95 thoughts on “Box Score Recap, 16 April 2012”

  1. Lehigh Valley continues their strong play! No save this game as they win big 8-2. DMitch fans happy w/his 4 rbis. Hyatt, even though he walked 4, gaveup only 1 unearned run. Cloyd goes to 3-0 in Reading. How about Troy Hanzawa batting .333 w/7rbis. Not a good night for Clearwater. Altherr a homerun short of the cycle for Lakewood. Eldemire with 3 runs scored (he is scoring a ton of runs at the top of the line-up).

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  3. Ok start for Cloyd.
    Unfortunate that Morgan managed to give up 5 runs on 8 baserunners.
    Eldemire’s OBP is ridiculous right now. Great game for Altherr.

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      1. And no HR’s, as well as a 6-3 groundout/flyout ratio. He might just have had some bad luck yesterday.

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      1. He got to 2nd on a passed ball the first time he was on base and he scored from 1st on an error on a pickoff attempt the 2nd time he was on base.

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        1. I’m trying to visualize him scoring from first on a bad pickoff attempt… man does he have speed to burn. Eldemire’s OBP is unbelievable and his leadoff skills to date look pretty terrific. Gillies with two hits was nice too.

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    1. and 15 Ks in 10 games (41 PAs). He really needs to build off of an improved season last year at Williamsport. IMO, he looks like another over-matched high school position player. Hope I’m wrong

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      2. Tyler Greene, another toolsy HS player, is having a tough time with strikeouts early. In 38 plate appearances he has 16 ks. Over 40% k percentage.

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    1. I noticed that – reminds me of Singleton in that way – but thats just me getting way too excited about any player showing any promise really early

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      1. He’s a terrific player but Eldemire couldn’t be more different than Singleton. They’re both good but in totally different ways. I still have hope though that Eldemire will show more power before the year is over as his wrist becomes stronger. Let’s not overlook how well Altherr is playing, he’s putting together a very nice start.

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  7. Looking at the boxes from the past several days, Franco and Brown have been raking. Not so much last night, though.

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    1. FWIW Dom had a nice blast that proably would have gone out on a calm day, but was knocked down by the wind. Baseball.

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  11. Love to see Hanzawa & D’Arby Myers hitting. Sure it means very little and both are very far off-the-radar but it’s always interesting to see.

    Hyatt hasn’t done too bad thus far. Hyatt, Cloyd, Pettibone, May could all see some big league time within the next year or two. Regardless of how they turn out (flameout, etc.) it’s a sign of a good org. if you can do that; right?

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    1. seeing big league time or making an impact are very different. Despite the hype from a few years ago, our system hasn’t produced much in the last 5 years or so. That’s reality

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      1. Worley won 11 games last year if I recall and Bastardo and Stutes were big time contributors last year also. Plus one could argue that the system got them Halladay, Lee, Oswalt, and Pence in the last 5 years also. And Galvis is holding his own after a slow start.

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        1. Not to mention Dom Brown (assuming his defense straightens out), Travis D’arnaud and Jon Singleton are within 2 years of possible big impacts. Plus, if the timeline is 5 years, can also include Happ and Kendrick. Even forgetting what we got in trade for prospects, that’s not a bad return from the farm.

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      4. Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt, Hunter Pence, John Mayberry Jr
        _________________________________
        Vance Worley, Antonio Bastardo, Michael Stutes

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    2. Hyatt’s been productive but early on he’s had trouble with the BB. He’s a guy who has been very good at not walking many and averaging more than a K an inning. He’s walked 8 and K’ed 13 in 16 innings. i’ll chalk it up to getting used to a new league, a new level and small sample size. I’m not concerned but will keep an eye on it.

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      1. Hyatt is not overpowering, he needs hitters to swing at his stuff. He’s learning how to pitch and learning when to throw a strike and when to throw something that looks like a strike. I don’t think he will ever be a starter in the big leagues but I think he could ultimately be a middle/long guy in the pen. Of course, he’ll have lots of competition for that job on this team. I’ll bet he ends up being a throw in to some deadline deal.

