Mariner Minors
Rule 5, What Others Are Saying
In the interest of providing multiple viewpoints, I'm providing links to the Rule 5 reviews courtesy of
Wait 'Til Next Year and
John Sickels.
First, let's start with Wait 'Til Nex Year, where Bryan Smith had this to say regarding the Twin's pick of Ryan Rowland-Smith...
I cannot say I completely understand this choice, though Rowland-Smith will hold a place in my heart (with Bryn Smith) for having a name vaguely familiar to mine. In seriousness, while there were many LOOGYs available, Rowland-Smith was one of the very few Ron Villone-types that were on the market. The problem here is that Rowland-Smith is not that good, and apparently his Australian ties helped get him chosen. I don’t want to say there is no chance the Twins will carry him, but really only a long-term injury to [fellow Aussie] Grant Balfour would stop them in my opinion.
Chance of sticking: 7%
As I've said before, ordinarily I would look at a guy of Rowland-Smith's caliber and not really think that he would be drafted. But again, this is the Twins we're talking about, and their scouting of Australia is one of the top, if not the top in all of major league baseball.
John Sickels spinned it in a more positive angle...
9) Minnesota selects Ryan Rowland-Smith (LHP, Seattle). A 6-3, 21-year-old Australian southpaw, Rowland-Smith allowed 107 hits in 100 innings this year for Inland Empire in the California League. But he also posted an excellent 119/30 K/BB ratio, and his 3.79 ERA was credible given the park and league environment. Rowland-Smith might not be the next Johan Santana, but mechanical refinements have boosted his velocity, and if he continues to throw strikes he could be quite successful. He pitched for Australia in the 2004 Olympics.
On the whole, it's pretty clear that Santana is the better pitcher in the long run, and no one's questioning that, but he is more polished than Santana was at that point. Santana, for reference, had a 4.66 ERA and a K/BB of 155/50 the year before he was drafted.
The big difference here is that the Twins team Santana stuck with lost 93 games and they are now viewed as division favorites, having taken the last three AL Central titles. If Rowland-Smith pitches like the 25th player on the active roster in the middle of a penant race, the chances of him sticking go down dramatically, and it only makes sense.
I'm not going to give numbers on his chances, but I do think that the Twins probably knew what they were getting into when they selected him. If he had a chance to stick with any club at all, it would be with the Twins, but they won't be just handing him the job.
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InsideThePark.com's 41-50 Mariners Prospects
Jason over at ITP has already rolled through the position ranking and is now on to running through the top 50 Mariners prospects, starting with
50 through 41 (free content).
This year, in addition to the strengths, weaknesses, and MLB comparables of yesteryear, Jason has added a little bit on each of the players tools. A good read, and as previously stated, this part of the ranking is freely accessible to everyone.
41. CF/3B Brent Johnson
42. LHP Matt Thornton
43. 1B Brandon Green
44. RHP Aaron Taylor
45. LHP Jared Thomas
46. RHP Brandon Moorhead
47. RHP Mark "Don't Call Me Derek" Lowe
48. RHP Jon Huber
49. RHP Mumba Rivera
50. OF Chris Colton
For reference, I've also tweaked the sidebar now so that it has the current 2004 prospect rankings and my own hitting and pitching data added. Those still curious about the 2003 rankings will find them listed below the weekly archives.
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BA's Top 10 M's Prospects Chat Transcript
The chat is now over and the
transcript is now up. For a while, it seemed like an experiment in how many Felix questions you could fit into a short span, but things picked up from there. It was good to see some familiar faces, namely Paul, G from SportSpot, "DG from NoTac", and Ian, who managed to avoid asking Callis about minor league nicknames (or at least didn't get that question answered). In addition, we had a reference to "Texas" Oldham that Jim didn't quite get, but displays that the range of the ITP chats is greater than I originally thought.
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BA's Top 10 M's Prospects Chat
Baseball America's Jim Callis will be
chatting on M's prospects starting a few minutes from now. If you had any questions you wanted to get in during the league chats but couldn't, now would be the time to ask, about both the guys on the list and those who didn't quite make it.
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Baseball America's Top 10 M's Prospects
Between Beltre + Sexson and BA putting out their top 10 Mariners prospects, it's just like Christmas around here...
Anyway, the
free portion of the article provides the system overview along with a short list of the top ten. Note all the different names appearing on the sidebar, with Felix and Reed being the only players to have their names listed twice. Overall, they seem pretty positive about the system, but the real insight is, of course,
subscriber only.
Without further ado, their list runs like this...
1. Felix Hernandez, rhp
2. Jeremy Reed, of
3. Shin-Soo Choo, of
4. Clint Nageotte, rhp
5. Matt Tuiasosopo, ss
6. Travis Blackley, lhp
7. Chris Snelling, of
8. Adam Jones, ss
9. Wladimir Balentien, of
10. Asdrubal Cabrera, ss/2b
Which is pretty similar to what the USSM guys have, except Blackley's bumped down one and Tui makes a huge leap into the top 10. Overall, no surprises here, unless you count Morse not being on the list and Snelling in his place as surprise, and personally I don't.
