Minor League Wrap (7/5-11/10)
I’m still waiting to hear anything at all w/r/t international signings. It’s been a big deal this year with a few top prospects going down with identity or steroid issues. Whoops. At least Walker and Wiswall debuted this week.
To the jump!
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Game 88, Yankees at Mariners
Last game before the All-Star Game, which COUNTS this time and yet still doesn’t really matter all that much for us.
RF Ichiro!
2B Figgins
CF Gutierrez
3B Lopez
1B Kotchman
DH Smoak
C Bard
SS Jack Wilson
LF Saunders
Saunders ninth again. Also I bet you thought we were done seeing Kotchman. Think again.
Hyphen vs. Sabathia. Hyphen has a good recent history against the Yankees, and Ichiro and Death to Flying Things have hit Sabathia in the past. Baseball!
If this game ends up going awry, you could also tune into the Futures Game, where Alex Liddi and Carlos Peguero will be hitting 4-5 in the World lineup. Game time on that is 3pm PDT.
Game 87, Yankees at Mariners
Second to last game before the All-Star Break. Happy Felix Day to one and all.
RF Ichiro!
2B Figgins
DH Branyan
3B Lopez
CF Gutierrez
1B Smoak
LF Saunders
C Johnson
SS Jack Wilson
P Felix
Luke French was sent back to the minor leagues after last night’s game to clear room for Smoak. I wouldn’t expect French to pitch in the Triple-A All-Star Game after four innings last night.
Fun fact: Smoak and Saunders trail only Detroit’s Brennan Boesch for home runs among AL rookies. And we’re going to have the opportunity to see both in the heart of the order for years to come! Today is a good day.
Smoak and Mirrors: a Look at Splits
Now that I’ve attracted your attention by using an obvious pun that we’ll be seeing frequently over the next five and a half years or more, let’s get down to business.
One of the rationales coming mostly out of Texas as to why this trade might not end up as bad for the Rangers as it presently seems is that Smoak is not the player we believe him to be. He’s overrated, in large part because he’s a future platoon guy. Sure, his billing has been nice and all, but years down the road, the joak joke is on us because he’s just not that good from the right side.
This argument is not without merit. The author of the article I cite brings up a number of his college splits as evidence in support of his point that Smoak is a very different hitter from the right side. History is also behind him. Just as it’s easy to bet against most minor leaguers to make any kind of contribution at the major league level, it’s also a pretty sure claim to say that a switch-hitter will eventually choose one side or the other. Very few players seem to be able to maintain consistent performances from both sides of the plate.
So let’s have a look at those career minor league splits, shall we?
vs. LHP: 130 AB, 28 H, 6 2B, 3 HR, 25/15 K/BB, .215/.304/.331
vs. RHP: 311 AB, 101 H, 18 2B, 3B, 12 HR, 65/65 K/BB, .325/.443/.505
It seems like they might be on to something, right? Here are two reasons not to jump the gun just yet.
If you’ve followed my work here for a while, you’re probably familiar with my stance that 130 at-bats is not really an adequate sampling of anything. In Smoak’s case, I’d argue that these 130 at-bats might be even less representative than they normally might be. There are six hitters that were drafted in the first round of ’08 that have already spent some time in the big leagues: Pedro Alvarez (2) of the Pirates, Buster Posey (5) of the Giants, Gordon Beckham (8) of the White Sox, Jason Castro (10) of the Astros (hehe), our man Smoak (11), and Ike Davis (18) of the Mets. Of this group, not only is Smoak the lone switch-hitter, he’s also spent the second least amount of time in the minor leagues with 599 plate appearances, behind Beckham, who comes in with 259 appearances. Alvarez (820), Posey (750), Castro (917), and Davis (769) all spent much more time in the minor leagues honing their craft.
