Daily Farm Report – 6/13/12
Posted on June 13th, 2012 by Andy Beard in Daily Farm Reports, UncategorizedThe system went 2-and-2 tonight as Skip Schumaker started a rehab assignment for Memphis, Springfield turned its first ever triple-play as a franchise, Palm Beach’s entire lineup contributed to their win over St. Lucie, and Quad Cities turned a 9th inning rally into an extra innings win. Details after the jump…
Memphis 4, Nashville 5
- Pete Kozma was 2-for-3.
- Ryan Jackson was 1-for-1 with a walk. Cedric Hunter also had a hit and a walk.
- Skip Schumaker, on rehab assignment, played CF and had a hit and run scored.
- Jamie Romak, Aaron Bates, Zack Cox, and Nick Derba contributed singles.
- Lou Montanez and Eugenio Velez each walked once.
- Brandon Dickson allowed frequent contact over 6 innings. The result was 5 runs on 11 hits, 0 walks, and 1 strikeout.
- Nicholas Greenwood pitched 2 perfect innings with 2 strikeouts.
- John Gaub pitched a perfect 9th inning with 1 strikeout.
- Oscar Taveras was 2-for-4 with a triple.
- Kolten Wong was 1-for-3 with a walk and stolen base (11th of season).
- Jose Garcia was 1-for-4 with a HR (2nd of season).
- Jake Shaffer was 1-for-3 with a walk.
- Kyle Conley and Chris Swauger had singles.
- Trevor Rosenthal pounded the strike zone but surrendered a few runs: 6 IP, 4 R, 8 H (1 HR), 0 BB, and 3 K.
- Kevin Thomas struck out 1 in 1 inning.
- Michael Blazek allowed 2 runs on 1 hit (1 HR), 1 walk, and 2 strikeouts.
- Justin Wright coaxed 3 groundball outs in the 9th.
- Mike O’Neill was 3-for-4 with a triple.
- Starlin Rodriguez and Nicholas Longmire each had 2 hits. One of Longmire’s was a double.
- Chris Edmonson was 1-for-5 with a double.
- Ronny Gil was 1-for-3 with a double and walk.
- Ildemaro Vargas was 1-for-3 with a walk. Rainel Rosario did the same.
- Luis De La Cruz singled.
- Scott McGregor allowed 1 run over 3 innings on 3 hits and a strikeout.
- Nicholas Gillung pitched 4 scoreless innings that included 3 hits, 3 walks, and 3 strikeouts.
- Aiden Lucas struck out 1 in 2 perfect innings.
- Anthony Garcia was 2-for-5 with a HR (6th of season) and game-winning double in the 10th inning.
- Matt Williams, Nick Martini, and Colin Walsh were all 2-for-5.
- Luis Mateo had a double.
- Tyler Rahmatulla and Virgil Hill had singles. Rahmatulla also walked.
- Dail Villanueva struggled with his control: 3.1 IP, 3 R, 5 H, 5 BB, and 0 K.
- Danny Miranda struck out 2 and allowed 1 hit in 2.2 innings.
- Robert Stock struck out the side in his inning.
- Ethan Cole allowed 2 runs on 4 hits, 1 walk, and 2 strikeouts in 2 innings.
- Travis Miller pitched 1 inning that included 1 hit and 2 strikeouts.
Entries (RSS)
Cards have 5 of the top 11 in OPS in the Midwest league including #1 and #2. If Garcia keeps hitting as he has since his slow start we will soon have the top 3 spots.
Walsh
Rahmatulla
Garcia
Castillo
Mateo
SIERA for Rosenthal now below league average. FIP approaching league average despite unsustainable HR allowed rate. Still extremely lucky so far with BABIP way below league average despite LD rate higher than league average.
Rosenthal has been excellent considering age and skipping a league but when looking behind the numbers he is not blowing the league away by any means and if he keeps pitching as he has, his stats are more likely to decline than improve.
