Mariners Pick Best Player of Supplemental Third Round, RHP Carter Capps
In a way, I’m torn. On one hand, there’s a part of my mind that always insists that there’s an art to pitching and that hurlers who didn’t grow up honing that craft are not to be trusted. On the other hand, attempts to convert a position player to the mound is always a practice that seems fascinating to me, like it’s completely new each time it happens even though I’ve watched this system so long that Rich Dorman, who was one of the first players I remember transitioning, is now a pitching coach.
Capps was a catcher in high school, just as Dorman was, just as J.J Putz was. He redshirted as a freshman and has since moved to the mound where he throws a live fastball that tops out in the mid-90s and seems to have an awful lot of sink to it. He’s been a starter throughout, but we’re probably looking at him as a reliever, similar to what we thought Pryor was going to be last year. Of course, Capps has better control than a guy who’s been catching should have, with a 129/18 K/BB and very few hits allowed. He needs to work on the secondary offerings though, and the slider is probably the best bet in that department.
Mount Olive College Stats
Interview with Capps and Dan Hayduk, some game footage
Danny Hultzen is Our Number One Pick
Leading up to the draft, I spent the past couple of days researching hitters. Everyone told me that the Mariners were going to draft a hitter. It was a foregone conclusion. I sat at my computer and wrote up three different draft posts, one for Rendon, one for Starling, and one for Lindor. The way I figured it, any of these options would be more or less satisfactory: Rendon solves the third base issues, Lindor shores up the defense all around and gets some power, and Starling, though risky, had a lot of power potential and would likely play a good centerfield. Any of these options on the table, and we’d be in pretty good shape. Hell, Dave and I both had “M’s Draft Anthony Rendon” posts in the draft queue here. It was practically a foregone conclusion once the Pirates did their thing.
Now this happens. If you remember my post from last week, you’ll remember that Hultzen was the guy I thought was least likely to go to the M’s. He was good and all, but not sexy in the ways that a lot of number two picks should be. He’s low-90s with the fastball (some say he’s sitting mid-90s at times) and commands a strong three-pitch mix. The stuff has had people project him more as a #2 starter than anything else.
I think where Hultzen may have separated himself is that, in addition to being relatively safe, he gets rave reviews for the work ethic and mindset that put him around the top of his class in this draft. One has to think that if the M’s are buying into him as a legitimate number two pick, they’re also buying into him as a #2 pitcher and maybe then some. It’s easy to draft a guy like Rendon or Starling when the need is there and it’s a position of weakness in both the major and minor leagues. It’s really tough to justify picking a pitcher with your number one if you already have a killer rotation and a few other interesting hurlers on the way in Paxton, Walker, Erasmo Ramirez, and Robles. The Mariners scouting department had to have been supremely confident in Hultzen’s abilities in order to pick him where they did.
Right now, we’re all stunned to the point where we don’t really know how to rationalize it. If I were writing purely from a gut reaction here, the results would be nearly unintelligible. I was practically livid when the pick was first announced, simply because it was so hard for me to figure out where Hultzen fits into the Mariners scheme. But the M’s probably have a better sense of that than I do, and there’s no backsies on this kind of thing. I hope that the fear I had that, regardless of who we picked, the fans would be grousing three years from now about us not picking X obvious player, won’t end up being extra justified in this case.
Minor League Wrap (5/30-6/5/11)
No intro this week either, as I’m draft-busy, what with the M’s selecting a new number one prospect this afternoon around 4 pm PDT. The draft will continue with rounds two through thirty starting at 9 am PDT on Tuesday and then wrap up with rounds thirty-one through fifty starting at 9 am PDT on Wednesday. Remember when we used to do this all in one day? Remember how neat that was?
Anyway, I’ll have my spin on the pick when it happens and leave a thread open where I’ll make some responses as I have time, probably not too many until later in the evening. On Tuesday, the plan would be to cover everything through the tenth round, including the compensation pick we get for not signing Stanek, and then leave catch-all threads from there out where I might fly by to make some comments. It’ll be a busy few days. The good news is that this draft is super deep and we could be picking up a lot of talent. The bad news is that other teams are drafting too and in many cases have more picks than we do.
To the jump!
