Clearwater Threshers Week 5 Report

5. Clearwater

The Clearwater Threshers have remained solid in the Florida State League battling with a strong Sarasota Reds team to a tie for first place in their division at 21-11 after five weeks of play. Strong pitching continues to be the dominate factor in the Threshers success as they continue to own the league’s best team ERA at 2.92.

This week consisted of three games versus the Sarasota Reds with the Reds getting the series victory two games to one, and then in a four game series versus the Eastern Division’s best team the Brevard County Manatees (Brewers) the Threshers grabbed three of four losing the series finale on Tuesday night in the team’s only double digit loss of the year 14-4. I’ll throw in as bonus an eighth game played on Wednesday afternoon (since it was final at the time of this write-up) where the team downed the FSL’s newest addition, the Vero Beach Devil Rays, 3-1 behind eight strong innings from Carlos Carrasco with closer Mike Zagurski fanning all three batters he faced in the ninth to secure the win.

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Reading Phillies–Week Five

6. Reading

Reading closed out week five slipping to 15-16 and losing ground to front running Akron, slipping to 2.5 games behind in the Southern division. Hitting leaders for the Phils include Jesus Merchan, 2nd in the lague in batting average hitting .390 and Javon Moran who is 10th at .325. Moran also leads the league in runs scored with 29, stolen bases with 14, and hits with 38. Joey Hammond is 4th in the league with 21 runs scored. Jason Hill is 4th in the league with 9 doubles. Mike Costanzo is 4th in the league with 5 homers and 9th in RBI’s with 17. Costanzo also leads the league in strikeouts with 45. Juan Tejada is 4th in the league with 21 RBI’s. Pitching leaders include Anderson Garcia tied for the league lead with 6 saves and Kyle Kendrick who continues to lead the league in Innings Pitched with 39. Tim McClaskey is 2nd in the league in homeruns allowed with five, and Matt Maloney is just behind him in 3rd place, having given up 4 homeruns.

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Player Profile: Jason Donald

Other Stuff

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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 →

New Feature: Prospect Tracker

New Site Features

If you check the top of the blog, you’ll see a page/tab called “Prospect Tracker”. It’s simply a page with links to the 2007 statistics of all the Phillies prospects, linked at minorleaguesplits.com If you’re curious how a player is doing and don’t feel like searching and clicking through various pages, just click on his name and his splits will open in a new window. Minorleaguesplits is the best minor league stats site out there, and offers much more than the standard 3 slash stats, including balls in play data and month to month splits. Check it out.

J.A. Happ Interview

* Interviews

J.A Happ Interview

Scouts drool over them. General Managers open up their pocket books for them. Managers dream of them. Opposing managers cringe at the mere mention of them. They are the tall lanky left handed pitchers who throw mid 90’s heat, snap off curve balls and/or sliders and frustrate opposing batters with a barely get there change up. It’s probably no coincidence that the number one pitcher in baseball, Johan Santana relies on numbers one and three. It’s probably no coincidence that Hall of Fame lefties Sandy Koufax and Steve Carlton embarrassed big league hitters for years and future Hall of Famer Randy Johnson continues to make big league hitters weak in the knees.

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Some general thoughts…

Other Stuff

* 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.

Monday Morning 6 pack

Other Stuff

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?

Yoel Hernandez gets the call

Transactions

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With Tom Gordon looking 60 instead of 40, he’s been moved to the 15 day DL and the Phillies have called up Yoel Hernandez, a minor league veteran reliever. Let’s take a look at Hernandez and see if he can provide any value to the big league club.

Continue reading Yoel Hernandez gets the call →

2007 Draft Notebook, 5/4

2007 Draft

Our good friend JE over at philliesdraft.com has started to do his homework on the upcoming 2007 draft, and he’s prepared his first rough mock draft, looking at who might be available for the Phillies in the first few rounds, as well as taking a look at the organization’s drafting philosophy in past drafts and how we can use that info to predict what will happen this June. This is the first in what I hope will be a number of contributions from Jeff, and next time, I’ll try and get him to write up the report here with his own unique login. For now, check out what he’s got, it’s a great read. I’ll catalog this posting in the “2007 Draft” tag group to the left, and all subsequent posts dealing with the draft will go there as well.

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Ottawa Lynx Report Week Four

7. Lehigh Valley

Lynx Week Four

Week four was the start of an eight game home stand . The Lynx schedule brought the Indianapolis Indians in for four games followed by the Louisville Bats, the first and second place teams in the Western Division. The Indians starting pitching would feature three of the stars of the Pittsburgh Pirates system, each of whom, because of various arm and shoulder problems, found themselves in the minor leagues. This matchup together with the to this date weak Lynx offense did not have the promise of an easy series for Ottawa who had been enjoying a successful home stand after a difficult opening season road trip. Indianapolis starters performed as advertised but the Lynx pitchers with the exception of game two of the series, were equal to the task, continuing their solid season. Three of the four games featured great pitching duals from both teams starters.

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