Rosenthal is lucky – Cardinals probably are too.
Remember that minor league batted ball profiles are not at all reliable…I’m not saying he isn’t going up a lot of LD, I’m just saying he would not be the first minor league pitcher who gives up lew hard contact than the minor league stat takers say he gives up
Less, not lew
I think Andrew has talked about this before where the play by play says a “line-out”, but when he sees it on MiLBtv, he says it was not a hard hit ball.
All I know is I have seen the kid pitch twice this year, and he doesn’t look like any league average pitcher to me. If that is what he is, then so be it. My eyes say different.
Right, though I will say my biggest concern, outside of the walks, has been the significant drop in his GB%
Not sure on this. I do know he has had more than one game where the umpire won’t give the low strike which is his bread and butter. One time he got stubborn and stayed low and gave up walks. The other time I was told he started working high as a result. I have no stats to back anything up, but he has had games with very high GB rates and others where it was 50-50 – I tend to think it is a function of the stikezone he’s given.
Adjusting to the zone is what makes good pitchers better. As he matures he will learn how to manipulate the umpire’s zone, and this is why I feel that skipping levels is not always in the players best interest as there are lots of things to learn on any given outing in any given league.
Pitchers are going to get hit, they are going to get hit hard and hit soft, but if he was pounding the zone and he didn’t walk anyone I would say he probably did what was asked of him and that meant it was a good night for him.
You may be right about the reliability – he actually might be giving up more line drives than are in the stats! :)
Given 13 starts and 72 IP, I think his “luck”, good or bad, is about in equilibrium.
You might think that but in baseball terms that is a very small sample size – not nearly enough (by a long shot) to take luck out of the equation
So I’m trying to find out still how 72 innings is still SSS but everyone expected Miller to regress to mean regarding home runs when he only spent 86 innings in Springfield last year. Can’t have it both ways..
Based on my own reading, the “mean” also includes his Single A time. He pitched 104.1 innings (24 starts) in Quad Cities in 2010, and his HR/9 was .60. In 9 starts in Palm Beach (53 innings) and the aforementioned 16 starts in Springfield (86.1 innings), his HR/9 ratios were .34 and .21, respectively.
Meanwhile, his HR/9 ratio at Memphis this year over 13 starts (61.1 innings) is 2.05. That is a huge, huge jump from what he’s managed to do consistently over about 243 innings at two lower minor league levels. A statisical regression like that is abnormal, and indicates specific struggles that are hard to judge as long-term issues in a reliever’s sample size for a starter. As Cario mentions, it’s too small to take “luck” out of the equation, because those events have an exaggerated influence on the statistics, for both Rosenthal and Miller.
They have a season to sort themselves out. Like Lynn did.
Bceause “batted ball profile” and “HR/FB” don’t stabilize at the same size sample. Some stats, like K rate, stabilize very quickly, others, like BABIP against, take a much, much bigger sample size to glean anything from.
So, actually, you can have it both ways, to use your terminology.
At least one of the means regarding HR data that I referred to is for all pitchers. HR rates as a % of Flyballs tends over time not to vary tremendously from pitcher to pitcher. So when we are talking about regressing to the mean we are talking the mean involving years and years of batted ball data among all pitchers – definitely not a small sample size.
Finally something written so I can understand it! Therefore, you would have said that Miller’s HR rate last year was unsustainable because he was so far below the mean. In fact, that has turned out to be the case. And this year Miller’s HR allowed is in excess of the mean, so you expect improvement. I don’t know where the mean actually is, but it makes sense.
I thought you had said that you expected Miller’s HR/FB to drop because that was his history vs. his relationship to the mean.
I still don’t understand how you figure the mean. Each years stats are based on where the pitcher is at at that point in time during that season. Last year Miller was just better than the hitters and able to overpower them with fastballs. This year his velocity is down a tick and can’t do that anymore. Each stat is indicative of the pitcher Miller was/is during that season. I don’t see how you can make predictive statements about what Miller is “overall” based on averaging where he’s been the last 2 years.
