posted by Jay Y. @ 3:07 PM

posted by Jay Y. @ 3:02 PM

posted by Jay Y. @ 11:45 PM

posted by Jay Y. @ 10:09 AM

posted by Jay Y. @ 5:30 PM

J: Snyder’s all business. Give him the ball and he’ll go do his thing, then call him back in another five days and he’ll go at it again. Some people refer to this as a sort of intensity, but you’ll get no complaints from me. Whatever helps a guy focus.

After he signed on as a draft-and-follow early last year, he tore through the Arizona League and the Northwest League after that, and with a power repertoire backing it up, he seemed like as good a candidate as any to have a “breakout” season, or at least start getting noticed by the minor league baseball publications.

For a while, Snyder was doing just that and had a 3.55 ERA through June 2nd. Not great, but showing signs of potential and racking up Ks at a decent rate. But from then on, things seemed to go downhill, and that all culminated with a shoulder tweak in early July. Even worse, he had to come back a bit ahead of schedule less than a month later, as Wisconsin started to run out of arms.

They kept him to bullpen work to ease the strain a bit, but I would’ve felt better had they shut him down for longer. We probably won’t know until spring training whether or not he’ll be back at full-strength.

G: I kept stats at three-week intervals through June 11th, just to try to keep an eye on how players are developing over the first half of the season, and to have something to compare their final numbers to.

Snyder, on 6.11:
7-4, 3.64 ERA in 71.2 IP, 81 hits (5 HR), 41 runs (29 ER), 43K/16BB.

He was scaring me a bit, since his Wild Pitches (11) and Hit Batters (5) equaled his walks for the year and I couldn’t exactly determine what that meant. Wild but starts throwing over the plate in order to avoid walking people? That could explain the high number of hits for a guy with a hard FB/Slider combo, as well as the fewer-than-expected strikeouts.

Harnessing his stuff correctly would clear all that up – he just never got that chance. Once that injury hit, his inconsistencies turned into disasters (though not as badly as it happened for star-crossed Mark Lowe, below) and balls started leaving the park, his K/BB ratio sank…it all went south. Snyder limited the NW League to 6.5 H/9 while striking out 8 per. His walks actually improved over his numbers there this year, but Jason’s got a power pitcher’s dilemma of how to be most effective with the stuff he has.

He got groundballs, but not as many as I thought he would. More Ks and fewer hits are needed, especially when going up to hitter’s leagues. But Snyder is a fairly tenacious fighter – something else he shares with Lowe besides stuff and bad luck – and it’s plenty early in his career yet. Assuming health next year, there’s nobody from Wisconsin I’d expect to take a bigger leap forward in performance than Jason Snyder.

Note, 11:33 AM: A commentor noted that the listed weights for Julio are still the same as the signing weight, and he's probalby closer to 200+ now and "built like Felix", apparently. That puts our concerns about his build to rest, but the reason why he's been missing months at a time is more of a mystery now. I'll probably have to change some of the things I wrote here later.
11:56 am: Changed it from the third paragraph on. Will ask G later if he wants to do the same.
J: For a few choice weeks every year since they’ve signed him out of Columbia, Julio’s been among the most exciting pitchers in the system. This year, August was his time to shine, and he mixed up two mediocre starts with three incredible ones to post a 2.51 ERA in 32.1 innings on the month, punching out about seven and a quarter per nine (big thanks to PRC for doing the legwork on the monthly splits).

And then he disappeared, and no one could seem to tell you where he went.

Originally, I thought this stemmed from his listed weight, which is usually in the 150 range. Smaller pitchers, you always have concerns as to whether or not they’ll be able to develop the endurance to stick around as a starter long-term. But apparently, he’s anywhere from twenty to seventy pounds heavier now, which just raises a new set of questions. Is he having back issues, or are they arm issues? Months after the fact, I still don’t know, and neither the M’s or the local papers ever seem to report anything. He may be a guy who suddenly bust on the scene in another year or so and gets some recognition as he finally manages to get a healthy season in, or he might not ever get that far.

G: Yep, there’s Julio teasing us again. He’s not even 20, though, so I’ll let him keep on teasing for a few more years if necessary. I’m glad his offspeed stuff has improved over the course of the season – Lord knows we couldn’t let a kid come through our farmland without making him throw a decent change – but I’d like to see him start well, pitch well, and finish well one of these years.

