Friday July 27 Minor League Updates

[11larkin11]

Originally Posted by Scrap Irony

Selsky's old for the league, but this is only his second year in pro ball. For his career (122 G, 534 ABs), his line-- .305/ .374/ .513/ .886-- is promising. His K rate in Baksersfied is less than 20% and his BB rate is over 10%. A 23-year-old in A+ is not usually someone to get excited about, but he could be a sleeper moving forward.

Too bad LaMarre or Felhauer hasn't caught fire to be moved up to AAA because Selky deserves to move up as well. Might eventually be a solid fourth OF type. Perhaps more. (Similar to Bryson Smith, actually, as a late-round college draftee.)

While LaMarre doesn't give you much in the way of power, he's getting on base at a .390 clip. That's pretty good.

[dougdirt]

Originally Posted by Scrap Irony

Pitch counts.

No, I meant why did he even go past 1 inning. Turns out he didn't. The box score was just wrong. Amir Garrett pitched the next 1.2 innings. Massett went 1 inning and struck out the side. It wasn't corrected until after the game.

[j_m_t_us]

Originally Posted by 11larkin11

While LaMarre doesn't give you much in the way of power, he's getting on base at a .390 clip. That's pretty good.

I've heard he's been working on his swing mechanics to generate more power and it seems to be working as last night he was a couple feet away from hitting his 3rd home run in his last 6 games!

[The Rage]

Originally Posted by REDblooded

Didn't Bailey's VELO drop when the Reds adjusted his motion to hold the occasional base runner?

That is what some people think, but he also went through a somewhat consistant velocity surge in 2009, mainly the 2nd half of the year........then had arm problems in 2010-11

I just think throwing 94-98mph was to hard for him. He seems to be comfortable in the 92-94mph range most nights. Which is fine if he can keep refining his breaking stuff. If he gets it to Mat Latos level, he would be pretty good. Matt Cain doesn't throw nearly as hard as he did a couple of years ago either, but that offspeed stuff is super good.

Stephenson topping out around 100 tells me he has one of those "elite" type of arms like Chapman. I would take a Verlander type approach and tell him to save the big gas for later in the game though.

[Scrap Irony]

Originally Posted by j_m_t_us

I've heard he's been working on his swing mechanics to generate more power and it seems to be working as last night he was a couple feet away from hitting his 3rd home run in his last 6 games!

Sounds great.

If LaMarre can go for double digit HR the rest of the way, he may end up at the back end of the Cincinnati top 10 list. But his .368 obp is likely to drop if he can't show power going forward, and his speed only makes up for so much of that loss in value. In short, even as a CF, LaMarre has to hit with more pop.

Maybe he does that in AAA. Gregorius has, in a limited number of ABs. Stubbs did at the major league level.

But the instances where a prospect improves his slugging greatly from the minors to the majors are few and far between.

[RedlegJake]

LaMarre has the tools to be a good centerfielder if he can simply jump from almost no power to hitting just 10-15 homers consistently without hurting his other numbers. That would bump up his .slg and so also his .OPS to near .800 levels. I imagine that would vault his prospect status several slots. I know I'd pay a lot more attention to him in that case.

[RedlegJake]

Originally Posted by The Rage

Stephenson topping out around 100 tells me he has one of those "elite" type of arms like Chapman. I would take a Verlander type approach and tell him to save the big gas for later in the game though.

I wonder how often he is over throwing to hit those numbers and how easy and natural that velocity is for him?

Does the pitch start to flatten out or does he still have some movement on the ball at that speed?

Where is he comfortable or sitting most of the time? Is he really ramping it up big time to hit 100 or is it just 3-4 mph?

Most high velo guys have to learn they are much better pitchers when they pitch at lower velocities - a notch below what they are able to maintain both to command pitches better and to conserve strength for when they need to reach back so they can "blow" it past the batter because it has a decent difference in speed to affect the hitter's timing. Plus as they get warm and loose throwing a bit less hard early they learn they are actually able to throw harder later in the game without losing either command or strength - we're seeing that this year with Homer.

Glad to hear he's got a hammer curve. Has anyone seen it? Is it a true 12-6? Does he come straight overhead or 3/4?

Man the early reports on Robert have been really encouraging, I hope this kid stays healthy!

[dougdirt]

Stephensons curve on Friday night - http://www.milb.com/multimedia/vpp.j...nt_id=23407757

[rgslone]

I think most guys with Stephenson's kind of stuff would benefit greatly if they could start developing Cueto's approach later in their minor league development. Namely, in the immortal words of Crash Davis: "Relax, all right? Don't try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they're fascist. Throw some ground balls - it's more democratic."

Cueto comes across to me as a really, really smart pitcher. Occassionally, I see someone talk about his strikeouts "being down" and I just think they don't realize what he's doing. He's not trying to strike people out - but when he needs to he can and usually does, because he's still got fuel in the tank that he's been storing. I'm sure it takes a special pitcher with super confidence to be able to do what Cueto does - and maybe you also have to be able to change speeds well to sucessfully pull it off - but I think guys with big arms who can pitch like that are going to be very successful.

[Scrap Irony]

I agree that "hiding" a couple mph for most of the game is great, but I love to see Ks. The more Ks, the less likely batters get lucky.

That said, pitching to contact makes sense if you want to stay in the game longer (thereby lessesning the need on the 'pen and typically poorer 'pen arms) and you have a great defense behind you. Which the Reds do.

[mdccclxix]

Originally Posted by dougdirt

Stephensons curve on Friday night - http://www.milb.com/multimedia/vpp.j...nt_id=23407757

His set up and delivery actually remind me of Leake.

[rgslone]

Originally Posted by Scrap Irony

I agree that "hiding" a couple mph for most of the game is great, but I love to see Ks. The more Ks, the less likely batters get lucky.

That said, pitching to contact makes sense if you want to stay in the game longer (thereby lessesning the need on the 'pen and typically poorer 'pen arms) and you have a great defense behind you. Which the Reds do.

Oh, the truth is I've always been right with you - I love the strikeouts too. I always had a real appreciation for the guys who could get by on little more than pitching "smarts", but I vastly preferred the guy who could strike people out (which is probably why I never wanted to give up on Volquez although everything reasonable said I should). I especially feel that way about relief pitchers. But when a starter with the stuff to K plenty of hitters becomes a master pitcher (a la Greg Maddux), now that is special in my book and I'll take him over the straight gas thrower all day everyday. I think that's what Cueto is quickly becoming. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and predict that if his health holds up and he remains a Red, Cueto will end up being one of the Reds pitching greats [e.g., Soto, Rijo, Browning - and others I didn't see or can't immediately recall (of course Seaver was great for a number of teams)]. Some may say that I'm jumping the gun, but I don't think so.

[WahoosFanRyan]

Originally Posted by 19braves77

Billy Hamilton Inside The Park Home Run - 7/27/12 - YouTube

Here's Billys triple from tonight !

I took this video, that's also me yelling Yeah it was a great hit (Almost out of the park), centerfielder threw it to second and it went right past him. Riggleman stopped Billy at 3rd, then realized what happened and sent him (That all happened in a spilt second). Place went nuts when he made it all the way, it was exciting watching him run! Then he stole back to back bases the next night. The boy is like Usain Bolt Jr.!

Also, I'm new to the forum guys, glad to come across it. I'm a big Wahoos fan (live about 15 minutes from the ballpark). Y'all have some great talent down here and have a very prominent future!

[JayBruceFan]

Kinda crazy to think that the whole sequence of events on the Hamilton play happened in about 12 seconds