Box Score Recap 6-21-2012

Box Score Recap

Nice night from Ervis Manzanillo, second in a row.  Perhaps he’s on the right track.

LV  REA  CLR  LKW  WIL  GCL  DSL  VSL

87 thoughts on “Box Score Recap 6-21-2012”

    1. Horst? I think they’ve seen Rosenberg and want to leave him down to work on some things and Ramirez isn’t there yet.

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    2. Schwimmer actually has had some pretty decent outings in a row. though if you look at his past 10 games, they’ve lost 9 of them. not really his fault necessarily.

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  2. Purely out of curiosity, is there going to be a “shout out” post for our two reps for the Futures game this year?

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  3. Christopher Duffy needs to be in Clearwater . He is a 24 year old College kid who was a first team all american . What’s he doing in Lakewood batting .372.. I also agree that Rosenberg should be with the big club , he only pitched 3 innings with the Phils and was hiting 94 on the radar gun .

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    1. I agree with you but he is serving a purpose. 1st, he started the year at CLW and hit .205 in 20 games. 2nd, he’s a 1B/DH. Who are you going to shift to get him ABs? 3rd, Lakewood needs a guy who can hit the ball and offer some maturity. If, and it’s a big if, they move Asche up (soon) then I wouldn’t mind seeing him split time with Murphy. I’d even be fine with moving Murph down to Lakewood. He was a stabilizing piece of past year’s Lakewood teams. He’s a couple of years older than Duffy and he has a professional nature about him. I wouldn’t move anyone else down and Duffy serves a purpose right where he is.

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  4. The best thing about someone like Quinn: I saw that he got on base an immediately checked to see if he stole a base before looking at the other players’ lines.

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  5. Hollands got that start we talked about yesterday. It wasn’t clean but the Reading bats gave him the victory. Giving up 11 hits and a BB in 6 innings would normally spell disaster but 4 Ks, 2 DPs and a little luck and he gets the W. One of those DPs involved a catch and a throw ’em out at first base by Leandro Castro from Leftfield. I’m sure it was an attempted run and hit but Castro can gun it and made him pay. He had 14 assists 2 years ago at Lakewood and has 4 so far this year.

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  6. Anyone else nervous about what Tyler Greene is doing? .143 in Williamsport after hitting similarly horrible in Lakewood, you’d think if he was further ahead of Walding, L. Greene, and Quinn he’d be able to hit better.

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    2. Not nervous because he’s 4 whole games into the Williamsport season. He had a decent start in Lkwood before falling off and just needs to get comfortable. It clicks at all different times for guys.

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      1. Nervous probably isn’t the right word as these guys have no effect on our daily lives. I get nervous when my company starts laying off people. Having said that I was one who bought into the T Greene hype. I really liked the reports I read on him after we drafted him. These early struggles between Lakewood and now tell me he might not be worthy of the ranking we gave him.

        Real prospects usually don’t struggle that badly for that long.

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        1. Ditto that DMAR…I bought into the hype also and still believe he can come around. He may take some time. Below the Mendoza line is a tough way to start low-A/short-season A ball.

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        2. You’re wrong.

          He was fine in his rookie league debut.
          He struggled in A
          4 games in A- mean zero

          You can’t add up those 3 very different experiences and draw meaningful conclusions. If he is struggling in A- after a couple hundred PA, then get back to me. Then we might have some (though still limited) reason for concern.

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          1. Larry, I uasually agree with you, but no matter how you look at it, he’s got a statistically significant amount of at-bats for the year. You can’t argue he was over-matched for A ball, and then on the same hand say but it’s ok because he was good in rookie ball. His year has been a disappointment even by my standards, and I wasn’t as optimistic as some.

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            2. Why can’t you? I don’t get it. Take a more extreme example. Say you put him in AA ball, and he was over-matched. That cause for concern also? You jump a guy 2 levels, especially at his age, and sometimes he’s not going to be ready. What does that tell you about his prospect status? IMO very little.

              That aside, whatever conclusions we draw from, his experience in A ball, it is beyond silly to make ANY conclusions based upon 4 games in A-.

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            1. it’s the same thing we see again and again – people around here being too reactive in both directions to small samples. Drives me crazy (obviously).

              On the one hand, the positive reactions tend to be at least understandable from a fan perspective. The negative reactions on the other hand tend to be more likely to be “accurate” – after all, most prospects fail, or at least fail to reach their upside. So even though 89 PA in A mean little, and 4 games in A- mean nothing (at all, zero, zip, nada), chances are you’ll end up being “right” just through the law of averages.

              But me, I prefer maintaining a more even keel regarding prospects, not letting myself get carried away in either direction by a few plate appearances.