It’s his own fault I have these expectations, really. When he comes out and blows away guys without any apparent effort for about 6 weeks, then evaporates, I never know what to think. Is he that good all the time and his age and lack of experience just isn’t letting him be consistent, or does he just get lucky in the middle of summer every year?

His control was great (just over 2 walks per 9) but he’s gonna have to get the hits against under wraps or higher level hitters are gonna tattoo him. Still, I don’t expect a 19 year old to have the art of pitching down to a science just yet. We’ll see if his low walks and high hits are because he’s just dumping pitches into the zone without spotting them.

I also share J’s concern about Julio – the same one that I have about Marwin Vega from the last update: can his frame hold up for 200 innings a year?

If it’s a warm-weather thing, I’m definitely voting for him to get a promotion to IE next year. Put Julio wherever he’s most comfortable and see if you can’t get that kid’s spark to ignite into a full-borne blaze.

J: Here’s another guy that we want to see back in the rotation, but it just hasn’t happened yet. O’Flaherty’s main issue is his back, which has been flaring up on him at times ever since he turned pro. That was what sidelined him for most of last season, after a tremendous first season where he had a sub-2.00 ERA and a sub-1.00 WHIP down in Arizona, which is the kind of thing that usually has me searching around the floor to see where my jaw went.

Back in high school, he was throwing his fastball with an average major league velocity and it looked like he was capable of adding more to it. More than impressive for left-hander, and enough to get the Braves to consider spending a first round pick on him, considering he also had a good sinker and a solid breaking pitch.

He was nails through most of the first half, but his performance dropped off in the middle months before rebounding at the end. I don’t know whether that’s the back flaring up or just the weight of having to carry the bullpen while Craig James and Chad Fillinger moved to greener pastures, but he was pitching just about every third day on average, so he’ll get a pass from me.

G: I actually disagree with J here – I thought Eric was better in the later months. J's Note: We aren't really disagreeing here, I'm just thinking of him running something like a 0.00 for the first month.

O’Flaherty’s BAA in the middle of June? .342. Ouch. 39 hits in 27 IP will do that to you. But Eric wasn’t used to bullpen work and was coming off of an injury-plagued previous season, so some adjustment was needed. Some of his troubles in the middle months seemed more like bad luck than bad pitching, and over the balance of those months he seemed to put together more consistent work than he did in his first couple. (Editor's note: J would like to say for the record that that's almost exactly what he said, so there's no disagreement. So nyah nyah. End quote.)

He only gave up 34 hits in his last 42.2 IP, racked up 33 of his Ks (‘bout 7 per) and 18 walks (3.8 per). Seems like a power pitcher getting better with his stuff to me, though he’s gonna have keep refining that control. My concerns about him lie with that bad back. If he can find his way back to the starting rotation he could be a gem. Otherwise, he’s trapped in the pen and thus limited to a certain value. There’s nothing wrong with him being a bullpenner, but I’d certainly like to see him get another crack at the rotation. And he’s still just 20, so we’ve got some time to get him finessed into the best pitcher he can be.

More than anything else though, I just want him to stay healthy. He can’t do anything for us just sitting in the dugout waving a towel.

J: There were times in the first half when Lowe was pitching like he was the best pitcher on the T-Rats staff, inducing groundballs left, and there seemed to be just as many times when you were gnawing your fingernails down to stubs, trying to figure out if he’d be able to get out this jam, before resigning yourself to the inevitable and shutting off the radio feed. But Lowe is another guy that we don’t want to sell short just yet.

For one thing, he had a liner bounce off his pitching hand in early June as an awful sort of birthday surprise. I’m not trained in the medical field or anything, but I can imagine where even after it’s supposedly healed, that’s something where it won’t feel just right afterwards, not to mention the month spent on the DL.

For another thing, his primary pitches are mostly sinking in nature, and the issues he experienced with the busted hand and the month off would certainly be further exaggerated if he were throwing a bunch of “feel” pitches.

Not a great season by any means, but the surrounding circumstances make it a bit easier to swallow.

G: For me, Mark was perhaps the most aggravating pitcher in all the low minors. I expected good things from him this year, and I got them – but only about every third start. The other two were either “eh” or “Holy Cow that’s gruesome.”

