Short DFR tonight as Palm Beach has the night off and Quad Cities gets rained out. Reverse order tonight starting with the newbies in Batavia.
Go Muckdogs!
Archive for June, 2009We received not only enough for one more year of FR’s hosting cost, but almost the exact amount for 2 years. Whatever little is left over I’ll leave in the FR fund and put it to good use, definitely something related to the site. Just wanted to thank everyone for your generous support! 2006 was Luhnow’s sophomore slump. Our friend Alex Eisenberg takes an up close look at Shelby Miller. No major worries about mechanics, and he says Miller has “undeniable upside”. He does say there’s no signability issues that he knows of, but we that have the P-D in our RSS reader and obsess over this team know that’s not true, although it does sound like Miller really wants to sign and I think he’ll eventually come in at $2-3 rather than the advertised $4M. We’ll see what his agents do. No photo quiz today. Rick Porcello day went about as well as could be expected. If you consider losing ‘expected’. Porcello wasn’t Fernando Valenzuela but he did continue is his awesome run in the wins and ERA department.
I’m not one of those people that seriously begrudges DeWitt for telling Lunhow he couldn’t draft him but I will always keep an eye on the kids career because of how easily he could have been starting for the Birds on the Bats tonight. It’s an interesting conversation to have as to whether he would have found himself with the same fate as Anthony Reyes and PJ Walters, two former Cardinals Pitchers of the Year who were told to ditch their great changeups when they reached the MLB level. Would Porcello have been told to do the same? On to the farm! Brett Wallace fell to the Cardinals at the 13th overall pick in the 2008 draft. Regarded by some as the best pure college bat in the draft, the Cardinals couldn’t pass up the opportunity to draft an impact player of that caliber despite having the games best player at Wallace’s likely position. On the eve of ‘Rick Porcello Brown Paper Bag Giveaway Day’ at Busch Stadium tomorrow, I thought I’d bring up the one prospect who seems to be performing well. Many a time, I’ve heard Colby Rasmus compared to Steve Finley. I always thought this a bit of a slight, perhaps limiting the heights to which Colby would reach as a player. Then I went and looked at BR.com page. While his HR power developed very late in his career, would anyone be disappointed if Colby ended up being Steve Finley (a Gold Glove OF’er with modest power and speed out his ears)?
The only good thing about today on the farm was that the cattle got in the barn before the storm in Palm Beach. Way to sell the metaphor.
Jun
17
2009
Getting to know the 09 Draft Class: HittersPosted by erik in 2009 MLB Draft, tags: Jason Stidham, Kyle Conley, robert stock, Ryan JacksonThese days, we’re spoiled for statistical information on our favorite big league players, and it’s trickled down to the minors as well. But we just don’t see a lot of quantitative analysis on college players around the ‘net. It’s a shame, too, because when hearing name after name being called on draft day, there’s little we know about the players who are being called and how they truly performed against their peers. Sure, the top players get some ink, but after the first couple of rounds we’re left with some superficial college stats that may look good on the surface but tell us nothing about the context they were in. Thankfully, there are some hard workers out there like Mike Rogers, who have taken the time to apply some of the advanced metrics to the college game to give us more information on some of these draft picks out of the D-I schools. He’s also been kind enough to share with me his findings. Mike has used Tango’s wOBA (weighted on-base average) for players, as well as speed scores, isolated power, walk rates, strikeout rates and the like to find some of the top college performers in the draft. He’s even applied things like strength of schedule, average conference stats and park factors for context. Now, I recommend reading the scouting reports first. Tools trump performance in evaluating amateurs. Just because someone is a good college baseball player doesn’t guarantee success at the major league level. But this does tell us more about what these players have done, and one thing we know, the Cardinals highly value track record in many ways. Joe Strauss is making me hyperventilate:
It’s getting to be about that time as the short season teams are getting up and running. It will be interesting to see how the infield shakes out with Nico Vasquez, Ryan Jackson and Jason Stidham all vying for spots in the middle infield. The outfield will look familiar for FR heads with Ryde Rodriquez, Beau Riportella (B-Ripper) and D’Marcus Ingram. And of course at catcher is the indomitable Luis De La Cruz. We got three close games and one not so close as the clubs went 2-2. |
|
Entries (RSS)