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  12. Eldemire just seems to be toying with the opposition, sheesh. Definitely should be one of the first promoted in my mind.

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  13. Gauntlett Eldemire has played his 1st 10 games as a professional. He has been on base in all 10. He has hit in 9 of 10. In 4 of 10 games, he reached base 3 or more times. He has 12 hits, 9 walks, and 8 steals in the 10 games. He may be trying to break a record for fastest promotion from Lakewood to Clearwater.
    It took Michael Taylor 65 games, of putting up monster numbers, but he started slow.

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    1. The 9 walks in 45 PAs is truly impressive, although his 9 Ks are also high. At 23 yrs old, I’d like to think he’ll be promoted relatively early-on provided he doesn’t fall into an extended slump

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      2. They also need someone to step up from the extended spring training camp to be promoted to take Eldemire’s spot. They are probably going to wait until After June 1 when some of the vets who have out clauses in AAA opt out and then they can move players around because as of now there’s nowhere to put Eldemire in Clearwater unless you’re sending someone down from Clearwater.

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        1. Stassi would probably move up and Dugan would probably move to OF, if Eldemire moved up.

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  15. Where’s all the T. Green fanatics now? The fact that us readers ranked him as the 11th best prospect in the system was astonishing. My view of him was much closer to where PP had him ranked in his top 30… (at 24) … anyone want to come clean about him being overrated yet or do you need another 0fer-4k’s?

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    1. The kid is playing in A ball in his first year out of high school and has even flashed some power… Really??

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      1. Just as Altherr and Franco in 2011…he is getting a taste at LKW and will eventually finish up well at Williamsport this year.

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      2. The power is great,… but he’s no where near our 11th best prospect, and if you guys want me to wait until he’s demoted to make that declaration statistically then fine. No matter how you look at it, a 40% K rate in a relatively small sample size sure as hell doesn’t affirm the over-reach that most of this board has on him.

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    2. I have no opinion on Greene, but it’s ridiculous to make that kind of assertion after 34 at bats. You know who else is 7 for 34? Jose Bautista.

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      1. I’m not saying he’s a worthless prospect, and I completely agree, 34 atbats doesn’t tell the whole story, but using just the eye-ball test, he looks like he’s 2 levels too high. I can’t remember a real prospect (don’t go comp’ing hewitt) playing as poorly over 34 at-bats, as he has. Mostly, my arguement is that he should have been in the 20’s not where he was voted to. And yes, his numbers may turn around, and even if they do, they won’t justify him being placed where he was (assuming it’s down at a lower level).

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    3. Greene is 19. He has shown flashes of power and patience and speed with decent defense. The Ks are the least important factor for him. He even has a 701 OPS with all those Ks. He will be fine and is probably showing enough to stay at Lakewood.

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        1. Wrong. If he can put up a .701 OPS at SS in the Sally league he’ll be a mid-season all-star, regardless of the Ks. Sounds like you have an axe to grin with TGreene.

          Seems to me the Phils concurred with his TGreene’s ranking. They promoted him to low-A, while prospects PP liked better (Walding, Quinn, LGreene) were retained in extended.

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    5. I don’t think I would go so far as to say he’s overrated, but it certainly was premature to rank him so high just because he had 70 PAs.

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    6. I ranked him that high, and I’d do it again as the Phillies somewhat validated that assessment by placing him in Lakewood.

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    7. I was like you and had Tyler much lower than we had him as a group. But there is no reason for “I told you so” posts. It serves no purpose except to start a fight.

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      1. I’m not trying to start a fight. I think he was irrationally ranked where he is. You could rationally argue him anywhere from 15 to 30, but 11? Come on. As statistics continue to come out for him, I believe I’ll be proven right. And as to the poster above saying his placement is a sign he deserved the ranking, that’s horsecrap, that’s no different then me saying his 300k bonus means he shouldn’t be ranked in the top 20. The thing was, he is a new draftee, with no statistically significant sample from the year he was drafted. How he ended up ranked above Roman Quinn and Larry Greene Jr. I’ll never understand. Both of whom were significantly better rated and better paid.