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            2. Say what you will about the foolishness of overreacting to small sample sizes (I agree with you) but that’s still far less irrational than a whole bunch of people getting really excited about Greene based on his scouting reports out of high school. I mean, I’m not saying anyone’s stupid, it’s natural, but the fact is that we all engage to some degree or another in the same irrational behavior: jumping to conclusions about guys who are 18 or 19 years old based on little empirical evidence. We are always reminding ourselves that the vast majority of these guys are going to fail, and yet I think probably am not the only one who feels surprised every time some phenomenally promising athlete ends up struggling.

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            3. That’s a good point, and one reason that I am not disappointed is that I didn’t get so excited when he was drafted. I guess if you thought he was the next Alex Rodriguez (yes, i exaggerate), then not immediately succeeding in A ball would be disappointing.

              Not that I don’t have my faults (for example, I totally suck at evaluating pitchers so I don’t even try), but I do think I usually tend to avoid to jumping to conclusions, one way or the other. Easy trap to fall into, though.

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            4. Well I’ll be, LarryM….’Not that I don’t have my faults (for example, I totally suck at evaluating pitchers so I don’t even try), ‘…..after all these years I would have never thought I would see words like that, there you go, I stand corrected, you do have a trace of humbleness in your being.

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            5. FWIW, I’ve said similar things in the past about pitchers. As prospects, they are something of a mystery to me.

              Even with hitters, I have a very high degree of confidence as to certain specific issues, and that’s the stuff I tend to talk about. But If you were to, say, ask me to break down swing mechanics, I wouldn’t be very helpful. The problem is that, with a few exceptions, there aren’t many people around here whose opinion on those type of “subjective” observations I trust. So that leaves us with the statistical metrics, properly interpreted, and scouting reports.

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            6. Less anyone forget the debates of trying to rate Greene in our top 10 based on 70+ PA in the GCL.

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      1. Actually 175 PAs of GCL/LKW/WMP over last 10 months, with a FIL, Winter Conditioning and EST regiment included. Still small sampling, but thought he could have been a notch more advanced at the plate.

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          1. Why did they put such a raw 19 year old in A ball? If he were the most advanced of the SS draft picks, then you’d think he would hit better. His strikeout numbers were Hewitt-esque. Maybe he just fooled the scouts a little. You don’t put a raw 19 year old in full A the year after being drafted.

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            1. You put him in low-A for a 1000 reasons that we are not privy to since we aren’t members of the Phillies front office. As such, we can only WILDLY theorize on why he went to Single-A. Maybe he’s overly cocky and they wanted him to see just how tough full season baseball is. If so, message received.

              Also – I don’t recall, at any time, him being referred to as “the most advanced of the SS draft picks”. If anything, I think he was recognized as very raw.

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            4. He was referred to as a great pick by the Phils and that he had LOADS of upside and was very toolsy.

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            5. Also, he was most likely put in A before anyone else because of his early signing and the fact he at least got some A- at bats last year.

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          2. 100% true, the issue is many of us had what has proved to be unrealistic expectations on the lad. (Myself included and as mentioned earlier, I wasn’t nearly as optimistic as most).

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          3. ‘could have been a notch more advanced at the plate.’…what is so unfair of asking the kid to hit a line of 230/275/290!

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        2. Not sure why you would include GCL in there, since he more than held his own there last year… He got double jumped as a 19yr old to low-A, and struggled with consistent contact. His BB% and ISO were fine for his age.

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        3. Exactly. If pointing to 4 games gives you more optimism great. I’m just saying I’m looking at 175 PA’s and I don’t like the trends. I’m not routing against him. I hope he turns it around but in the famous words of judge judy “don’t pee on my leg and tell me its only raining”

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  7. I was at the Lakewood game last night. Good to see some offense out of them for a change.

    Manzanillo is fairly tall but very lanky. Still looks like a boy. From what I saw he was throwing a fastball, slider, and a work in progress curve/breaking ball. The slider had great movement on it, sinking down and away from lefties with sharp bite. A few gave Stumpo some problems causing him to scramble in the dirt for them. Manzanillo predominately started the count on fastballs, then threw a couple sliders when he was ahead in the count. Occasionally he would mix in a curve/breaking ball. One froze 3B Matt Skole in a 2 strike count to catch him looking. Overall he got into a lot of full count at bat’s but only gave up 1 hit through the first 4. In the 5th Manzanillo finally allowed some base runners and gave up a double. This scored a run and you could tell he was pissed. After covering home he kicked the backstop then ran two fast balls high and inside on the next batter. I like seeing that.
    On the other side of the plate, Villalobos (who looks exactly like Rufio from the movie Hook) took one deep with the second pitch of the game. Even though he’s not a prospect Chris Duffy smoked every ball he made contact with. I like his role as this years Jim Murphy. Altherr and Eldemire didn’t do anything to impress. Franco worked most of the counts he was in. He stayed with one pitch and pulled it down the third base line for a double. He’s not one of the fastest guys out there and I’m not sure it would have been a double had not a fan reached over and interfered with the ball.
    This was Ludy’s first game as well. I think he’s generously listed at 5’11”. Very short and stocky. I was impressed by his first major league at bat. He got into trouble with 2 strikes but choked up on the bat and flew out to center. Nice to see sound baseball fundamentals still. Second at bat was a sac fly to right for an RBI.
    I took some video and will upload them some time today and post them here.
    Hey did anyone notice that Braden Shull and blast from the past Nick Hernandez are now listed on the Lakewood roster?