Additionally, you can look at where they played. Smoak got fourteen games in with Clinton in the Midwest League the year he was drafted, and a rehab appearance in the rookie leagues aside (he had a ribcage injury last year, another important note), it was double and triple-A from then out. The number two pick of the same draft, Alvarez, spent half a season in advanced-A before he hit the high minors. Posey was at San Jose for two-thirds of a season before moving up to Fresno. Castro had thirty-nine games in a short-season league in ’08 before he too spent half a season in the Cal League on his way to double-A. Davis spent twenty more games in the short-season league in ’08, but otherwise his development plan was no different.
What I’m getting at here is that Smoak, relative to his peers from the same draft, not only had to deal with switch-hitting, he was also rushed. You can give him a little credit for coming out a good college program, but pitchers at double and triple-A are going to look nothing like what he’s accustomed to seeing in the NCAA. Those are minor league veterans out there, and they know how to exploit less experienced hitters. They wouldn’t be at the level otherwise. Combined with his acknowledged weakness from the right side, this created an environment where Smoak was almost certainly going to fail.
The second part is partially conceptual work. Let’s look at those numbers again.
vs. LHP: 130 AB, 28 H, 6 2B, 3 HR, 25/15 K/BB, .215/.304/.331
vs. RHP: 311 AB, 101 H, 18 2B, 3B, 12 HR, 65/65 K/BB, .325/.443/.505
There’s one important detail I’ve omitted from these lines so far, and that’s batting average on balls in play. Against left-handers, it was a paltry .245, where against right-handers, it was .380. There are a number of factors that could have contributed to this. One would be to take the “weaker from the right side” to its most literal level for comedy’s sake and suggest he’s simply not strong enough to get the ball out against left-handers, but given that this theory doesn’t pass the eye test and Smoak hit a 365 ft home run against the Astros in June 18th and a 400 ft shot against the Athletics on May 3rd, both from the right side, we might be able to put that one to a quick rest.
So what else is there? His groundball rates from both sides are roughly 45%, the five percent shift from line drives to fly balls against left-handers wouldn’t account for it, particularly when his line drive rate was close to 20% anyway, so what is it? Well, remember what I said about those crafty southpaws at higher levels? Twenty percent of his flyballs last year never left the infield, compared to about six percent against right-handers. Lefties were giving him a steady diet of jam pitches and let Smoak get himself into trouble.
That might be one thing to watch out for in Smoak’s continued development at the major league level. His ability to fend such pitches off, or at least lay off them, might end up making a considerable difference in what we can expect out of his career. But while we can acknowledge that he may never be the same hitter from the right side, suggesting that he should be a platoon player, based off a year and a half of experience at baseball’s highest levels, is foolishness.
Game 86, Yankees at Mariners
After all that, we still have baseball to play. You kids like baseball, right?
RF Ichiro!
2B Figgins
DH Branyan
3B Lopez
CF Gutierrez
1B Kotchman
LF Saunders
C Johnson
SS Jack Wilson
P Pauley
We thought we were going to see Pineda vs. Lee tonight. That’s a good one!
Saunders moves up in the order again, so for those of you keeping track at home it’s Bard/Josh Wilson > Saunders > Johnson/Jack Wilson. It’s important to know these things.
This promises to be a thrilling game of competitive, closely played baseball. Anything could happen!
Lee and Lowe to Texas for Smoak, Prospects, Heartache
This was always the realistic endgame. Few of us wanted to admit that. After an offseason that saw us sign one of the top third basemen on the market, extend our current ace, and bring a second one in for kicks, we started printing out “In Jack We Trust” banners, which Jack himself seemed uneasy about, wanting results first, making him perhaps the only sane one. The Mariners became a national story around the premise of using defense as the new market inefficiency. It was a good division surely, but surely not so decided that a 85-90 win team couldn’t take it all and then use the 2001 Diamondbacks formula to charge through the post-season, guns ablazin’.
