Friday, July 5, 2013

Down on the Farm: 7/4/2013

AAA  Sacramento River Cats scored the only run of the game with the Fresno Grizzlies in the top of the first inning:

Gary Brown(CF)- 1 for 4, 2B.  BA= .246.
Roger Kieschnick(RF)- 2 for 3, 2B, BB.  BA= .265.
Mitch Lively(RHP)- 6 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 4 K's.  ERA= 5.87.
Brett Bochy(RHP)- 2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 3 K's.  ERA= 5.00.
Heath Hembree(RHP)- 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 3 K's.  ERA= 4.93.

Young Boch has been scored on in just 1 of his last 7 appearances.  This was Hembree's 4'th consecutive scoreless appearance.  While his ERA is high, he has terrific peripherals with 42 K's against just 11 BB's in 34.2 IP.

AA Akron Aeros out hit the Richmond Flying Squirrels 11-8:

Javier Herrera(LF)- 4 for 5, HR(12), BB, SB(17).   BA= .312.
Angel Villalona(1B.)- 1 for 4, 2B.  BA= .200.

High A  Visalia Rawhide defeated the San Jose Giants 4-2:

Chris Lofton(CF)- 2 for 3, 2B, BB, Sac.  BA= .242.
Ricky Oropesa(1B)- 3 for 4.  BA= .529.
Adalberto Mejia(LHP)- 6 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 7 K's.  ERA= 3.63.
Jason Forjet(RHP)- 1.1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 3 K's.  ERA= 2.01.

Strong start for Mejia despite being charged with the Loss.  Take out his second start of the season in which he gave up 6 runs in 3.2 IP, Mejia's ERA is 2.25 with 33 K's against 10 BB's in 36 IP.  He is having a successful transition to high A ball at age 20.

Low A  Charleston River Dogs beat the Augusta Greenjackets 4-1:

Joan Gregorio(RHP)- 6 IP, 7 H, 3 R, 2 BB, 6 K's.  ERA= 3.78.

Short Season  Salem-Keizer Volcanoes topped the Everett Aquasox 8-5 in 12 innings:

Elliott Blair(CF)- 2 for 5, 2B, BB.  BA= .286.
Ryan Honeycutt(DH)- 2 for 4, HR(1), BB.  BA= .269.
Shilo McCall(PH-DH)- 1 for 1, 2B.  BA= .296.
Ryan Jones(2B)- 3 for 5, SB(2).  BA= .457.
Chris Johnson(RHP)- 5 IP, 9 H, 4 R, 0 BB, 7 K's.  ERA= 2.17.
Jake Shadle(RHP)- 2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 3 K's.  ERA= 1.88.
Raymundo Montero(RHP)- 3 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 3 K's.  ERA= 3.09.

Shilo McCall hit a bases-loaded, bases clearing pinch-hit double in the top of the 12'th to drive in the winning runs.  Jake Shadle is 23 years old.  He's pitched in the AZL for the past 3 seasons with good peripheral numbers.  It looks like he may have been injured in 2011.  He now has 15 K's against 3 BB's in 14.1 IP.

Rookie AZL  Giants were idle.

DSL  White Sox topped the Giants 6-3:

Raffi Vizcaino(RHP, 17 yo)- 5.2 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 BB, 6 K's.  ERA= 3.00.
Reymi Rodriguez(RHP, 18 yo)- 3 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 3 K's.  ERA= 1.31.

17 comments:

  1. Javier Herrera's BABIP is .369-- YIKES!!! That sure makes his .312/.394/.529 line look a lot less exciting.

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    1. Sorry, but that is a misuse of BABIP as far as I'm concerned.

      Mike Trout's BABIP is .351. Does that make his .314/.389/.547 line a lot less exciting?

      Carlos Gomez' BABIP is .370. Does that make his .311/.350/.563 line a lot less exciting?

      Chris Davis has a BABIP of .371. Does that make his .327/.401/.722 line a lot less exciting?

      Come on, people! If you have a BA over .300, you are going to have a high BABIP. Do high BABIP's tend to regress? Yup, they do. Do BA's >.300 tend to regress? Yup, they do!

      I am so sick of people posting BABIP's and predicting this or that from them when anybody who knows anything can easily see that players who put up great numbers tend to not sustain them, except when they do sustain them!

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    2. I'd add that you have to treat minor league babip's with a little more salt grains as well. Quality of fields, quality of fielders, all sorts of variables.

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    3. I tend to look at pitcher BABIP's more than hitter BABIP's. For instance, if a pitcher gives up 10 hits and 6 runs, but also walks just 1 batter and K's 8 in a 5 inning start, then he might, MIGHT, have gotten the bad end of a run of BABIP luck. On the other hand, it you are Tim Lincecum and you find yourself BABIP'd every single game for a year and a half, then you might want to start looking for other things to blame your lack of success on.

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    4. Let's just take 2 very well known players who had long MLB career as case studies:

      Cal Ripken's peak years were from 1982-1998. During that time he had BA's that ranged from .250-.323. His BABIP's ranged from .248-.338. His final career BABIP/BA was .277/.276. Without going into more details, I defy you to look at his season-by-season BABIP/BA and find any pattern that makes his BABIP's a better predictive tool than his BA's.