To quickly add some notes to this...
* Felix has no questions with his work ethic and is groundball prone, both things I'd been looking for insight on.
* In general with the hitters, their reports agree with mine, though they say that Wlad pulls every pitch where I would say he pulls every pitch until he gets two strikes on him, but I digress.
* Inside pitches are still kryptonite for Choo. I don't think I mentioned that before.
* They're higher on Blackley's curve than his slider.
* Snelling's various surgeries have left him with below average speed, so don't expect him to play center though his instincts could save him at the corners. He may not go too much higher than 15 HR, but then again, he hasn't really been on the field for a few years now.
* Jones, at worst, could be a CF, so they say.
* Earlier, I predicted that Asdrubal could make the jump from Everett to the Cal League for next season, taking the Jose Lopez career path, and they say that the Mariners are planning on doing just that.
Of course, there are a few topics of interest left unmentioned, so there will be a chat on the Mariners farm at BA tomorrow, 2 pm ET 11 am PT. I'll try to add a link as we get closer to that time.
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Rule 5 Draft Recap
The winter meetings have finally concluded with a lot of stress and little fanfare. As is always the case, the last day was reserved for giving a few players new teams via the rule 5 draft.
This year, the Mariners lost two pitchers,
LHP Ryan Rowland-Smith in the major league portion to the Minnesota Twins and
RHP T.A. Fulmer to the Devil Rays in the Triple-A portion. While they did not add any players to the major league roster, they selected
1B Aaron Rifkin from the New York Yankees, 2B
Aaron Herr from the Atlanta Braves, and
IF Kervin Jacobo from the San Diego Padres.
The selection of Rowland-Smith caught me slightly off guard, as I was focused primarily on the possiblity of strong-armed RHP Rich Dorman being taken by someone. Still, if anyone was going to take a flyer on RRS, it was going to be the Twinkies. Minnesota has recently been one of the strongest forces in Australian scouting, and there's little doubt that they know what they have in Ryan.
As a pitcher, he compares to both of the Aussie left-handers we already have/had in the system, Craig Anderson and Travis Blackley, though stuff-wise he's a lot closer to Blackley. Rowland-Smith has the repetoire to start, he just never quite got the opportunity to do so with much regularity in the minors. Still, it's hard to pass up on a guy who has K'd over a batter per inning for his career and has consistently put up solid peripherals.
Ordinarily, I would say that a guy of Rowland-Smith's pitching style (and inexperience) might not have a chance to stick with an MLB team for entire season, but the Twins know what they're doing when it comes to these thing and plugging him into relief has proven to be no issue. I would be a lot more suprised if we did see him in Mariners uniform again at the end of the coming season, but the Twins' possible playoff run will also factor in there.
Fulmer's on the other end of spectrum. It's not that he's bad, through his first two seasons he was actually pretty good, but last season things fell apart for him. It strikes me that the D-Rays are probably paying for the potential of dominance that Fulmer displayed in the first month of play when he posted a sub-1.00 ERA, opponents were batting .151 off of him, and the Inland Empire pitching staff was looking like the wrath of God divided amongst five different arms (albeit in unequal portions). Since Fulmer was drafted in the minor league portion of the draft, the Rays are under no obligation whatsoever to return him for any reason, and could have him pitching for their Gulf Coast team for all anyone cares. No great loss.
So far as the players taken by the M's, Aaron #1 (Rifkin, that is) is known for averaging 21 home runs over his past two years in Double-A. That power potential made him a fourth round pick by the Yankees out of Cal State Fullerton in 2001. The bad news is that in 1213 career at-bats in the double-A Eastern League, he's posted a career batting average of .259, and those numbers regressed last year, while his strikeouts went up. The highest average he's posted in a year is .269, and the highest OBP was .335 in the same year. The guy looks like a 4A player at best (so says BA as well) and I have no real idea why they grabbed him considering they've already signed not
one, but
two minor league free agent first basemen who look like they're the same basic thing. But hey, Jeff Sullivan says that he was
the 2003 Trenton Thunder Fan Favorite, and we all know that's what counts the most.
Aaron #2 (Herr) I'm still digging for info on, though I hope to get some feedback on him from
Brad Dowdy soon enough, as he was an Atlanta Brave. He is the son of former St. Louis Cardinal
Tommy Herr, and was a first-round supplemental pick by the Braves out of high school in 2000. What else is there to say about him? He contributed to James Loney's broken finger during the season. He hit .196/.240/.217 in the AFL this fall. He was part of what was, at the time, thought to be one of the best drafts the Braves had done. AND... now that we have "noted fan favorite" out of the way, we can add a "solid tools that have gone unfulfilled" to the system. Huzzah!