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        1. I had Quinn and L. Greene ranked in that area as well – both of whom were better liked by the national publications – but not THAT much better. T. Greene was a top 200 prospect, the Phils got a great deal on him. Most were prognosticating he’d sign for 700+. Good on us for getting it done.

          I wasn’t very high on the system – so I ranked recent draftee’s really high. No horsecrap there, not many folks liked our system post-trades, predraft. And I’ll stand by my assignment comment. Look at Phils history, it means something for a HS player to get assigned to Lakewood.

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  16. I guess no one listened when I said that people shouldn’t get too high or too low on anyone’s results in April. The thresholds for when individual statistics become statistically significant

    From fangraphs:

    50 PA: Swing %
    100 PA: Contact Rate
    150 PA: Strikeout Rate, Line Drive Rate, Pitches/PA
    200 PA: Walk Rate, Groundball Rate, GB/FB
    250 PA: Flyball Rate
    300 PA: Home Run Rate, HR/FB
    500 PA: OBP, SLG, OPS, 1B Rate, Popup Rate
    550 PA: ISO

    http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/when-samples-become-reliable/

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      1. Batting Average isn’t great for evaluating a prospect, or any player for that matter considering the evolution of OBP in our game.

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      2. If Greene is ascending in OBP by 1 June….Phillies will send back to short-season Cutters, just as they did with Mikael Franco. Confidence seems to be an important aspect to development of youngters.

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    2. Generally I’m all for being patient. But for guys who are behind developmentally, I don’t mind jumping the gun a bit and hoping for the best.

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    3. Great reference PP, thanks for the reference (wish you could list a link to this on the site somewhere)… As to jumping the gun, absolutely, but I’ve been jumping the gun on him being ranked rediculously high by the readers since the moment we voted. I just wanted to throw out that opinion after 34 AB’s to see if I have any converts, If he’s still over matched by 100 AB’s i’ll mention it again.

      Just to follow along that line, I don’t think he’s worthless by any means. He’s just not one of our top prospects and belongs in the 20’s (I have him in the 21-22 area). Of all the placements towards the top of the reader top 30, this was the one that I disagreed with the most. And it’s why I brought this up.

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    4. I would say these significance tests underestimate the time needed for statistical significance for players adjusting to a new league, especially young players like TGreene.

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  17. jimhg
    saw the reading game last night. gillies was impressive with two good hits and a great diving catch. being picked off third was a learning experience i hope. leandro castro made a fabulous throw on a line to almost get a putout at home. reading manager thought the call was wrong and game close to getting tossed.also a key hit. cesar hernandez looked very comfortable in the field and made a run saving stop to his right early in the game. cloyd did not look impressive and was hit hard consistently. never got up to 90 on the gun. rosenberg was at 94-95. didn’t realize that he threw that hard. maybe it’s a fast gun. plan on seeing the next two games

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    1. Jimhg, I hope I’m not stealing your thunder too much but I just typed up some stuff on last night’s game and I’ll add it below. What a gorgeous night for a ball game.
      -Mike

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      1. mike, no problem, i enjoyed your observations very much. good to have different perpectives.
        bbq at buzz and ned’s and a perfect night for a very entertaining ball game. can’t do much better.
        i am wondering about cisco being pulled from the game with an apparent injury of some kind. nothing in the news about it.

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        1. Absolutely, good call Jim. Buzz and Ned’s is a must for anyone looking to grab a bite before the game. Plus with Hardywood Park opening up this past year, trips to the diamond area can get pretty dangerous in a good way…We couldn’t figure out what happened to Cisco on that pitch as it didn’t seem too remarkable. If only the city of Richmond and it’s surrounding counties could settle plans for the new ballpark maybe we could get a stadium with a jumbotron for replays (would have loved to have seen Gillies catch again!). Did you happen to catch the game tonight? Can’t believe I traded a T. May start and that massive offensive display for the Hunger games…Hernandez w/5 hits, Castro w/6 RBI, May with a 7/2 K/BB and a pair of doubles…WOW!

