The Clearwater Threshers game scheduled for Friday night against the Vero Beach Devil Rays was cancelled due to smoke in the air.  The smoke has been in the area for more than a week with a tropical storm off of the east coast carrying winds and smoke down to Clearwater from a series of wild fires burning in Georgia and north Florida.  Most days the wind pattern has changed in the late afternoon as the gulf winds move inland when the weather cools later in the day.

On Friday night the winds never changed and with health concerns for the players the game was cancelled and will be made up as part of a double header on Saturday shceduled to begin at 5:00 weather/smoke permitting.

The Threshers have split the first two games in this series winning in an afternoon game on Wednesday 3-1 thanks to back-to-back eighth inning home runs from Jeremy Slayden and John Urick.  Carlos Carrasco took the mound for the Threshers throwing eight excellent innings giving up just one run on four hits with eight strikeouts and two walks to lower his ERA to 4.05 and pick up his fourth win of the year to move his record to 4-1 on the season.

The Threshers got a 1-0 lead in the third when Matt Thayer walked and scored on a Greg Golson double, but the V-Rays tied things in the seventh with a solo home run off of Carrasco.  The Threshers answered in the eighth inning with back-to-back home runs from Jeremy Slayden and John Urick to take a 3-1 lead in the game, with closer Mike Zagurski shutting down any hope of a Rays rally in the ninth by fanning all three batters he faced to secure the 3-1 victory.

The team lost on Thursday 8-6 with starter Dan Brauer having his first bad outing of the year.  Brauer was only able to make it 2.2 innings in the game giving up six runs on five hits with six walks and three strikeouts.  With the loss the Threshers dropped to second place one game behind the Sarasota Reds.

The hottest Phillie in the minors right now, I felt it was time to give Jason Donald some face time. It’s tougher to write player profiles for guys just drafted last June, especially if they aren’t heralded prospects, which is the case for Donald. Nevertheless, his hot start won’t be ignored by this author, and we’ll try to figure out what to expect going forward. At this point, I’ll also take requests for the next batch of player profiles, but I don’t know when I’ll get to them, as I’m still busy tweaking and adjusting my projection/evaluation system. But, post away, let me know what you think of this profile, and let me know which players you’d like to see profiled in the near future.

Continue reading Player Profile: Jason Donald →

* I’m starting to legitimately worry about Carlos Carrasco. It’s only a month, it’s only a handful of starts, but he’s already allowed 6 HR in 31 innings after allowing 6 home runs all of last season. The low K rate is also sending up a bit of a red flag. We’re not in panic mode, or even “worry mode”, just kind of head scratching mode at this point.

* JD Durbin made his debut the other day, and struck out 7 guys in 4.2 innings. The bad news is, he also allowed 7 hits, and of the 14 balls put in play, 6 were line drives.

* Jason Donald is tearing the cover off the ball. In 23 May AB, his 3 slash line is .609/.643/1.000…..not bad.

* Adrian Cardenas is up to .279, and while you want to see more from a top pick, after a frigid April, he’s hitting .316 in the first week of May.

* Mike Zagurksi clearly doesn’t belong at Clearwater. Through 13 innings, he’s averaging 17.5 strikeouts per 9, and he’s allowed only 9 of the 44 batters he’s faced to reach base.

The new name for the weekly “Hot or Not” series is the Monday Morning 6 pack. I’ll admit, it’s a nod to Kevin Goldstein’s always entertaining Monday Morning 10 Pack over at Baseball Prospectus, but “Hot or Not” just wasn’t gonna get it done anymore. I’m cutting the list down from 5 each to 3 each, mainly because I felt like I was starting to put mediocre stat lines up there “just to get 5”, and that’s no fun. If I deem 4 to be worthy one week, we’ll go with an honorable mention. So here we go

Stock Up

Jason Donald: 15/27 — .556/.600/.852 — 3 BB — 2 2B – 2 HR — 10 RBI — 9 Runs
Jeremy Slayden: 11/28 — .393/.500/.679 — 6 BB — 5 2B — 1 HR — 8 RBI — 7 Runs
Andrew Carpenter: 14 IP – 4 ER (2.57 ERA) — 12 H — 4 BB – 12 K

Stock Down

Jason Jaramillo: 3/26 (.115) 1 BB
Greg Golson: 5/29 (.172) 2 BB
Mike Costanzo: 3/21 (.143) 1 HR

Thoughts?

