Archive for the “Scouting Reports” Category

I was really fortunate to see a lot of impressive players over a three day trip to Quad Cities. I’ve had weekend trips before that felt like a total bust but this one was pretty good. The starting pitchers were most impressive, relief pitchers were underwhelming and it is something of a mixed bag for the position prospects.

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Yesterday’s report was much more positive than today’s.

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Three games, three starters. This past weekend I had the opportunity to see Trevor Rosenthal, Zach Russell and Boone Whiting start for the Quad Cities River Bandits. Two out of three weren’t bad.  I’ve also got some notes on Ryan Copeland.

I’ll have more scouting reports on Saturday (relievers) and Monday (hitters). I had originally thought this would be one post but … it turned out to be considerably longer than I expected.

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I spent a weekend in Springfield taking in some local company and a pair of games: one on Saturday and one on Sunday.  There are three position players on the Springfield team (Matt Adams, Ryan Jackson and Tommy Pham) that I paid special attention to and I had the chance to get a look at Nick Additon and Kevin Thomas as starters.

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Over Labor Day weekend, one month ago, I made another tip to the Quad Cities to watch River Bandits baseball.  I’d been to the Quad Cities several times this year and still managed to miss Shelby Miller.  Yes, I’m still bitter about that and yes, he’s something of a white whale to me currently. In any event, what follows are my notes on various players from that visit.

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I’m pretty jealous of Kevin Goldstein. Beyond the fact that he has an awesome day job of discussing bsaeball prospects all the time, he’s also seen Shelby Miller four times this year in person! I’ve seen nine Quad Cities games and zero Shelby Miller appearances. Boo!

KG saw Miller in his latest start during the playoffs against Kane County. Miller was dominant over 7 innings and Goldstein has a full scouting report on the Cardinals top prospect:

Summary: Between body, delivery, and stuff, Miller has easy frontline starter potential, as 9/8 playoff start was best performance by a pitcher I’ve seen all year. Previous looks do create concerns, although potential for improvement is significant. Don’t see much projection in fastball, but doesn’t need it, and shows enough high-quality curveballs to project for a 70/60/50 repertoire only seen in star-level arms. Improved control/command throughout season and could be poised for ’11 breakout.

I’ve been critical of Baseball Prospectus in the past (and they still need to clean up their UI experience — their stats sections are awful) but between Goldstein’s continually awesome prospect reports and the additions of some “hardcore” sabermetric types (namely Colin Wyers), it wasn’t a hard decision to re-up my subscription last week.  The teaser above is just a small part of the awesome writeup that Shelby got from Goldstein.

I wanted to link to this report, which was quite detailed and well done; he came away with a higher opinion of Broderick (and higher velocity readings) than I did from a recent game. It’s a good read. To wit:

I can see him being a very good fifth starter or maybe even developing into a fourth starter.  However, Broderick doesn’t have anything that’s over powering or above average.  But he is a very good competitor and gets the job done.  Guys like that seem to do okay for a few years.  And at least make a decent career in the bullpen.

There’s more over there so be sure to read the full report.

I’ve got notes on all three starters I saw: David Kopp, Brian Broderick and Arquimedes Nieto. Below you’ll find out which of the three I think has big league potential.

From the bullpen I saw quite a few pitchers including Blake King, Tyler Norrick, Jason Buursma, Thomas Eager and just a touch of Adam Riefer.

Notes on both groups follow.

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I wasn’t sure what I was going to see when I went to Springfield. I had a lot of names on my list to see. The level of talent was better than I expected. So let’s get down to the details.

(Note: Based on the length of the post, I decided to split it into two parts. Too much to discuss at one time. The pitchers will be available in a post on Wednesday.)

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As I recount my notes from the past week and scour the some 50 pictures I took over 3 days, I always find it prudent to let my notes sit for a bit before I make any hyperbolic statements. The trip to the Quad Cities was a lot of fun (and I owe a big thanks to my friend in that area for housing me for the weekend) despite the humidity.

After three days, these impressions are the epitome of small sample size on a results based measure. I try to look for skills that should be relevant after any sample size but I’m cognizant of the limitations here. Without further equivocating, here are my comments, both general and specific, regarding the Quad Cities River Bandits.

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