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  18. Hey all, I had a chance to catch the R-Phils/Squirrels game last night and here are some general observations , sorry in advance for the tome:
    -Most impressive player for me on either team was Leandro Castro as he demonstrated good power, (absolutely smoked a double to the wall in Left Center), a plus arm, (threw a frozen rope to the plate on a guy trying to score from 2B on a single, called “safe” but the ball arrived a good 2 steps before runner slid and Valle could apply the tag), and had much more speed 1st to 3rd and scoring from 2nd than I anticipated (the always important “hustle” intangible). Struck out swinging in his 3rd AB on slider down and away IIRC but pitch recognition looked good otherwise.
    -Gilles had a good game driving a FB off the outside corner into LF in his 2nd AB and smoked a triple inside the 1B bag. Fun to watch leg out the triple and even had my girlfriend remark, “that guy was flying.” Highlight of the game was a circus-catch he made charging a pop to shallow center w/a sliding grab. Awesome closing speed. Did get picked off of third on a fake to 1B throw to 3B which was quite the rally-killer.
    -Cloyd pitched fairly well, however, Richmond made pretty good contact off him all night as his command fluctuated. At the end of the game I checked in w/D. Buchanan and T. May who were a few rows behind us doing some advance scouting and they said that Cloyd topped out at 88 and that the velo on the stadium gun was true.
    -Cisco came in in relief with his FB getting hit pretty hard (topped @ 92 IIRC) but also featured what looked like a nasty slider with late break/downward movement to get several Squirrels to look silly. Might have been the single most impressive pitch from either team’s pitchers all night.
    -Johnson; I’m not very familiar with this big lefty but he came in throwing hard from the 3/4ish slot. Looked to be tough on lefties but I didn’t catch any of his secondary stuff since I had to go on a fried-pickles run to the concessions.
    -Rosenberg came in to close and was around 94-95 w/his FB. Seemed like the Squirrels hitters were making good contact with fastballs all night regardless of velocity, however, many of the hardest-hit balls were either right at somebody or just foul.
    Other observations: James has a pretty swing and will be fun to watch fill out, however, looked like he was late on a lot of FB’s and had a difficult time w/handling off-speed stuff (K’d 2x’s IIRC on off-speed stuff down and in). Was really hoping to get a chance to see Valle’s arm in action but no luck there. Hanzawa had an all-around good game, it was great to finally put some names to faces!
    -Mike

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    1. Thanks for the report. I was able to catch some Reading games in their last series and Castro was one of the players that stood out. Good to hear on Gilles, as I really look forward to seeing what he can do in a full season and beyond.

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  19. I know it’s only been a couple of games…. but Anthony Hewitt’s .083 BA and continued struggles with the strikeouts are not very encouraging. Will he ever turn it around and be even remotely close to the prospect the Phillies envisioned him to be when they selected him? Or has everyone already turned the page on this guy? I think I may be the first Hewitt-related comment on this thread…. so has everyone given up on him?

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    2. I have to think that he’d have been released by now if the Phillies hadn’t given him first round money. Easily the biggest prospect bust they’ve had in my time following the system, and it’s not like a whole lot of people saw it coming. Still, I guess they had a lot of picks that year, many of which worked out nicely, so we can’t really complain about them swinging and missing for the fences on the first pitch they saw.

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    3. Having been hurt, I’m sure he’s behind right now and trying to catch up. Having said that, Hewitt needs a year better than last year to remain even a marginal prospect and its his physical tools and not his production that allow even that.

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    4. If you have the rosiest colored glasses in the world you might stutter over the ‘Y’ but you’d still say “Y-yes”.

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    5. I don’t think it is a pick the Phillies regret, he was a lottery ticket, even now if you just looked at the tools you would still see potential superstar. The problem with taking raw athletes is that often they don’t really learn how to play baseball, and occasionally you get something special.

