If you’ve been following along for the last few weeks, I’ve begun to dissect the 2007 draft and started to ponder who the Phillies may end up with. While my belief is that you take the best available player all the time, our system is so devoid of position prospects, you almost hope that the best available guy is a position player, simply because of our lacking, but at the same time, pitching is still at a premium all around baseball, and this draft class is stocked with pitchers, especially prep pitchers. In previous entries I pondered the first round and the compensation round, hoping we’d be able to land guys like Devin Mesoraco and Nevin Griffith, and now we’ll look at who might be there in the 2nd round.
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Monday Morning 6 pack
Let’s take a look back at the week that was and find out who was bringing it, and who was stinking up the joint.
Hot:
Quintin Berry: .448/.515/.552 — 7 R – 6 SB
Welinson Baez: .379/.419/.448 — 2 2B – 4 R
Carlos Monasterios: 13.2 IP, 2 ER (1.36 ERA) — 5 H — 7 BB — 8 K
Not:
Lakewood Trio (Cardenas, Milner, Henry): .179/.267/.284 — 12/67 — 3 XBH
Will Savage: 2.2 IP, 5 ER (20.46 ERA), 5 H, 4 BB, 0 K
Edgar Garcia: 6.1 IP, 6 ER (8.85 ERA), 12 H, 1 BB, 7 K, 2 HR
Notes:
* Brett Harker pitched four perfect innings, picking up 4 saves for Clearwater.
* Gus Milner, despite his struggles hitting the ball, still drew 5 walks last week
* Kyle Drabek had a nice week, just missing the list. 12 IP, 3 ER, 8 H, 5 BB, 8 K
* James Happ continues to struggle with his control….not a good sign.
* Matt Smith had a decent week, pitching 3 scoreless innings, but he did allow 3 walks. That’s not good.
* Josh Outman’s command remains a problem (4 BB in 5 IP), but the K numbers are returning.
Schedule for this week
Here are some things I’m working on, with a schedule*
Monday: Monday Morning 6 Pack
Tuesday: Thinking about our 2nd round pick in the draft
Wednesday: Arms to Watch Update
Thursday: TBA
Friday: More draft stuff
* tentative, of course.
Some miscellaneous thoughts
– Carl/CJ/WhateverHeWantsToBeCalled Henry is now playing some outfield as well as 3B….hmm. It seems that most really athletic guys who struggle as infielders eventually move to the OF, where they can just let their athleticism take over and not micro-manage their defense. We’ll see if it helps Henry.
– Mike Costanzo can’t play defense….really, he can’t. With his error on Monday, he now has 17 errors on the season. For someone who was praised for his defense, this is disappointing.
– Javon Moran has 16 SB….and he’s been caught 9 times. Not good. Quintin Berry has stolen 21 bases, and been caught 7 times. That’s also not good, but he’s more raw than Moran and the speed is nice, as is his .360 OB% this season.
It’s official, Zagurski up, Coste Down, Myers on DL
Not really surprising, you can’t run the risk of hurting Myers further by having him out there less than 100%. Good luck to Zagurski, pray he throws strikes, and if he does, he should be up to stay. As for Coste, this isn’t surprising either, as he hasn’t really gotten AB’s since being recalled. The sad thing is, this means Barajas will remain a Phillie for a while longer.
Update: Mike was hitting 92-93 tonight. His velo is definitely up from 2005 and it looks like it’s up even from last year. If he throws like that consistently, he won’t be going back to the minors.
Mock Draft Sign-ups
An idea I tossed around in the latest draft post, I plan on taking a stab at all 30 picks in the first round, probably next week. If you really follow this stuff and want to take a crack as well, I’d love to have your response and we can see who comes the closest. I’ll make the deadline for submission next Thursday, May 31st, and you can send your entries to phuturephillies at hotmail dot com, replacing the “at” and “dot com” with their appropriate symbols. At the bottom of this post, I’ll type out the exact draft order, so all you have to do is copy/paste and then fill in your picks. I’ll post all of the results once I receive them, if you don’t want your name posted with your picks, just give me an alternate display name to use.
Mike Zagurski called up?
Just had an e-mail hit my inbox stating Zagurski has been called up and will be in the bullpen on Friday. This leads to me to believe, if true, that Myers is headed to the DL. Stay tuned, nothing official yet, and it could just mean one of the guys who never sees the light of day (Hernandez, Yoel) could be waived.
Random thoughts….