The game is not so kind as to work out that way. Our risky infield switcheroo resulted in neither players being able to hit, the big bullpen arm we acquired wouldn’t throw the pitch that made him any good (the rest of the ‘pen has been a mess), Milton Bradley has been lovable but aggravating in new ways, Kotchman’s change of scenery resulted in little change in his perpetually terrified expression and playing style, our wonderful infield gremlin pulled something and had return to his dugout lair for a while, and dear, sweet Clifton got himself hurt in spring training. Not even Gutierrez’ early season performances were enough to save the team, so big was the mess we had on our hands.
But for a few weeks in there, we were afforded some of the best pitching any of us have ever seen, and in the process got a hazy glimpse of what a championship team might look like in Seattle. The first chance I had to see Cliff pitch was not long after I flew back from the east coast. It was a Friday night and my friends and I were at the Rock Bottom in Bellevue and I, being the baseball fan of the bunch, positioned myself across from the nearest TV screen. I saw Lee execute, but turn in what was the worst start any of us will see out of him this season. And even without the star pitcher at his best, the Mariners managed to keep up and knock out our hated interleague rivals. As if to reward us, Lee spent the next several weeks grinning like a madman and putting on a pitching clinic the likes of which we might not see again for some time.
Right now, Cliff Lee has a case for being the best southpaw in the game. It’s more than the pure stuff, which is great, but not eye-poping. It’s more than the endurance that allows him to throw three complete games in a row, because why should he give the ball to anyone else? Part of it, though, is in the post-game comments where he addressed his much lamented walk that broke the streak. Cliff Lee complained about doing something that even the best pitchers do probably once a game.
This is the position Cliff Lee has placed him in. Even the greats that we think of as exemplary in their field often use the accomplishments of past or contemporary heroes as a yardstick by which to judge their own progress. It’s natural to set up such milestones, but they’ve become irrelevant for Lee. Consequently, things that would have seemed inevitable for another man, even one with better talents, aren’t anymore. Lee only has his own standards to judge himself by. It’s remarkable, and more than a little dumbfounding. Texas is going to see a very special pitcher the next few months.
In return, we’re getting Justin Smoak, Blake Beavan, Josh Lueke, and Matt Lawson. Comparisons to the proposed Yankees haul are going to be inevitable, so I’ll do what I can with that, putting aside comparisons to previous Lee trades because that stopped being fair sometime last night. First, there’s the matter of Smoak versus Montero. Montero has hit and power tools that grade out close to 80. Such grades are not handed out readily. You can usually count the number of players that have them on one hand at any given time. He’s also a right-handed hitter without a true defensive position and probably can’t be considered a catcher long term. Smoak, meanwhile, is a great defender, a switch-hitter, draws walks, and loses maybe five points off both hit tools, which isn’t that much in the overall scale of things. As an added bonus, if you were like me and horribly upset on missing out the once-in-a-generation first baseman draft of aught-eight only to select a reliever, we just got in it two years late! It’s a bad day to be Dennis Raben or Rich Poythress because there’s a good chance Smoak not only holds the position down, but becomes an all-star player in the Mark Texeira mold for the next five+ years. Haha, I just thought of the Yankees.
Beavan would be the player we parallel to McAllister, being both back-end rotation types with some potential. Back in the ’07 draft, Beavan was a big deal, both in the literal and figurative senses, a 6’7, 210 lb right-hander who was throwing in 91-6 with iffy mechanics. The Rangers went out and tweaked his throwing motion and got themselves a pitcher with slightly above-average velocity and a career walk rate of under one-and-a-half. He lost the anticipated strikeouts in the process, something that has made him quite suspect in the eyes of some. Relative to McAllister though, he’s been rushed. At the same stage, Zach had two years in short-season and was entering his first year in double-A. Beavan is in his second full season of double-A already and never saw short-season for so much as a game. The Rangers have been very aggressive with him and he’s done all right with it, but his development, particularly of the breaking ball (he’s quite good vs. lefties with his change) could have been assisted by some patience. This is close enough to a wash, without acknowledging that circumstances might have been working against the Beav.