Kervin Jacobo is one of the names I hope to be typing more often, just for the variety it provides. He spent 3+ years in the Diamondbacks system, including DSL time, then headed over to the Padres for the past year and a half, which means that he's the third player we've taken from the Padres in the past two minor league rule 5s (the other two being
Omar Falcon and
Darwin Soto). Jacobo never really did anything with the bat, but his arm is decent, so they're planning on converting him to a pitcher. Which isn't so bad, after all, the M's have had
some success stories in that area, though
not all conversions have succeeded.
This brings our minor league rule 5 draft tally to a fan favorite with some power, an infielder with a lot of tools and little to show for it, and a project right-hander who is just moving to the mound. Just another day in the Mariners farm system.
Please, someone make a good signing. I'm dying here.
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Winter Leagues: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (12/12/04)
Good
OF Shin-Soo Choo, 23 games, 73 at-bats, 19 runs, 3 home runs, 14 walks, 7 stolen bases, .301/.422/.466
3B Greg Dobbs, 27 games, 106 at-bats, 20 runs, 4 doubles, 12 RBIs, 7 walks, .293/.346/.377
RHP Emiliano Fruto, 2.70 ERA, 3.1 IP, 3 hits, 1 run
SS Juan Gonzalez, 19 games, 54 at-bats, 8 runs, 3 doubles, 10 RBIs, 7 walks, .296/.394/.444
RHP Rick Guttormson, 0.36 ERA, 25.0 IP, 14 hits, 7 walks, 33 strikeouts
LHP Cesar Jimenez, 2.51 ERA, 32.1 IP, 33 hits, 14 walks, 21 strikeouts
SS Jose Lopez, 28 games, 101 at-bats, 23 runs, 8 doubles, 5 home runs, 6 walks, .277/.330/.505
LHP Miguel Martinez, 1.00 ERA, 9.0 IP, 5 hits, 6 walks, 3 strikeouts
RHP Julio Mateo, 3.38 ERA, 2.2 IP, 3 hits, 1 run
2B Erick Monzon, 13 games, 27 at-bats, 5 runs, 1 double, 1 home run, 5 RBIs, .296/.345/.444
C Rene Rivera, 11 games, 32 at-bats, 4 runs, 5 doubles, 1 home run, 7 RBIs, .313/.333/.563
LHP Melvin Rosario, 3.00 ERA, 9.0 IP, 8 hits, 6 walks, 4 strikeouts
LHP Matt Thornton, 1.54 ERA, 11.2 IP, 10 hits, 4 walks, 14 strikeouts
2B Luis Ugueto, 44 games, 191 at-bats, 37 runs, 14 doubles, 5 triples, 25 RBI, .330/.373/.503
Bad
RHP Juan Done, 4.70 ERA, 15.1 IP, 18 hits, 2 home runs, 4 walks, 15 strikeouts
LHP Jose Escalona, 6.75 ERA, 2.2 IP, 7 hits, 3 walks, 3 strikeouts
RHP Brett Evert, 7.43 ERA, 23.0 IP, 24 hits, 6 walks, 4 home runs
RHP Jon Huber, 6.43 ERA, 28.0 IP, 35 hits, 13 walks, 27 strikeouts
RHP Edgar Guaramato, 5.40 ERA, 16.2 IP, 22 hits, 13 walks, 10 strikeouts
IF Jesus Guzman, 3 games, 4 at-bats, 3 runs, 2 strikeouts, .000/.000/.000
3B Justin Leone, 19 games, 59 at-bats, 14 runs, 2 home runs, 10 walks, 21 strikeouts, .220/.333/.390
SS Michael Morse, 25 games, 93 at-bats, 5 runs, 2 doubles, 8 RBIs, 17 strikeouts, .258/.296/.301
LHP Melvin Pizarro, 5.40 ERA, 6.2 IP, 1 home run, 5 walks, 7 strikeouts
RHP Tony Runion, 5.67 ERA, 27.0 IP, 38 hits, 16 walks, 24 strikeouts
Ugly
RHP Renee Cortez, 9.45 ERA, 6.2 IP, 12 hits, 2 home runs, 7 earned runs
C Luis Oliveros, 13 games, 38 at-bats, 2 home runs, 7 RBIs, .158/.195/.342
LHP Jared Thomas, 9.14 ERA, 21.2 IP, 30 hits, 15 walks, 15 strikeouts
This week's movements include Renee Cortez and Edgar Guaramato dropping to ugly and bad, respectively. Meanwhile, Miguel Martinez and Julio Mateo have both debuted on the good list. Juan Done is close to being promoted to good. In other notes, it's possible that Cesar Jimenez has wrapped up his season this week, as he did not make a start. Reports indicate that Jesus Guzman, Jose Escalona, and possibly Emiliano Fruto are currently working out in the LVBP's minor league. Whether they'll spend any more time with the Cardinales remains unknown.
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