A few weeks ago, after a particularly strong outing for Pat Overholt, I noted that his success is basically tied to being able to get groundouts, as he has been home run prone in the past, and as a starter, he’d have to really focus on pitching at the bottom of the strike zone to be effective. Last night, Pat got a lesson about not keeping the ball on the ground, to the tune of 7 ER. Here is the only stat you need to know

2 groundball outs, 8 fly ball outs.

He gave up 3 home runs in the game, 2 of them to top prospect Jay Bruce. In a 4 start stretch from April 5th through April 21st, Overholt had gotten 37 ground balls to only 13 fly ball outs, and he was largely successful in those starts. In the start prior to last night’s, he got 9 ground balls to 7 fly balls, struggled with his command (5 walks), but managed to avoid major damage, allowing only 1 ER in 6.2 IP. Last night, however, he wasn’t so lucky.

Welcome to the latest installment

Hot…

Carl Henry Jr: 6/20 — 2 2B — 1 3B — 1 HR — 4 R — 4 RBI
Greg Golson: 10/29 (3 BB) — 3 2B — 6 R — 2 SB
Jeremy Slayden: 9/28 (4 BB) — 2 HR — 8 RBI
Josh Outman: 12.2 IP — 2 ER — 10 H — 6 BB — 9 K
Mike Constanzo: 8/25 (4 BB) — 1 HR — 6 RBI

Not…

Gus Milner: 2/22 (5 BB) — 6 R
Jason Donald: 6/27 (1 BB) — 1 HR — 6 RBI
Alex Concepcion: 3.1 IP — 6 ER — 7 H — 2BB – 2 K — 2 HR
Matt Maloney: 8.2 IP – 5 ER (7 uER) — 13 H — 6 BB – 4 K
Michael Dubee: 3.2 IP — 4 ER — 5 H — 2 BB – 4 K

Weird stat of the week…

Gus Milner got on base a total of 7 times in 27 plate appearances and scored 6 times. Similarly, Lou Marson had only 3 hits in 17 AB but drew 5 walks and 1 HBP and scored 6 times.

(courtesy ottawalynx.com)

Player profiles return today, and as I mentioned yesterday, I’m hoping to crank out more of these going forward. Next up is Welinson Baez, but if anyone has requests thereafter, I’m all ears. So far, we’ve done Zach Segovia, Mike Zagurski, Adrian Cardenas, Michael Bourn, Edgar Garcia, Brett Harker, Dan Brauer, Andrew Carpenter, Fabio Castro, and Mike Costanzo. Today, we profile the top catching prospect in the Phillies organization, and one of the hottest hitters in the young season, 2004 second round draft pick Jason Jaramillo.

Continue reading Player Profile: Jason Jaramillo →

Tuesday night proved to be an interesting night for the Phillies stable of pitching prospects, as three of the most interesting guys in the system all took the mound, and two of the three were pitching against highly rated pitching prospects for their respective teams. The night also proved to be a continuation of early trends for all three pitchers.

Continue reading A tale of three pitchers →

Way back when, when this blog first started up, I wrote a piece about the timetable for prospects, and how to look at a player and properly assess his “prospect status” and things like that. I wanted to write a followup, go over some of those ideas again, and expound on them a bit, because I’ve been getting a bunch of questions via e-mail, and here in the comments section, asking about guys like Landon Jacobsen and Greg Jacobs. So, I felt like I’d try and answer them in a broad manner and give sort of guide for you to make things easier.

Continue reading Prospect v Non-Prospect, Part 2 →