Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Down on the Farm: 2010 Giants Top 50 Prospect Review- #16 Clayton Tanner

#16 Clayton Tanner, LHP. AA: 9-9, 3.68, 149 IP, 64 BB, 79 K, GO/AO= 1.79.

I'm not sure what to make of Clayton Tanner's 2010 season. He pitched decently, but that K/BB is just horrific. It's partially made up for by the groundball tendency, but still.... It's hard to imagine stuff that produced a line like that in AA holding up at higher levels. One thought is that Tanner's season continues a trend in which pitching prospects see their K rates drop significantly in AA. In Madison Bumgarner's case, it turned out to not mean too much. He was probably just working on some things and got his mechanics messed up a bit in the process. In the case of Tim Alderson, it was a harbinger of tougher times ahead.

Tanner physically looks a lot like Noah Lowry, has similar stuff and this is certainly a Lowryesque line. The thing about Noah Lowry is I'm not sure he cracks the current Giants rotation, even at his best! It wouldn't shock me to see Clayton repeat AA at age 23 in 2011. Not impossibly old, but not exactly on the fast track either. I have to say I see him eventually getting traded out of the organization.

3 comments:

  1. I seem to recall one of Urban's segments with Bobby Evans late in the year in which Evans singled out Tanner as someone on whom the organization was particularly high. Something about the tone of his voice suggested to me that he really meant it and wasn't blowing smoke. I believe they later added him to the 40-man roster. So despite the nonspectacular peripherals, perhaps he does have a future as a possible 5th in 2012.

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  2. Tanner is the most advanced of all the potential SP prospects. It's quite possible he was working on something specific in Richmond. When I made the comp with Noah Lowry, I should have pointed out that Lowry was never a groundball pitcher like Tanner is. That is a really important difference. If Tanner can maintain a GO/AO >1.5 at higher levels, he may be able to get away with the low K rate, but it would be unlikely for him to be more than a #4 or #5 on any team.

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  3. Clearly Tanner is not a premiere prospect, not on the fast track, and there's nothing wrong with that. Given that, being in AA at age 22 in 2010 is still pretty good in terms of growth and development, if he is ready to come up when Zito's contract is over or almost over (i.e. tradeable) that would still be pretty good, he wouldn't be that old a prospect coming up.

    I've been rooting for Tanner because he's a local kid in the Giants farm system. Hopefully he was working on something because those numbers are not the greatest.

    But as DrB astutely notes, a key difference between him and Lowry is that he's a groundball pitcher, and if he can keep that up in the higher levels, he'll be OK.

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