      All this being said, he will be 23 in a week and a half and is in Hi-A, there is zero expectations of him doing anything, if he makes it to AA next year it will be a nice surprise. This year so far is a tiny sample size considering it has been his first few games. He isn’t really a prospect any more but I still check the box score because when he does manage to put the ball in play he is exciting

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    6. Did he miss all the spring training stuff with his injury too? If so I give him a break for his bad start, which is only a few games after all. He’s been taking baby steps each year in the system, so I’m just hoping he takes another one this year. I wouldn’t say I’m optimistic about it though.

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  20. Love this site. Can someone enlighten me as to how Eldemire compares to Gose when he was at the same level?

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    2. For me personally its tough to compare. Gose was extremely raw in Lakewood and IMO still is. We dont know a whole lot about Eldemire. So I cant compare the defense but I can probably say his arm isnt on the level of Gose. Gose has 3 plus tools already, speed, defense, and a special arm. Eldemire a college player and isnt age appropriate right now. Baseball America was very high on him going into the draft 2 years ago though. Hes showing plate discipline Gose never showed and actually none of our tool shed outfielders have since Brown. Its early though and hes too advanced for low A. We will see.

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    4. I agree that its a tough comparison. Gose has special speed while Eldemire is merely very fast. Gose is a special defensive outfielder with a great arm while Eldemire is very good. however, Gose has not yet shown an ability to make enough contact or hit for enough average to be a major league player. Gose has started to show some power and Eldemire hasn’t although I still expect his wrist to get stronger over the course of the season and I think he’ll flash power also. Eldemire is far away and already 23 so he’s going to have to move quickly. In rough terms and just as a frame of reference, Eldemire is a 300 hitting 20 homer, 30 steal kind of guy while Gose is a 280, 15 homer, 60 steal kind of guy who wins a gold glove. In theory……

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  21. A project I am going to embark on, very soon, is to go through all of the daily box score recaps and pull out the first person reports and put them in their own section on the website. I think this will be helpful going forward. If you attend a game, please feel free to send me your report by email to make it even easier for me to find them and catalog them.

    Thanks.

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    1. I would again like to remind folks that you can see basically all the AAA games, some of the AA games and selected lower level games if you sign up for the Minor League Baseball package. It’s $40 dollars a year, which gives you unlimited access to all games and all game tape archives (every game available is archived). So, if you want to see what Phillippe Aumont or Dom Brown did the day before, you can just click on the archived game and forward to their appearances during the game. It’s the best bargain around.

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      1. I have the MiLB.tv package, it’s been great so far. Watched all 4 of Reading’s games last week/weekend and the week before that I saw the Blueclaws. I think they are showing Lakewood again this upcoming weekend.

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  22. Good idea PP. I love reading (and writing) the first hand accounts. Putting them separate will highlight the reports which take us beyond the boxscores. I can’t wait until my minor league watching season starts.

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  23. I love what Eldemire is doing. Can anyone educate me on where Lavin came from? He is quite old to be starting out- he had a nice year at WP last year and is continuing to do well even with a skip to CW. Was he in an independent league prior to last season?

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    1. I believe he was a four-year college player. Looks like he played two years in junior college and two years at the University of San Francisco. On his USF profile page, he lists Justin Bieber as his favorite musicial artist. So he might be a 24-year-old in single A ball now, but just a few years ago, he was a 15-year-old girl.

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  24. Peter Lavin is a college kid who played in the Gulf coast league AND WILLIAMSPORT LAST YEAR HITTING .299 AND .301 respectively. contact hitter played CF , GOOD SPEAD WITH NO POWER ..he IS 5 ‘ 10 …180 lbs. he will also be 25 in Dec.

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    1. I knew he was old for such a low level last year. He impressed me at WP last year. Who knows maybe he will be a late bloomer.

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  25. Like the boss said, don’t read to much into early boxes. Eldemire like Gillies has to show he can stay healthy. I know it is easy to get excited for these young guys.

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  27. Reading tearing it up tonight.
    Valle with another walk and 3 hits. Hernandez and Ruf with 5 hits a piece.
    2-6 hitters on the year: .333, .432, .333, .333, 310

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