After his first two starts: ERA was 0.00
His third start: 4.1 IP, 10 hits (2 HR), 8 runs (all earned), 3K/3BB
His fifth start: 2.2 IP, 10 hits (1 HR), 9 runs (8 ER), 2 K/1BB
His ninth start: 6.0 IP, 4 hits, Zero runs, 7K/0BB

It was as schizophrenic a season as I’ve seen in a while.

For a sinker/slider guy in the low 90s he gives up a lot of flyballs. I still think his is one of the best arms that was at Wisconsin this year, but he’s gonna have to learn how to keep the big inning/trainwreck game from getting out of hand.

6.25 K/9 and 4.25 BB/9 are not especially notable for a power pitcher. He was all over the zone, and just had some spectacularly Tin Cup type of games. “What, that didn’t work? Okay, we’ll try it again. What’s that, another HR? I am unafraid, try to hit this…”

However, before the hand injury JFrom mentions his Ks were about 7 per while his Ks were under 3.5 – in other words, he was holding his own even with the occasional (nuclear) meltdown. If he can get back on that track next year and keep his fastball out of the heart of the zone he should still be a prospect of note.

J: Being the college guy who had a good track record, but not the exciting stuff, Grasley’s role this year was to bridge the gap between the starter and the tougher arms in the ‘pen, if the guy in the rotation just couldn’t bring it that day. The bad news for the T-Rats is that those days seemed to come almost once a week, but Grasley was more than capable of going the distance and logged the most innings of anyone in the ‘pen.

Since he’s a right-handed control artist who relies on staying away from the free pass, he’s dealing with a potential uphill battle for his whole baseball career, but I find it difficult to argue against his approach or his results. For his minor league career, he’s a perfect 13-0, and there’s a good reason behind it. He doesn’t back down, doesn’t give in, and he’ll make the adjustments when he has to.

G:
Grasley on 6/11: 2-0, 4.43 ERA in 42.2 IP, 44 hits (4 HR), 27K/20BB
Grasley after 6/11: 7-0, 3.06 ERA in 47 IP, 40 hits (1 HR), 43K/14BB

Without his 2nd half of the season, Grasley would not be on this list. Even with it, it’s hard to put a RH bullpenner with average stuff on here. But Grasley reworked his mechanics this year, was extremely effective after he got comfortable with those mechanics, and has done nothing wrong in his minor league career thus far. He’s filled every bullpen role imaginable and succeeded at all of em. I’ve heard his breaking ball is improving as well, which could really help his stock.

He went to college with Tom Oldham, and I can only hope he adjusts to better hitting at least as well as Tom has. Grasley’s an unknown commodity until he hits AA – at least as far as future success goes. He has a hunger to learn the game and get better, and that fire is gonna have to serve him well.

J: Hope. But I can’t really get by with a one-word summary, so I guess I’ll have to expand that a bit…

Back in high school over in Marshalltown, Iowa, Clement set the record for most career home runs by a prep player with 73, if I remember correctly. There are a lot of factors that can skew high school records like that, but when he went to USC and played in a pretty tough PAC-10 conference for his college career, he was doing pretty much the same thing and still projected to 30+ HR, according to most.

Except he’s a catcher and he still has a bit to learn about handling the position. Such is the price one sometimes has to pay for premium offense at a premium position. His release point while throwing out runners is a bit off, and our view of quality pitch blocking may have been skewed for having a former hockey goalie behind the plate for more than a decade, but the M’s have one of the best catching instructors in the business in Roger Hansen, so I have some hope.

If he can’t stick behind the plate, his bat will still play anywhere, but it would be super cool if the M’s got a MOTO bat from a position that doesn’t always inspire tremendous offensive numbers.

G: There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Clement. Other than we drafted him as a catcher at #3, of course. There just haven’t been a lot of top-5 pick catchers who’ve come through on the promise of their bats.

In fact, let’s list all the ones in the top half of the 1st round since 1990 who’ve done ANYTHING: Joe Mauer. Eric Munson made it to the show. Our own Ben Davis. 1994 was a good year with Varitek and Konerko back-to-back in the first. Mike Lieberthal and Dan Wilson in ’90, not exactly power-hitting backstops. And that’s it.