      Willie Mays is a very interesting case. Excuding his 1952, 1972 and 1973 seasons, his BABIP's ranged from .268-.339 while his BA's ranged from .263-.347. Here's the thing about Willie: From 1954-1966, his BABIP's were lower his BA every single year except one when it was equal! Then, from 1967 until the end of his career, his BABIP's were higher than his BA. He finished with a career BABIP/BA of .299/302. Again, I defy anyone to find anything in his BABIP's that were more predictive than his BA's.

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    5. On the flip side there are only a few major league players who have career BABIP of over 350. I think its Jeter, Ichiro and a couple of other likely suspects.

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    6. A couple of things on that: 1. I did not say I thought Herrera would maintain a BABIP of .369. He's going good right now. There are rhythms to baseball that go up and down. He's definitely in an up phase right now. 2. He does not have to maintain a .369 BABIP to maintain a .300 + average. The point to get from both Ripken and Mays is that their BABIP's and BA's both had a fairly wide range but they did not necessarily coincide with each other. Both players were able to put up good BP's with mediocre BABIP's and had seasons where they had poor BP's with good BABIPs.

      I guess the main point I got out of reviewing those 2 players season by season is that there just is not any more consistency in BABIP from year to year than there is for BA and the two do not necessarily follow the same curve. I checked out several other players who had long careers with high BA's like Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs and Rod Carew and round much the same thing.

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  2. .422 for Minicozzi.

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  3. Mikey Edie is signed! The monks of MLB of course don't release the financial details. Maybe later today. Really nice signing in my opinion. The Gigantes seem to be valuing standout play in international competition, with Arroyo and now Edie. I like that strategy a lot.

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    1. Don't know anything about Mikey Edie, but he sure has a great baseball name. I can just hear Kruk and Kuip saying it now.

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    2. He's played on the VZ national team under 15 as well as being on the 2009 LLWS team. Here's a nice look at him: http://baseballinstinct.com/2013/06/30/2013-top-21-international-free-agents/

      They like the fact that he's succeeded in international competition. Couple this with Arroyo, and I have to say I really like the picks and the strategy here. I love getting Team USA guys - that's what got me hopped up about Ty Hensley and Lucas Simms. And good ol Alex Bregman.

      This is a very nice signing. We hit the 5-tool tree, we hit the yoot tree, and the Gints get the added advantage of seeing him compete at a different level. Good stuff.

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    3. Sounds like given their MLB imposed spending constraints, the Giants already have a solid IFA signing season.

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  4. Mejia is a great looking prospect. 20 years old and gonna start looking at AA ball soon. Mano! There was a rough period for our pitching prospects, but with Crick and Mejia back and dealing, things are looking up big time. Just want to see Agosta get over that dead arm.

    Hembree looking better, but is that secondary pitch coming along?

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    1. Yeah, you and DrB have been right on bringing up Mejia, I was not convinced at first but you guys really hit the nail on the head, once I started looking at his stats in-depth, I joined your Mejia bandwagon.

      And yes, it was great that both came back dealing, that's really exciting. Any thoughts on whether their injuries are one-timers or a recurring thing to look for in the future?

      Did not realize that Agosta had a dead arm! I missed that totally (just saw it in the description of his last start). Wow, not even a sign in his pitching gamelog, he had four straight DOM level starts to June 13th, then basically has been shut down since his one inning start on June 22nd, that's about two weeks now. There were no pitch counts before his last full start on June 13th, but he threw 109 pitches in that start, and been facing roughly 25-26 batters faced in every start starting with his May 13th start (and excluding his really bad start on May 19th).

      Assuming that is around 100-110 pitches per start, maybe he's not used to throwing so many pitches into June? Though I thought that colleges work starters really hard, for a lot more pitches, though I guess the flipside is that they don't have a start every 5 games like they do in the pros.

      If Hembree has been struggling for so long to develop a secondary pitch, he needs to do well for the rest of the season to even get my hopes up, as we all know, even a full season's worth of stats is not truly indicative of their talent level, too much random noise makes that too hard to see, really.

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    2. I'll tell you what about Mejia - he'd be high in any organization in baseball. There's a certain tribe of Giants prospect hounds who love to beat up on the Giants for not having enough youths. Occasionally I join in to that chorus, but come on, the Giants have 3 of the 5 youngest players in the California league with Crick, Blackburn and Mejia. That's major cause for celebration. But some folks are never happy.

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  5. Good for Brown to snap back so fast! After struggling for about 10 days with strikeouts again, though still hitting for HR power, in his last four games, he had only one, one!, strikeout in 18 AB/PA. That is a great percentage, obviously unsustainable, but still you got to start somewhere. And he's still hitting well and for power with this short stretch of excellent contact.

    Angel is clearly adjusting to the higher level, but doing better than his adjustment back to Advanced A ball this season. So far in AA, 702 OPS, which is good considering his BA is only 200 and he's still not drawing walks. On top of that, he has 7 K's in 15 ABs, again, obviously unsustainable, he'll be sent back to SJ if he keeps that up. But 2 XBH in 4 games, keep that up, and he'll be a top prospect once more.

    Good for Ricky, maybe he can just relax and let his natural talents shine. Go Ricky!

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    1. I'd be cautious about sample size in all three of these cases.

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