* Kyle Drabek’s full season debut has been a success on a lot of levels. Some of his numbers, particularly his walk rate and home run aren’t where you want to see them, but his strikeout numbers have been fine, and more importantly, he’s getting a lot more groundballs than flyballs, with a 2.1 GB:FB ratio to this point. His control was great in April, not so good in May, but it’s all part of the learning curve. Lefties are hammering him to the tune of a .923 OPS, while righties have only posted a .650 OPS. To me it says that his changeup isn’t where he wants it to be yet, but it will get there.
* Adrian Cardenas has been miserable against LHP. This isn’t uncommon, for a player getting his first taste of full season ball, against good pitching, to struggle against lefties. Cardenas’ batting average has been constant from day 1, around .272, but his OB% has gone from .297 in April to .326 in May, that’s a step in the right direction, but more importantly, his slugging jumped from .388 to .481, a vast improvement. Cardenas is also hitting much better away from pitcher friendly Lakewood, with an away line of .333/.370/.533 compared to his home line of .194/.234/.306. I’ve detailed it before, but Lakewood is basically the toughest hitting park in the SAL.
* Greg Golson has had an interesting season. His splits really indicate he is two different players. Against LHP, his line is .240/.291/.280, and against RHP, his line is .314/.347/.471. This isn’t a one year trend, because while he generally sucked it up all around last year, he was better against righties than lefties. In May, Golson has drawn 7 walks in 95 PA’s, while he drew only 4 walks in 110 PA’s in April, but his slugging % has dipped from .490 in April to .337 in May. Is he becoming too passive? Is he just not making solid contact? Does he just stink? Who knows.
* Josh Outman has been a bit of a disappointment to me. I knew coming into this year that his success hinged directly on his ability to throw strikes, and so far, it’s been a struggle. He’s averaging 5.86 BB/9 to go with only 8.23 K/9, and that just isn’t going to get it done. If he can’t lower his walks into the 3.00/9 range, his future lies in the bullpen, but even that will be a struggle. His home run rate has also climbed a bit this year, as he’s given up 5 in 47 IP (0.96/9) as opposed to the 5 he gave up in 155.2 IP last season. Again, the Lakewood factor can’t be stated enough.
More draft stuff to ponder
After I wrote last Friday’s article about the draft, Jim Callis at Baseball America posted his first mock draft, trying to predict where everyone would go in the first round. Here are his picks from 13-23
13. CLE – Blake Beaven, RHP
14. ATL – Jason Heyward, OF
15. CIN – Kevin Ahrens, SS/3B
16. TOR – Matt Dominguez, 3B
17. TEX – Julio Borbon, OF
18. STL – Matt Wieters, C
19. PHI – Devin Mesoraco, C
20. LAD – Josh Smoker, LHP
21. TOR – Pete Kozma, SS
22. SFG – Casey Weathers, RHP
23. SDP – James Simmons, RHP
Player Profile: Jeremy Slayden
The latest player profile will cover a guy that a lot of people are talking about, outfielder/DH Jeremy Slayden. The Phillies, especially over the last two seasons or so, have seen their system produce very few position prospects even worth talking about, after graduating all star caliber talent like Jimmy Rollins, Pat Burrell, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard. With Slayden, many feel we may actually have a true hitter on our hands, as opposed to the “quality athletes who can’t play” that the system has produced an abundance of in recent years. But as Kevin Goldstein pointed out in his Q/A for us, most great players are quality athletes, the trick is just teaching them how to play the game and how to become baseball guys. With Slayden, it seems he already knows how to play, but the question is, does he have the tools?
A thank you is in order
Normally you’d find the Monday Morning 6 Pack here, but I am in the process of signing a lease for a new apartment, and still trying to get work done, so I don’t have time to put together the update right now. However, hopefully I’ll be back with that tomorrow, plus a few more things in the pipeline. I’ll roll out my Jeremy Slayden profile this week, as well as more on the draft, and maybe some other stuff as well. However, I want to take this space and thank each and every one of you who have come to the blog since I started last December. We hit a bit of a milestone today…
When I started writing, I thought I might do it for a day or two, maybe a week, and I guessed that maybe 20 people would read it. Well, 181 posts later, 806 comments later, and 100,000+ visits later, I’m still at it. Thanks again for all the support, thanks for continuing to come back, and thanks for telling your friends about the site. I keep writing because you keep coming, and I’ll continue as long as there is interest. Thanks again, and happy Monday.
Phuture Phillies 