But Clement may indeed be one of those rare, once-a-generation-or-so hitters who can pull off 30 homers every year while squatting behind the plate for 9 innings as well. And if he can’t hack the D, he should be able to pull off a 1B switch like Konerko did.

He has a chest like a water buffalo and a clean power stroke that reminds me of Thome or Abreu, with the hands loaded far back and the rotation of the torso creating most of the power. He does seem to keep his hands closer to him than either of those guys do, however, so he may not be as pull-happy as a Thome could be.

Then again, at the Safe we don’t care how pull-happy he is, as long as he’s hitting the dingers. His catching skills need work, but we have coaches for that. His eye at the plate in college was very good, and was just fine at Low-A as well.

Whaddya want me to say? He’s the best hitting prospect we have, and he’s living up to the potential. He loves catching, he’s gonna give it his best effort to stay at catcher, and all he has to do is have “all right” defensive skills if his bat progresses as expected. If we can stuff him into Safeco in ’07, I’ll be ecstatic.

J: A lot of scouting types who dig on physical tools fell hard for Tui following the ’04 season, but while most were listing him as a breakout candidate, his performance wasn’t quite as exciting as they had hoped for. Still good, for a teenager in the Midwest League, though, and his on-base abilities and raw power showed some potential.

Tremendous tools, he still does have, but there were more than a few things working against him in his first full season. You have to take into account that this is the first year that he’s focused solely on baseball, and furthermore, the first year he’s been just a position player (yes, he did pitch in high school). He could have also been distracted by the demands of playing a tough defensive position, which he just isn’t going to stick at anyway. And finally, you have the league itself, which can get into the heads of inexperienced batters and drag them down in the early months, leaving them with a steep incline to claw their way back up.

But hey, Adam Jones didn’t have an easy time in his tour of the Midwest either, and he seems to have broken out this year. Put Tui in a hitter-friendly league and give him a position that lets him think a little more about his bat, and he could be on pace for a similar explosion.

G: Adam Jones at Wisconsin: .267/.314/.404/.718. So that would mean Tui’s just about on-pace – except he’s not a SS or a CF of the future. If he’s gonna be a LF of the future, then those power numbers have to go waaaay up.

If I had my wish he’d also have been trending up in the 2nd half instead of down – but then Jones didn’t exactly go on a tear the 2nd half of his inaugural year in full-season ball either.

I hope they'll see what he's got at 3rd before shunting him to LF, but more than anything I'd just like him to be able to focus on putting the bat on the ball and making it go far. If left - or right - field is where he can do that, then put him there. He's got a cannon of an arm, good speed, and serious bat potential – but he’s not a SS, especially not in our system, so stop wasting his time. At the plate, he did nothing particularly WRONG in the Midwest League this year; he just didn't blow everyone away. Lots of Ks + lower-than-expected power = questions.

Don't let that get you down on him. For a guy who's only gonna turn 20 in May, his future is still awfully bright. Give him warm weather, easier-to-reach fences and A Plan, and let him grow from there.

J: Not one, but two catchers on the list? Hey, when you’re playing what is viewed as the best defense in the league behind the plate and batting MOTO most of the time, this is what happens. I’m not saying that Johnson projects as a comparable threat in the big leagues, very few big leaguers bat or pitch in the same slot as they did in the minors, but he’s shown a consistent ability to make contact and has some decent power numbers, so I think he could become a solid contributor.

Rob is another guy who’s shown some potential, but doesn’t have an extended track record to go off of. He only started playing baseball seriously in JuCo, and he was mostly an outfielder there, but he’s been improving by leaps and bounds and seems well worth the high draft slot.

I do like the strength of our catching corps in the low minors right now, but if I’m picking one guy to rise above the pack and form the duo of the future with Clement, I gotta go with Rob.

G: First off, does this guy even know HOW to strike out? You aren't supposed to make contact EVERY time, Rob, especially as a white boy from Montana. A K every 9.83 ABs in the Midwest League is pretty darn special. For his career (452 ABs above AZL) he's at 8.21 AB/K, which is still extremely good. All he has to do is walk a leeeettle more and he could be awfully special - considering his defense is better than his already-pretty-good offense, Johnson is everything you'd want from a low-level catching prospect. He's 22, which is a little old for Wisconsin, but just about right for Inland Empire where he finished off the season.

