Organizational Updates. 5-16-2010

I'll start this update with just a few notes on our recent trade activity.

As you know by now, we dealt Scott Moss to the Manchester Maulers for minor league reliever Bob Page and a 3rd round draft pick. We think this deal will really work out well for us down the line, and we also think it was the right thing for Scott. Our outfielders in Laredo are playing tremendous ball, and there just wasn't going to be any playing time for Moss in the near future. Instead of having him stagnate in our system, we were able to acquire a promising young reliever and position ourselves with another high round draft pick in the upcoming draft.

As for Page, he's a promising young right handed reliever who can touch 94 on the gun. He's just 20, and just two seasons removed from high school ball. He has spent the last two seasons at short season ball. We'll start him at A ball this season where he will be the closer, and it's likely he'll repeat the level next year. Our realistic view is that we'll see him in Laredo in about 4 seasons.

As for the draft pick, it's near the bottom of the third round, but it gives us 3 selections in the third round. We also have two selections in the second round, and one near the top of the 4th round. This gives us 6 selections over the course of what will amount to about a span of 2 rounds. With 3 other picks on the first day of the draft, for a total of 9 in the first 7 rounds, we feel we are in good position to improve the depth in our organization.

Just this morning we completed yet another deal, moving 6 minor league pitchers to West Virginia in exchange for a seventh round selection in the upcoming draft. The six pitchers we moved are all young, and all have at least some promise, but most if not all would have been headed to the waiver wire shortly as we prepare our organization for the draft. As it was, we did place 9 pitchers on waivers for the purpose of giving them their release. We these six marginal prospects we were at least able to garner a draft pick in trade. The nine pitchers who were waived were:

Sadakuno Hashimoto, a 24 year old soft tosser who was 1-4 7.45 at Monterey this season.

Dave Knight, a 22 year soft tossing left hander with control issues.

Chet Miller, a 24 year old soft tosser.

Sergio Sousa, a 22 year soft tossing lefty with a limited 3 pitch repertoire.

Timothy Wright, a 19 year old righthander.

Kevin Christian, a 23 year old lefthander with a limited 2 pitch repertoire and ugly whip numbers.

Juan Flores, a 23 year old soft tossing sinkerball pitcher.

Oscar Kennedy, a 24 year old soft tossing right hander who had some decent success in the low minors but had reached his ceiling. A 4.38 whip so far this season hastened his departure.

Hidetada Watanabe, a 22 year soft tossing lefty. He has a decent 5 pitch repertoire and keeps the ball down, but I needed dramamine every time I pronounced his name.

The pitchers dealt to West Virginia included:

Jerry Collette, a 20 year old right handed starter. Collette had worked some decent innings for us the last two seasons at Taku, but he is never going to be a big strikeout pitcher. He does keep the ball down and has good endurance, so there is an outside chance he could develop into a back of the rotation type somewhere down the road.

Jorge Rosario, a 19 year old soft tosser who has been in the organization for 4 seasons. We actually hated to give Rosario up, he has been a good pitcher for us at the low levels of the minors. But despite his decent numbers, he just didn't fit our profile. We think there is the outside possibility he could someday be a useful back of the rotation type, or maybe a swingman.

Stanley Hughes, a 20 year old southpaw reliever. Hughes has put up decent numbers in the low minors, and he has a 5 pitch repertoire. We were having a hard time projecting him as much more than a mop up type lefthander, but if he keeps putting up the numbers he might surprise people.

Luis Sanchez, a 20 year old lefthander who has spent 4 seasons in our low minors. He has posted some decent numbers, but we couldn't get past the fact that he's only 5'7" tall, which led us to believe he would have difficulty making it at the PEBA level.

Juan Salazar, a 19 year lefthander. Like Hughes, Salazar is a left handed reliever with 5 pitches. He's an intriguing prospect.

Jeremy Hann, a 21 year old soft tossing righthander, Hann was once a fairly promising prospect but a torn labrum that has kept him out almost a full year has cast a shadow on his career. He's eligible to come off the DL next week and should be ready to pitch, but we just won't have a spot for him. Hopefully he can resurrect his career in West Virginia.

Team Updates. Let's start with San Antonio. So far through a month and a half of the season, things have gone about as well as could be expected for our rebuilding club. The revamped offense has been fairly good, we rank third in the league in runs scored. But it could be better.

To this point, our middle infield is producing almost nothing, much like last year. Jack Cobb is hitting .159. Jose Moran .234. Utility infielder Heida is batting .173. Obviously, this is an area we need to improve over the next year or two. We thought the players we brought in here would be an improvement over last season, but so far it has not worked out that way.

Murdock has been alright over at third base. He leads the team in HR and SB, and is second in RBI. But his .247 avg and .310 obp are a bit dissappointing. But we have to remember he is still just 23, and has loads of talent. We don't see him reaching his peak production for another 3 or 4 seasons.