There was no parallel to Lueke in the original Yankees deal, so instead I bring in Mark Lowe, who was also a part of the deal. Lowe was absolutely delightful when he was called up initially in 2004. A lot has happened since then and that has included Lowe being a little less awesome on the field (no less awesome in person) and oft-injured, the latest being season-ending back surgery. He hit his first year of arbitration this year as well. I like Lowe and his place in the bullpen, and am happy that he’s going to his hometown team, but since Lueke has yet to hit the big leagues and has a mid-90s heater, a mid-80s slider, and strikeout rates that have ranged within double-digits, you could see him as effectively replacing Lowe in the org, and for four more years.
Since I can’t avoid addressing it though, I’ll note that Lueke has one nasty incident in his past. This is something that I feel strongly about personally and have a great deal of difficulty being objective about, to the point where trying to talk about him in terms of ability alone still leaves me with my skin crawling. I’ll leave it at that by saying that the rape charges were later dropped, and offer to judge him based on his pitching from here out. This is not a posting for open season on the comments, speaking on behalf of both the authors and moderators. Lueke is going to have this hanging over his head for the rest of his days and the hornets’ nest is going to stir up every time he does anything of note. Let’s agree not to pile on.
The last piece in the deal, Lawson, is effectively your parallel to Adams, in that they’re both right-handed, probable future utility infielders who could provide stopgaps before the Ackley era begins. Both have gone station-to-station in the minor leagues and have been a little old for their levels in each instance. Adams may have been the stronger hitter of the two, but Lawson was ranked the best defender in the Cal League last year at second, where Adams was only a little above-average. Fourth pieces in deals are rarely interesting, except that Lawson might have a big league career as a role player and could force an Ackley promotion, as all three of the non-Smoak prospects are heading to West Tenn.
Overall, people are probably going to judge this deal in the short-term by us not getting Montero’s dual-80s, which isn’t the best way of looking at it. Smoak can help us sooner and is a better defender now than Montero will ever be, and could turn out to be an extremely valuable player. We’re also getting a young flamethrower for our older, slightly broken one. The rest could come out as a net positive for the M’s anyway.
I’ll miss Cliff very much, but this was the right trade to make, and helped our team while taking some weapons away from a frightening division rival. Don’t try to look for the bad in it, because given the circumstances, you’re not going to find a whole lot.
Deal With Rangers Done
Per Joel Sherman, as always. Ken Rosenthal confirms.
i have learned deal done with #Rangers, Smoak and 3 others for Lee and reliever Mark Lowe
I love Justin Smoak, and prefer him to Jesus Montero, so I’m prepared to dance with joy.
Celebration time. The M’s now have a first baseman of the present and future.
Well Then
Apparently, the deal is off. Joel Sherman and others report that talks hit a snag (potentially over David Adams’ ankle injury) and another team has “jumped in hard”.
Argh – I’m going to be on a plane in two hours, so I won’t be able to keep on top of this tonight. Will do analysis of whatever deal happens when I can.
Montero, Adams, and McAllister
Since this deal seems all but official, here’s a rundown on the three guys the M’s are reported to be getting back.
Jesus Montero is 20-years-old, currently a catcher, and one of the best hitting prospects in the minors. Before the season, Baseball America ranked him the fourth best prospect in the game, behind Stephen Strasburg, Jason Heyward, and Mike Stanton. Pretty heady company. He’s struggled a bit in Triple-A, but his numbers for a player his age aren’t bad, and he’s been killing it the last month or so. When BA did their mid-season update, Montero ranked fifth, two spots ahead of Dustin Ackley and six spots ahead of Michael Pineda. He’s a premium prospect, no doubt.