I’m with J on this one – I like him to come out of the pool of non-Clement catchers we’ve got. He’s not as young as Santin (in Everett and just missing that list) but the same age as Rivera (AA with a stint in the bigs) and Oliveros (also AA). And thus far he’s shown better power than all of em (small sample size alert). So at this point consider Rob Johnson right about where he should be on his ML track - taking into account, of course, that catchers are almost impossible to predict.

And since as J points out Rob isn’t exactly a polished product just yet, I’m looking forward to another year of him figuring out this baseball thing. Two catchers from within the org both making it to big-league success? A guy can dream, can’t he?

J: Hubb put together some pretty nifty power numbers for the season, even keeping himself in the system home run chase for most of the year, but there are two things that have been keeping me from getting more enthusiastic about him.

For one, everyone ahead of him on that list was either younger, playing at a higher level, or (in most cases) both. As a college guy, he should be hitting, and his craft there should be pretty refined. The other thing is that the added intrigue I have in him as a prospect, I suspect is the novelty surrounding him being a first baseman and an apparent offensive threat, a combination that has been otherwise limited to a series of quad-A guys lately in the M’s system.

I wanted badly for him to be promoted to the California League before the end of the season, which would’ve given me a little more to talk about, but that never came to pass and he seemed to cool down towards the end, rather than heating up with the weather. Wait ‘til next year.

G: Marshall's 2004 year in Everett was not exactly something to write home about. Average? Okay. OBP? Good. SLG? Bad. Strikeouts? REALLY Bad. All in all, as a 22 year old college-boy in a league of teenagers, it was just short of a faceplant for our 8th round pick. (Kinda reminds you of Sabatella this year, don't it? That bodes well for Sabs next year, I guess)

Hubbard started slow (.253/.336/.394 on 5/21) but he just went on an absolute tear in the middle of the season. It didn't seem like there was an RBI that Wisconsin had that didn't come off Marshall's bat, and it got that slugging % up around where you'd want your power-hitting 1B to be. He walked a lot during the season, but struck out an awful lot too. I don't mind the K specifically, but when it's coming against A-Ballers who haven't perfected their craft yet it's a bit unsettling. He also doesn't have the excuse Wlad Balentien had last year of being an inexperienced kid in a foreign country. Marshall's gonna have to rein in his tendency to whiff in order to reach the majors, but at least now he's back on the ML track to begin with.

For getting his game on track, he definitely deserves props. But I want to see him take the next step in the Cal League next year.

J: Seriously, Mike Wilson? Wasn’t this guy supposed to be a football player?

The tools were in place all along, but it took him a while to get there. In reality, this year’s isn’t too different from last year, except his BB/K improved a bit, as did his power, and, to whip at the dead horse again, the Midwest League does strongly favor pitchers in the first half. He also seemed to improve on the field, racking up quite a few assists out there.

I don’t know what else to say with him, but for now, I’m not calling it a breakout, partially due to the level and partially because it wasn’t that big a jump from last season. I’d also like to see him improve the ol’ batting average just a little bit.

G: Mike Wilson. Also known as The-Draftpick-Who-Should-Have-Been-Dan-Haren. Or Casey Foppert, if you prefer. But it’s not Mike’s fault we wanted to draft Bo Jackson instead of an arm. After all, Bo does know baseball, and we paid Mike Wilson a “decent amount” ($900K) to forego his scholarship to Soonerville and join up with us.

He is an absolute Brick – that weight probably isn’t wrong, and it ain’t fat either, all thighs and chest – so it’s good he found a decent HR swing. I haven’t seen a guy that big switch-hit in a while, but it’s got to be an interesting sight. I actually thought swinging from both sides of the plate was hampering his game last year, but this year was just a decent one and not a great one so if it was holding him back it wasn’t much. At least he finally got into full-season baseball; we drafted him in ’01 and this was his first year above Everett. It showed promise, but also that he’s very much a work in progress.

In fact, just cut and paste what I said about Hubbard striking out and such in here, replacing “first baseman” with “outfielder” wherever necessary.

He’s got work to do, but this was a decent campaign for a hitter who was very well thought of coming out of HS, so I’m willing to wait and see. At least for another year…

posted by Jay Y. @ 10:56 PM

posted by Jay Y. @ 1:21 PM