I think it is a compilation of historical numbers that yield league “means”. You either accept the theory or you don’t, but I think the numbers – even if they may seem counter-intuitive are probably correct.
Don’t get how you find the mean for each pitcher though. How many years of data do you need to know what BABIP each particular pitcher should have.
IT doesn’t depend necessarily on the historical data for the pitcher but a comparison of his BABIP with the kind of hits he is giving up. LD’s fall for more hits than other types of hits. Ground balls more so than fly balls. So by comparing the profile for the types of batted balls a pitcher is giving up with his BABIP and the league average BABIP one can get a general sense of whether a pitcher is being lucky or not. The variable that is harder to get a grasp on is the defense behind a pitcher which can also influence BABIP. A pitcher only has a distinctive profile to the extent that he consistently gives up the same kind of batted balls (LD/GB/FB) from year to year.
If you get caught up in the details and the math you will go nuts. However if you stick to the general concept it makes sense and you can get a general feel for how to apply it.
True enough
Re: “Rosenthal has been excellent considering age and skipping a league but when looking behind the numbers he is not blowing the league away by any means and if he keeps pitching as he has, his stats are more likely to decline than improve.”
I’m not sure I get that. Why, for instance, would we expect, “if he keeps pitching as he has”… He doesn’t seem to do much of that. Last night was, for instance, as big a variation as one could expect…. He gave up a lot of hits and no BB’s. Clearly his stuff wasn’t working for him so hitters were centering on him. Which sounds to me like he was off and not like he was offering more of the same. The previous game he finished 7 innings of 3 hit ball with 7K’s and 1 BB. What about that is predictive of poor future performance?
On the other hand, as he continues to refine his offspeed pitches and work them into his repetoir, most good pitchers become more comfortable with the art of pitching and he’s a good one….student of the game, I would think. I believe, instead, that he’ll become more dominant as he moves forward rather than less so.
Just an opinion, but, no less valid than somehow trying to predict future results by using past numbers. Having spent a career in the stock market trying to accomplish something similar with numbers, I can proffer a litany of fallacies with the process.
I understand it now. There is nothing to say that Rosie’s BABIP won’t finish low for the season. However, if it does, all CC is saying is that it is an aberration. All pitchers BABIP’s on a given level are in a fairly close range – much closer than you would think. For instance, Clemens sat .284 while Lohse sits .300. You will get variations from the mean in any given season. All CC is saying is that there is no way that Rosie is a .234 BABIP pitcher…..on any level because his BABIP by definition will gravitate to the mean eventually.
In many ways, this removes the human element from the game, but it is only used (as far as I can tell) for predictive purposes.
That’s pretty much it. There are very, very few .234 BABIP pitchers even for a season. If Rosie were to start giving up fewer line drives his BABIP could possibly stay low (but doubtfully lower). Of course you can still give up a lot of hits and be effective if you get a large number of K’s or get a lot of DP balls. A good pitcher such as Rosie will most likely adapt if a few more of those batted balls start falling as hits. He will most likely bear down even more and give up fewer walks and possibly get a few more K’s.
Man that triple play sounded cray
Great start of it by Garcia – continues to impress
The more I watch Lance Lynn pitch, the more I believe in the theory that pitchers should get their feet wet in the bullpen before starting. It worked with Lynn and Waino very well. I am starting to think that this would be a great way to get Shelby acclimated (next year probably). Like Lance, Shelby throws a great fastball and his off-speed stuff lags. Get him in the bullpen in high pressure situations, learn to pitch, and move to the rotation the following year.
The thing that worry’s me about Lynn is he has never logged over 164 IP in his career and teams haven’t faced him multiple times yet just wait till the 2nd Half it will be a test to see if he’s a for real pitcher. For Example Michael Pineda had a strong first half last season eating tons of innings for the M’s and in the 2nd Half he broke down and struggled with his pitch location and he lost his velocity.