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    1. Shull- N. Hernandez are listed on Lakewood’s Disabled List, not the active roster. Let’s see where they are when they start playing again. I believe when a player becomes disabled they place them at a higher level than that at which they will play when they return. In this way, they can assign them to where they play on a Re-Hab assignment and thereby save a roster spot.

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    2. Thanks for the report. It may make some happy to see Manzanillo react that way to allowing a run, but it also might give some insight into why he’s struggled so much. Good to see him have a couple good starts in a row as the stuff really seems to be there.

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    1. Close to the top – Castellanos and Adeiny Hechavarria have more, (plus mexican league guys with mostly 70 PA more), though among guys with 200 PA and at least as many hits as Asche has single, Asche has the highest single/PA rate, 26.3%.

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    2. Excuse me, Hechavarris has the same number of 1B as Asche, not more. 71, in case anyone is wondering.

      Some projections for you – assuming a 650 PA year, at current pace Asche would have:

      214 hits
      171 singles
      31 doubles
      7 triples
      5 HR
      29 BB
      89 K
      24 SB
      5 CS

      Not placing predictive value on those projections. Just a fun exercise.

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  10. scouting report on Greene prior to the draft from BA

    He’s impressive physically and shows well in workouts and showcases with his raw tools. Greene has improved his speed to well above-average over the last year by getting stronger and more explosive. He has a fast-twitch body and athletic ability, and looks the part at shortstop. He’s not natural at short, doesn’t always get good hops and doesn’t have the most accurate arm, short-circuiting his plus arm strength. Offensively, he was erratic on the showcase circuit and again this spring, where he was hitting around .380 in mid May with just five home runs. Greene also could move up boards with a strong workout.

    This was what Keith Law said about him after the Phillies drafted him

    Tyler Greene (11) is their best tough-sign pick and would be farther over slot than I can remember them going in any recent draft

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      1. Wouldn’t pronouce Keith Law either wrong or right based on a couple partial seasons and less than 200 total professional at-bats.

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      2. To be fair, everyone was wrong except the Phils. Everything I read about him suggested it might take $1m to sign him.

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  11. i think the walks could be different as he moves up to better pitching, but i would take his other stats, dont like the lack of homerun power, but if he is a gap hitter with good defense, on a team which relies on pitching, dont see anything wrong with that, who knows his lack of power can be made up maybe by a second baseman who has better power than that position calls for or a ss, polanco isnt a homerun hitter but great d and line drive hitter,

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    1. You realize that you can reply in line to the comments that you are referencing? Click the “Reply” button under the comment you want to reply to.

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  12. What do you do with a 25 year old with over 1500 Minor League PA’s who is a career .306 Avg/.381OBP/.871OPS who is currently well above those averages in AA?

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    1. What SHOULD we do with him DMAR? Release a HOF player (Thome) so Ruf can sit on the bench in Philadelphia? Plug him in as starting first baseman for a few weeks until Howard’s return – and then what?

      Maybe the “experts” are wrong about him, I don’t know. Maybe, despite his age, he really is a prospect. But what do you want the Phillies to do with him? Howard’s contract has 5 years yet to run – by then Ruf will be 30 himself.

      So maybe you promote him to AAA – I mean, I’m not opposed to that, but then what? I’m not even arguing about how good a prospect he is – I’m probably more skeptical than you are, but the man certainly can hit and maybe is is as good as some of his fans think. Let’s even assume he is. So what do you do with him, with 150 million committed to Howard?

      It seems to me best case scenario with Ruf is that other teams start to take take notice and he is a piece in a trade.

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      1. Exactly. The irony is that I tend to probably get more excited about these guys than I should. I’m talking about the older non-heralded prospects who “broad based” good hitting performances (i.e., not just BABIP driven good batting averages). Ruf and Rizzotti both fall into that category, with decent or better contact/plate discipline/power. But at the end of the day, if they can only play 1B, if they are blocked there by Howard, and if other teams don’t think they are real prospects – what do you want the organization to do? Oh, with Rizzotti we heard some ill informed suggestions that he play the OF; thankfully so far no one is suggesting that for Ruf.

        In fairness to Ruf, I see him in some senses as a better prospect than Rizzotti. He’s been more consistently excellent over a period of years, and, while I don’t know much about his defense, at least the reports on it are not as uniformly horrible as they were for Rizzotti’s defense.

