This is an interesting little trade worth commenting on from a fantasy perspective too. The Twins traded Ryan Doumit to the Atlanta Braves for LHP prospect Sean Gilmartin.
The fantasy impact here is that Doumit is a pretty good hitter who has mostly DH'd or played LF for the Twins but has catcher eligibility in most fantasy leagues. This means that even though he is a terrible defensive catcher and doesn't catch much, he has a lot of fantasy value because most fantasy leagues don't count defensive stats and he gets more playing time than most catchers. That all goes away as he moves back to the NL where the Braves will likely use him mostly as a PH and backup catcher. In short, he pretty much loses all fantasy value!
Gilmartin is a cautionary tale about the fate of polished college pitchers with marginal stuff. He's a soft-tossing LHP, former first round draft pick out of Florida St., who can get it up to 90 MPH but mostly works in the high 80's with very good secondary stuff. He did well in the lower minors but stumbled in AAA. Of course, he also had some shoulder issues so that could have impacted his performance. Gilmartin fits the mold of the type of pitcher the Twins like to run out there. Pitch to contact, keep the walks down, keep it in the ballpark and hope to win a lot of 5-4 and 6-5 games.
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Regarding polished college pitcher with marginal stuff, I understand the part about marginal stuff, my question is,seeing a lot of older pitchers who do get by with marginal stuff, how do they pull that off?
ReplyDeleteCan a prospect with marginal stuff, but with baseball IQ (my assumed answer to the above question), succeed as well?
In the majority of cases, said pitchers once had much better stuff when they were younger and as they go older, wiser and more experienced, gradually became finesse pitchers who could win with lesser stuff. We are probably witnessing that happen with Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum as they evolve into more well rounded pitchers with less dominant stuff.
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