You can’t compare the two, Lance is a bull dog, and a beast. He does what all young pitchers should learn to do, just throw the ball to the target and don’t think about it. You could change him back to releiver today and he would do the same, that is Lance.
I agree with that of below, things will change his second time around .
He also put a lot more time in AAA, Shelby is no where near going to STL.
We rarely agree but in this case we do. Miller isn’t ready. He needs to develop a change and curveball.
Lots of comparing and discussing two pitchers who have had their weaknesses exposed and certainly have a long way to go to STL.
Who’s the other pitcher and what’s the weakness?
I won’t get into a p match with you, you seem to be very knowledgeable, so figure it out.
What’s the weakness? He’s walking more than last year despite being hit less? We have discussed likely why this is occuring. In fact I’ve stated it. He’s trying to be too fine sometimes and sometimes he seems to lose his head and throw 8 balls in a row. Is that considered a “weakness” if it didn’t occur last year?
In case anyone is interested, here is a link to a write-up that John Sickels did on Joe Kelly:
http://www.minorleagueball.com/2012/6/14/3084221/prospect-of-the-day-joe-kelly-rhp-st-louis-cardinals-scouting-report
Went to the Springfield Cardinals game last night. Some observations:
Rosenthal didn’t have a good night at all. He pounded the strike zone, yes, but a lot of his pitches were pounded the other way. Pretty much every hit and a lot of the outs were hard contact. His line could have looked much worse, were it not for the triple play.
The triple play was bizarre and great. The ball was hit sharply up the middle. Garcia made a great sliding/leaping/over-the-back snag for out one. Gathered himself, threw to second to force out the runner on his way to 3rd. Then, Wong overthrew the first baseman quite severely. However, the Cards got a lucky bounce and the ball came right back to the first baseman, who promptly threw out the runner going to second. The crowd’s reaction was something along the lines of “Holy crap! Triple play! No! Son of a..>! What? Holy crap! Triple play!”
Finally, Oscar Taveras’s swing… Keith Law is definitely right on saying “violent,” but it’s the bat speed and plate coverage that makes it so, not any kind of weirdness. Lots of hard contact. Really fun to watch.
On the triple play it was the catcher backing up first base that got the over throw and threw to second.
Too bad Tartamella can’t hit………
Very true. He does a real nice job behind the plate and seems to work with the pitchers well.
Definitely not Rosie’s night. I think he had 90 pitches. The Springfield broadcaster must have done a terrible job because I thought he described the ball Garcia snagged as a fly ball into shallow center. No walks! (figured everyone would be pleased! :) ). Definitely didn’t sound like any of the hits were cheap.
Did you check out Garcia nice range at SS. Kids a very good defender at that position a .963 FLD%. What makes Taveras so great is he has the great hand eye coordination that is what makes him such a threat at the plate. Though I agree with you on Taveas unorthodox swing very good bat speed he also has a leg kick in his approach that will make him go in few slumps at times.
http://www.baseball-intellect.com/WordPress/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/oscar-taveras.gif
Anthony Garcia has 28 extra base hits in 52 games..impressive stuff at the age of 20
He has really turned it on in the month of May, and June after a struggling April he’s hitting for a higher AVG and more power.
A quick back-o’-the-envelope calculation has Anthony Garcia at roughly .310/.400/.550 since his dreary 3-24 opening week.
Also, for anyone who didn’t see John Sickels’ writeup, it looks like Anthony G. has grown a couple inches since he was drafted at age 17. Sickels says he appears to be about 6′ 2″ and 195 lbs., or plenty big enough to have plus-plus MLB power by age 25 or so. Now if he can just cut back on the K’s….
Also, Oscar Taveras hits good, huh?
And Carson Kelly is signing