Stanton be listed if the list were expanded?
Yeah.. make it a top 10 and you could add:
Mike Stanton, Brett Wallace to the list.
On a side-note, Brian Sabean has hindered Buster Posey’s development beyond belief.
A) He’s letting him rot in triple AAA while Eli Whiteside plays.
B) He’s moving him off Catcher.
C) He’s trash talking the kid every chance he gets.
“He’s moving him off Catcher”
? He’s played 31 games at C, 9 at 1B. Giving him a rest every now and then is normal, he’s a C, and when they do that, they have him play 1B. There’s already plenty to complain about without making stuff up.
Stanton is definitely another you can add… same with Wallace… for sure.
Is this a ranking or just a list of prospects who might be up in June? Because Stanton clearly has a much greater chance of being called up than Hellickson or Alvarez…
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not put Buster Posey at 3rd base. I can see giving Huff a rest once a week (and although Huff’s splits aren’t too bad, probably against a lefty considering Posey’s lefty crushing tendencies), but why move Pablo to first and put Posey in another uncomfortable position, while removing one of the few somewhat productive hitters in the lineup in Huff? I am ok with Posey not sitting on the bench like the end of last season in SF, and playing in Fresno instead. I am ok with him playing the entire season down in AAA, even if the league is a step down from AA. What I’m not ok with is that LF, CF, RF, C, SS, 2nd, and 1st are all below average/fringe average hitters. And Pablo is playing like a below average hitter at 3rd, too.
Crazy who has the highest WAR to date as a position player for the Giants this season.
a golden horseshoe shoved up his Jeremy Hellickson?!?!??
“Santana continues to challenge Posey for the title of Best Offensive Catcher in the minors.”
Seriously, if Santana and Posey were to have switched teams no one would question Santana as the top offensive catcher in the minor leagues. Outside of the batting average Santana top Posey in every aspect.
Right now Santana is on course (if he were to for some reason play all year in AAA and assuming 500 AB’s) for a 30 HR 130 RBI 15 SB season. That’s awesome even for a LF or a 1B. Posey is looking at a 15 HR 85 RBI 3 SB season. So why give Posey more love? Yeah, the guy’s AVG is awesome, but he still gets on base slightly less than Santana and doesn’t have nearly the power nor can he switch hit. Not to mention the BB:K ratio is better for Santana than Posey (Santana has one less K in 13 less AB’s but 9 more BB’s in that span).
Clearly Santana needs more love than people have been giving him.
Totally agree, though the numbers have recently closed to closer than I would have expected. Still, think it’s absolutely clear that Santana is a better offensive catcher, no doubt.
Buster’s plate discipline is fantastic, but Santana’s is even better. Don’t forget about Santana’s 5 steals so far – he’s got a bit of speed, apparently, too. Though he is also a year older than Posey.
I am also curious where one can find the minor leage BABIPs for the current season – wonder how Santana and Posey compare this year, and with their historical (well, as historical as you can be with such limited track records) numbers.
Here is a good place to start 😉
minorleaguesplits.com:
Posey: .397
Santana: .318
That BABIP is totally unsustainable. Not to mention the INT is more park neutral while the PCL is definitely a hitters league. If Santana was on a contender he’d be getting all the love in the world, maybe not Heyward love, but he’d be the next best thing according to all the writers.
As a Giants/Posey fan, I’ll say….it makes me happy to see what Santana’s doing since the Dodgers gave him up for Casey Blake. 🙂
I’m a Rockies / Indians fan, so I’m in total agreement with you B! For a paltry $2 million of Blake’s salary the Tribe got a guy who projects to be one of the top offensive players in a couple of years. What a steal!
BTW, what the hell is up with Blake and the clean shaved look? My wife thought he was cute during the 2007 ALDS / ALCS but now she’s creeped out by him, quite frankly I am too.
“This line of thought just might cost the club a playoff berth.”
Really doubt it, Posey’s MLE right now is .293/.366/.425. As much as I love Posey, he’s probably not going to make much of a difference for this ballclub if he’s up. No need to bring him up and slow down his development at C, especially if it involves moving him to positions he’s not familiar with where he might give back runs, and doesn’t really hit well for those positions. Especially since our best hitter plays 3B, and Bengie and Huff are doing ok – not much different than Posey. Let’s just leave him in the minors, delay his arb clock, and let him continue to work on his C skills. He’s our starter next year.
“Posey’s defense definitely still needs some work behind the plate but he’s not useless back there”
I’m calling BS on this. Posey has caught runners stealing to a tune of 44% (to Molina’s 14% and Whiteside’s 29%), with 1 PB and 0 errors in 31 games.
If this is about “game-calling”, then fangraphs has done drunk the kool-aid, and I’m going to have to start looking somewhere else for serious analysis.
(Oh by the way, last I checked, the Grizzlies’ pitching was doing pretty well)
Let’s not forget why Eli Whiteside is on the Giants – he’s Jonathan Sanchez’ personal catcher. He’s replacement level at the plate but a pretty decent defensive catcher. I’m just waiting for Molina to get hurt, then we can finally do this thing. Buster’s ready, he just needs a chance..
This is why I hate reading about Giants prospects by people who don’t follow the team closely.
The Giants have said that while they believe in Posey playing in the majors, they did not think that he would last a major league season as the starting catcher. They thought that he was good for maybe starting 100 games. Hence why they sought out a vet free agent catcher. That they ended up with Molina was luck (bad or good depending on how you feel about him and/or Posey; I think good).