His calling card is his bat. He’s a high contact line drive slugger, far more developed offensively than most players his age. He’s a big guy at 6’4 and stocky, so while he’s not going to fill out and get stronger, more power could come as he learns how to get some loft under his swing. He doesn’t walk a lot, but he’s not a Jose Lopez hack either. He’s aggressive because he’s got good bat control and can make solid contact with pitches across the strike zone. Vladimir Guerrero comparisons are not completely absurd, though are clearly the absolute best case scenario. In terms of just pure offense, Montero probably has the most upside of any prospect in the game. If you were to take one guy not currently in the big leagues as the most likely to league the lead in OPS at some point in his career, you’d take Montero.
He’s not perfect, though. He’s just not much of an athlete, kind of a soft-bodied type who doesn’t move all that well. His footwork isn’t great, and his receiving needs a lot of work. Very few guys his size can stick behind the plate, and the ones who can are much better athletes than Montero is. I’d put the odds of him having a long major league career at catcher at something like five percent. I think he’s a first baseman long term, and the M’s may be best off just making that switch sooner than later. I know its exciting to think about his potential as an offensive catcher, given the M’s woes back there right now, but it’s probably unrealistic to expect him to be able to handle the position. Remember, Miguel Cabrera was a shortstop in the minors, but leaving him there wouldn’t have been the best idea either. Guys play positions early in their career that they can’t handle. It’s part of how they develop. And, therefore, I don’t think we should view Montero as a catcher.
So, to me, that makes him the Mariners first baseman of the future, and a guy who could be ready at some point next year. If they convert him right away, a solid year of work learning how to play first base and get reps over there could allow him to be in the M’s line-up next summer as a 21-year-old, and the bat should play up pretty quickly. As a right-hander, he’s not the ideal clean-up hitter for the M’s, but he’s not strictly a pull power guy and should be able to succeed even with the park.
As for Adams, he’s a performance-better-than-his-tools type, who has hit well for the last few years despite underwhelming physical abilities. He doesn’t have a ton of power or speed, but he has a good approach, makes good contact, and has produced most of the way through the minors. I’d peg him more as a potential utility infielder than an everyday guy, though he could prove me wrong and lay claim to a starting job if he keeps hitting. He’ll have a hard time beating out Dustin Ackley for the second base job long term, though, and third base belongs to Chone Figgins starting next year. But, he could get to the majors before Ackley and have a few months to establish himself as the team’s second baseman, which could then give them options going forward.
McAllister is an interesting guy, and probably a better throw-in than I expected. As a 22-year-old right-hander, he’s had a rough year in Triple-A, but has had better success in the past. He pounds the strike zone with average stuff, and while his GB% is low this year, he’s been more of a sinker specialist in years past. He’s also shown an ability to get LH hitters out, which gives him a chance to stick in the rotation. In some ways, he’s similar to Doug Fister, but with more velocity, less change-up, and a better breaking ball. He’s not a high upside guy, but as we’ve seen, strike-throwers in Safeco with a good defense can be useful pieces. He needs more time to develop, but could be a potential #5 starter down the line, or perhaps a solid middle reliever.
Overall, it’s hard to argue with what the M’s are getting. This package is light years ahead of the one they gave up to get Lee, and gives them a legitimate potential star and a couple of solid young role players. This deal is better than the rumored Hicks/Ramos deal from a few days ago. This deal is better than pretty much any of the rumored deals.
The Mariners did very well here.
Lee to Yanks Close?
The New York Post is reporting that the M’s are close to sending Cliff Lee to the Yankees for Jesus Montero (20-year-old catcher), David Adams (23-year-old 2nd baseman), and a third prospect. Many other sources confirm that the deal is close, but nothing is done. Texas or Minnesota could still jump in and make a deal that the M’s like more, but this is a really strong offer – Montero is legitimately an elite prospect, and probably the best hitting prospect in the minors. For Texas to beat this offer, they’d have to put Justin Smoak on the table. For Minnesota, it’s probably something like one of their starting pitchers and Aaron Hicks.
So, yeah, while I’d rather not see Lee go to the Yankees, this is good news for the M’s. They’re going to get a great return for Lee, assuming this report is true. We’ll have more if it becomes official.