        One curious thing about Rizzotti is how much worse he has done in AAA than in AA over 2 seasons. Yes, small sample size, but he’s just been SO bad in AAA.

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        1. I think that Ruf is a much better overall prospect than was Rizzotti but he has the same problem in that he plays 1b, meaning his threshold for playing in the majors is massively higher than others.

          He’s fighting with pretty much every minor league position player and every major league veteran for 45 big league spots (30 1b and 15 DH) because teams don’t typically carry bench players who can’t play multiple positions. Obviously Jim Thome is an exception to that rule but then again, he’s also hit over 600 career HRs and didn’t make it to the majors as a bench player.

          As such, a guy like Ruf needs to be more than just a solid hitter, he needs to be an outstanding hitter and his AA numbers are not outstanding.

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          1. Well he is third in his league in OBP and second in SLG, so arguably his AA numbers are indeed “outstanding.” Still may not be enough, for reasons we agree on.

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            1. Just to point out the mountain he has to climb, there are currently 16 players in AAA and 3 in AA who have a better .OPS than does Ruf right now (not counting the Mexican league). Each of these guys have a good case for making it to the majors ahead of him.

              Now certainly, not all of those guys are limited to 1b but the point is that each of those guys can move down the defensive scale to play 1b if necessary.

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            2. How many of those 16 are in the PCL? I’m curious, but even if most of them are you still have a point. The bar is very high for a 1B, but even scouts seem to think Ruf is more of a prospect than Rizz. At this point, there’s really nothing the Phils can do with him except promote him to AAA, which they should.

              Do they have anything to lose by doing so? I don’t think so. Anything to gain? They get a little better understanding of one of their own, and possibly increase his trade value ever-so-slightly. Maybe in the event Thome can’t pinch hit or gets traded and Nix doesn’t recover from his injury, they could give Ruf a shot as a bat off the bench.

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            3. 5 of them in the International league and the rest in the PCL. There are actually 5 guys in the PCL with .OPS over 1.

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  13. erractic offense? that is showing most likely now. might take him longer to figure it out, but he really so far hasnt played a lot of pro baseball. but according to scouts the tools are threre, lets hope he figuress it out, we need infielder badly

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  14. whats wrong with may by the way because he was so dominant in the beginning of the season but it seems like he just fell off.

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    1. 2nd/3rd time through the league and opponents have seen him a few times now. He now needs to begin making adjustments.

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      1. Or the heat is getting to him. Or his mechanics have fallen apart. Or he’s hiding an injury.

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        1. Or the Phillies recognize he’s doing really well but needs to work on one thing in particular. Like another pitch or something.

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        2. Agreed, it is difficult to know all of the facts in the matter. He seems prone to one big inning which indicates his mechanics might be falling apart when he is pressured or he is not doing well out of the stretch.

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          1. ok that makes more sense and what is his upside because i have read and heard a lot of sources that range from solid 3 starter to ace potential and what kind off pitcher is Worley because people were saying he was a 4 starter but he pitches much better than that so what is he then

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            2. How is May a fringe #1? A #1 has two(2) plus-plus pitches and plus command. He doesn’t have the pitches and certainly not the command. A #2 has a plus pitch plus 2-3 other quality pitches and command.
              Trevor May’s ceiling is #3 right now, because there is no evidence that he is better.
              If everything clicks, I could be a fringe #1.

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            5. I think I do recognize how rare plus-plus pitches are. That’s why #1 pitchers are rare… and not guys that struggle with control for 4 years in the low minors

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            8. May’s ceiling is as a #2, it is looking more likely he won’t reach it but his FB has a chance to be plus plus (the movement on it compensates for a lack of velocity), the curve could be plus as could the change. His command will never be great, but it is his ceiling.

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  18. Larry Greene has been, statistically at least, showing an advanced eye at the plate. I like that.

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  19. Our high school guys at Williamsport, are they considered age appropriate for that league or young for it?

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  20. I’d venture to say they’re mostly young for the NYP Lg. which is where–typically–drafted college pitchers go after they were drafted. Our guy are mostly HS kids drafted but largely didn’t play pro ball after they were drafted last season.

    The lengthy spring training for them has given some a leap forward…but only would do so if the talent was there.

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  21. Isn’t it too early to judge what kind of pitcher worley will be? imo he is a work in progress still. right now he to me is a solid four,

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    1. I would say Solid 3 actually. If anything, he’s improved yet again this year and his SO/9 and BB/9 numbers show its not really a fluke. Smoke and mirror guys dont typically strike out 8 per 9.

      Since he’s come into the Majors, he’s pitched (results-wise) like a #1 but that’s a reach in all likelihood. He is a solid win for our California scout (drafted twice by the Phillies in 2005 and 2008).

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