I think good overall for a number of reasons. One is because Posey still needed work defensively. Do you really want him learning at the MLB level while you are expecting to battle for a division title? BA’s report on him noted that he still things to learn defensively while he is good offensively. Is BA not considered credible by some here?
This allows him to work on his defense without the pressure of learning how to be a major leaguer, as well as how to be a major league catcher, as well as being one of the main offensive cogs on the team. Meanwhile, the Giants have the catcher that their pitching staff, in particular a Tim Lincecum, who loves pitching to him. And eventually, at some point this season, Posey will come up and Molina will start mentoring him to be ready for the 2011 season.
And Posey’s hitting, while nice, is in the PCL hitters league. His MLE is not impressive, though nice at the catcher’s position, as B nicely pointed out above. And he struggled (relatively, look at the MLE for April) in April before getting hot for a couple of weeks at the start of May, before cooling off again for around 10 games. For those who assumes he will hit well in the majors once promoted, I direct you to look at Matt Weiters first 3 months in the majors.
People always forget what the consequences are if you are wrong in your assumption. And people have been assuming he will be good, despite historical examples that suggest that not all is milk and honey, that promoting a top prospect does not guarantee that he will necessarily excel immediately. Andy Marte stands as a stark cautionary example.
The Giants have also made it clear, for those who follow closely, that Posey is the starting catcher of the future, period. The only reason he is playing 1B is because they think enough of his bat that they want to be able to start him at 1B on the days when he is not catching, because there is no way he is going to catch 162 games a season. Is it so bad that they want to keep his bat in the lineup by playing him at 1B when he is not catching?
There has been zero talk by Giants management about any other position, and they have come out to make clear what their position is a number of times already. But the pundits (and assorted commenters who don’t know what they are talking about) always have to throw other positions out there and get tongues wagging about the idiocy of Giants management.
Also, if the Giants managed based on Super-2 status, you would think that they would have either: 1) waited to bring up Lincecum to the majors; or 2) sent him down to the minors for the necessary time to move him out of Super-2 when he had that very bad stretch of pitching after one month of great pitching (people forget that he had a pretty horrible second month in the majors before hockey-sticking his stats). They did neither.
I think I’ll end with a quote from BA on Posey for 2010: “For all the strides Posey has made as a catcher, the mechanics of the position haven’t become second nature yet. He’s still working to improve his receiving and has problems handling quality fastballs with late life. … [in addition] the Giants want him to get stronger in order to handle the grind of a full season.” So you can quote all the 19th Century defensive stats you want, but I’m taking BA’s word that he needs the rep behind the plate to learn to properly catch. And, if you haven’t noticed, the Giants have a number of pitchers on their pitching staff with quality fastballs with late life.
Good addition with the BA stuff. A few disputes I have with the rest of it:
“The Giants have said that while they believe in Posey playing in the majors, they did not think that he would last a major league season as the starting catcher. They thought that he was good for maybe starting 100 games.”
I’ve never heard that, do you have a link or quote or anything? I wouldn’t be surprised if they said something about how he seemingly wore down last year, but did they get that specific about their plan for him this year?
“There has been zero talk by Giants management about any other position”
It does appear at this point that they’re focused on Posey being a full time C and only a full time C, but earlier in the season, there were rumors that they really did have discussions about bringing Posey up in some other role. Not sure anyone in the Giants was quoted about it, but if I remember right, Baggs or Schulman or someone like that did report they had internal discussions about it. That said, I think it’s pretty clear right now that’s not going to happen.
Finally, I think the Giants are managing his Super 2 status – they made a costly mistake with Lincecum, and they’ve learned from it. I don’t think their handling of him is good evidence it’s not something that concerns them. I actually hope it IS something they consider.
I hope Posey stays down in the minors. It’s the right call at this point in time. Delay his arb status, allow him to work on his defense (which needs work) every day behind the plate, Molina’s producing fine for now, and Posey’s not going to be the difference between playoffs and no playoffs, so let’s avoid making rash decisions…..
I am too lazy to find the links, but I, too, remember reading the same stuff as obsessivegiantscompulsive (love the name, btw) about preventing Posey from wearing down.
I think there is a difference between internal talk and PR talk. I don’t believe Giants management ever publicly stated that they were considering Posey in any other role, but it would be a disservice to the team if they weren’t willing to at least discuss all options internally.
Good point on possibly changing their tact after Lincecum’s Super Two.
As for the Giants, I am all in favor of whatever changes will get them to beat those darn Padres. Those were some depressing games.
I cannot easily locate it, but found some instances where other fans refer to it, like this one: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/305157-san-francisco-giants-the-case-for-throwing-buster-posey-to-the-wolves
Basically, Bochy lazily said that they were looking at Posey at infield positions, which everyone ran with, so he soon clarified that 1) he’s our future catcher and 2) he’s only seeing time at 1B in order to keep his bat in more games when he needs to sit out a start.
The Giants have publicly stated that Posey’s Super Two status will not determine when he is brought up, it will be a baseball decision (of course, that could be PR too, I admit).
More Santana love using MLE projected over 500 minor league AB’s:
524 AB, 80 R, 140 H, 27 2B, 0 3B, 25 HR, 107 RBI, 15 SB, 91 BB, 101 K, .268/.376/.461
Outside the AVG those numbers are pretty sexy. I’m looking for a 15 HR 60 RBI season once he gets called up.