Catcher Brock Brett is another youngster who we don't expect to reach his peak for another 3 or 4 seasons. He is scuffling a bit right now, but we understand the learning curve and expect him to be a competent starter behind the plate for years to come.

Tom Kirkland has been a bit dissappointing over at first base to this point, but we are confident he will turn it around. After a rough April in which he hit .200, he has responded by batting .289 in May.

The outfield and DH spots have been tremendous. We knew exactly what we were getting when we brought in Pexego and Miyata to be the cornerstones of our offense, and they have exceeded expectations. Carlos Madrigal has been a pleasant surprise, he has posted a .398 obp to this point and appears to be headed towards his best season yet. Martin Griffin continues play flawless defense and is batting .320 to this point in the season.

We can't emphasize enough how much defense means to our team. We are tied for the secnd fewest errors in all of PEBA with just 15 on the season, and four of those can be directly attributed to experimenting with Murdock at SS and Moran at third in the first two weeks of the season. 4 of the errors were with those guys playing out of position. Cobb has also made a few errors adjusting to his new position at second base, but we expect him to just keep getting better over there as the season moves along.

Not many bright spots on the pitching side of things, but there are a few. How about Augusto Torres? He's tied for the IL lead in wins with 6, and he has been our pitching savior to this point in the season. Claimed off waivers from London in spring training, he continues to impress us. While we don't see him being a long term ace, we do see Torres as possibly being a solid back of the rotation innings eater going forward.

Despite his 3-6 record, Keith Bandelow has actually pitched much better than expected and our scouts are liking what they see enough to consider him another contender for a long term role at the back of our rotation. Bandelow suffers from being cast at the front of the rotation, and catching matchups against other teams aces, resulting in a severe lack of run support. (3 runs total his last 4 starts)

The days are numbered for our other three starters. We have no intention of keeping Graham, Martinez, or Rodriguez past this season, and some or all of them may be gone sooner than that. We are closely eyeing our financial projections, and giving serious consideration to upgrading our pitching staff as the trade deadline approaches. We think we may find a little help in our own minor league system, but if we stay within spitting distance of the wild card race we could break out the checkbook for a couple of starters in the middle of the summer.

The bullpen has ranged from mediocre to awful, with a strong lean towards mostly awful. About the only bright spot has been Yamasaki, who is posting a 2.86 era. It's hard to see most of these guys being back next season, and much like the starting staff, if finances allow some may be gone much sooner than that.


AAA Joplin Update.
It's been a rough start at Joplin, with multiple issues giving us cause for concern. Primarily, the pitching. The bullpen at Joplin has been awful. Several of the starters have been dreadful. And the team has a serious lack of power. Beyond that, things are just peachy.

Our two best starting prospects at Joplin, Perez and Hunter, have been dreadful. Cris Reyes got off to a bit of a slow start, had a short demotion to AA, and has pitched better in his last 3 starts. In fact, our scouts suggest he is close to ready for the PEBA level, and a few more starts like his recent ones and he could receive an early June call to the big club. Reyes was an offseason minor league free agent signing from Nicarauga. He throws in the low 90's with good control and decent endurance, and we could see him eventually being a fairly decent #4 starter at the PEBA level.

Two other somewhat bright spots in the Joplin rotation have been Eric Hill and Victor Hall. Hall is a 24 year old righthander who has logged nearly 340 innings at AA the last 3 seasons before finally earning a promotion to AAA this season. He is just 2-5, but sports a 3.42 era and he sports decent control. Despite the fact that he gets a lot of groundballs, he still has a tendency to give up too many longballs and that's somethiing he will need to correct if he ever wants to move up to the next level. Hill is a 22 year old right hander who toiled most of his first three seasons at A Drumright before a midseason callup to AA last year. He progressed enough in limited time there to earn a quick promotion to AAA, but we don't expect his next promotion to come quite as fast. He throws in the low 90's, mixes up 6 pitches, but needs to do some work on the control yet.

About the only bright spot in the Joplin bullpen has been closer Leith Geldart. We signed Geldart to a major league contract in the offseason to get him into our system, and so far it seems to be a move that is paying off. He started at AA, but showed quickly that he was ready for AAA. Combined at the two levels he has allowed 1 run in 14.2 ip, allowing 7 hits, 3 walks, and striking out 14. Geldart has a simple two pitch repertoire, but can pump it in at 96 and has a nasty splitter. We feel he could be in our big league bullpen by midseason in 2011.

The offense at Joplin has only a few bright spots as well. Silas Boone is batting .336 with a .408 obp and is making quite a case to get the call to Laredo to bolster the offense in the middle infield. We're going to resist that urge for now, but a callup later this season is not out of the question.

Miguel Duenas continues to impress us as well, his .376 obp and 17 doubles, as well as 8 stolen bases, make him a player on our radar. At this point we see him as a possible future 4th outfielder, or even a platoon outfielder. He has great speed, and well above average defensive skills.

We'll be back later with updates for the rest of the minor league system.