I’m certainly not saying Carpenter’s success directly correlates to Garcia’s, but a big knock on his (Carpenter’s) offensive profile was that his lack of power would allow his discipline tool to be exposed against more advanced pitching. Surely that point holds true most of the time, but it’s nice to have a success story to point to so we can keep the prospect window open for Garcia, not that he cares.

I’ve seen him play a couple of times myself, and like you I’m no scout, but he did seem to have a good grasp on the game and did a lot of those small things right and well. He seems like he’ll continue to get the most out of the tools he has.

Oscar Taveras is everything you hear about and then some. He’s going to be a special player when he makes it to the big leagues IMO. He’s got a really weird batting stance and honestly it looks like he is chopping a tree when he swings, but does it work for him. The ball makes a completely different sound off of his bat than it did from most hitters, and it just jumps off of it too. Anyone who says he doesn’t have a batting eye doesn’t know what they’re talking about, he took a couple of borderline pitches but just swings when he sees a pitch he can hit. Defensively he looked the part in RF (I was hoping he’d be in CF though), but I think he could play center assuming he doesn’t get much bigger. He’s not going to be a Jim Edmonds kind of centerfielder, but I think he could be at least league average defensively. His arm is stronger than advertised. He caught a one hopper off a slicing hit down the line and threw it back into second quickly. I was impressed with that one. He’s not overly fast, I’d say he’s about a 50-60 in the speed department. I’m not sure he’ll ever top 20 stolen bases in a season. He’s not as skinny as I imagined him, but he’s not a hulk either. Think like Carlos Beltran built. And he plays with some swagger. He was drifting back for a fly ball that went to the warning track and he acted like it was going over before putting his hand up at the last minute to catch it. He’s going to be really good for several years to come.

Kolten Wong on the other hand didn’t have a real great night at the plate. And he’s listed at 5’9″, and I think that might be generous. He’s tiny. But back to him hitting, I think I counted three times he hit a weak ground ball to the first baseman and I only saw one ball hit out of the infield the entire game. Nice swing just wasn’t doing anything for him. Defensively he was smooth. Should be an above-average second baseman.

Trevor Rosenthal wasn’t really built like I thought he was. I thought he was stockier almost in the same mold as Jake Westbrook or Lance Lynn, but he’s got long legs. Not quite Adam Wainwright legs though. He’s got clean, repeatable mechanics and I think it adds some deception to his delivery. Unfortunately from where I was sitting, I had trouble telling his offspeed stuff from each other, but this slider/change up (I think it was the slider) had some nice late break that sort of just dropped down a plane. Unfortunately there were no guns in the park, but I’d have to guess he was sitting in the mid 90s with his fastball for the majority of the game. He had most of those Drillers hitters completely baffled as they were consistently late fouling pitches off behind home plate. There were only two really well driven balls, with one of them being the one that Taveras caught over the bullpen fences and then one driven to center where Adam Melker caught it on the warning track. Could have easily got an extra inning, but I think their manager was trying to break open up the game by pinch hitting for him. Honestly, I think he could pitch effectively out of the big league bullpen if needed.

Speaking of great hits, Garcia’s home run cleared the stadium. Not that it’s built in a huge way, but he hit it down the RF line and it cleared the stadium and the concourse there. If I had to estimate, I’d say 350+. The entire Drillers team didn’t move as they watched it go out of the stadium.