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The 2011 Draft: Many Names, One Pick
Next Monday, around four o’clock, the Mariners are going to select the player that will likely finish the season as their number one prospect. It’s very cool for us, but also kind of scary. Coming into the season, we were pretty confident that the Pirates would likely take Rice third baseman Anthony Rendon and we’d then have our choice of UCLA RHP Gerrit Cole or TCU LHP Matt Purke or maybe a college hitter. Purke slipped off the radar, Cole has been good at times and mediocre at others, the college hitters haven’t broken away, and Rendon has simply been injured. In the meantime, various other names have clawed their way into the discussion and the whole thing has become nebulous as the “what have you done for me lately?” scouting crowd starts to make their vocal presence known. There’s a phrase my father used to use for situations like these, but it’s unrepeatable in polite company.
In the past few weeks, I’ve heard about seven different names linked in discussions for picks one through three of the first round. At this stage, the hope still seems to be that we get Rendon, but no one knows what the Pirates are going to do. If Rendon is off the board, it could go in any number of directions. What follows is seven capsules on the players we’re likely looking at. The information is largely culled from various internet sources and synthesized/spun in some small way. I’m not playing armchair scout yet because that’s something I reserve for draft day and players that I know to be in the system. College data is taken from collegesplits.com, prep data is pilfered from BA’s Top 200 Prospects list.
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Minor League Wrap (5/23-29/11)
I don’t have an intro this week, just content. I’m trying to work on some sort of broad draft-related preview stuff, as this has quickly turned nebulous on us. The Dominican Summer League has indeed started, but I’ll probably tackle that next time as I’m not certain of the roster composition yet. In the meantime, if you really want some minor league stuff, check out Larry Stone’s output lately, where he’s talked about the youth movement the team has been trying to sell everyone on and gets quotes from Pedro Grifol on Erasmo Ramirez, Kyle Seager, Nate Tenbrink, James Paxton, Mike Carp, Carlos Triunfel, and Guillermo Pimentel. Ramirez is throwing a lot harder than he used to.
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Minor League Wrap (5/16-22/11)
I’m back! Things should be resuming their usual schedule from here out. On the plus side, the Generals and the Mavericks both won five games this week! On the negative end of things, the Lumberkings, in spite of all of their personnel changes, still have an awful record, and yet remain fascinating to watch on certain days. Tacoma’s in the middle, but Ackley is still amazing, so that’s something.
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Minor League Wrap (5/9-15/11)
Abbreviated stuff. I’m still in NYC and probably won’t have time to respond to comments promptly, but hey, there’s the usual pitcher/hitter/transaction stuff, and a few random notes as I have seen fit. As stated before, the next wrap will be off-schedule as well. Also, we signed a Cuban left-hander last week, and I know at least a few things about him.
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Minor League Wrap (5/2-8/11)
I’m going to be in New York next Monday, so there probably won’t be a wrap next week, or at least not one that’s on time. Since I’ll be getting back late the following Saturday, that probably also means a delayed wrap or none at all for the following week. I doubt I’m going to have a lot of time to be writing about baseball while I’m there.
Anyway, the high minors affiliates are doing well, and Jackson is continuing to run off some good streaks. The lower levels are not so hot and have been having issues. But Taijuan Walker debuted this week, we saw a 10+ K performance and an inside-the-park grand slam, and the on-base stuff that we’ve been seeing to start the year is still in full-effect with a lot of guys.
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Rejoice, Mike Wilson has been Called Up
Divish has the news, and it’s been reported plenty of other places now. I don’t think that I have to really introduce him, as during the regular season I tend to get e-mails on a weekly basis asking me why he hasn’t been called up yet and thus putting me that much closer to an asylum tenure, but for the five of you out there who still don’t know who he is, here’s a Mike Wilson primer.
Wilson was drafted in the second round of the 2001 draft, ahead of guys like Dan Haren, Ryan Theriot, Jeremy Guthrie, and, hilariously, Ryan Howard, who was a fifth rounder that year. At the time, the Mariners’ modus operandi for the draft was to grab the toolsiest guy available regardless of whether or not he had ever played baseball before, or, from the pitching end of things, guys that profiled to be something like Jamie Moyer. This was the same draft that brought us Michael Garciaparra (once a promising soccer recruit), Rene Rivera, and Bobby Livingston. Wilson was supposed to go to the University of Oklahoma on football scholarship, and one look at him would explain why, but for whatever reasons, he signed with the M’s, who thought they were getting an athletic, switch-hitter with promising power potential, and one of those things is still true.
Mike Wilson spent three years in the short-season leagues to start out his career, having inked too late to play in 2001. By the time he cracked a full-season roster in Wisconsin, he was of legal drinking age. He also nearly hit thirty doubles and twenty home urns the same year. The next season, he split his time between Inland Empire and San Antonio, which should tell you exactly how long he’s been around. He finally cracked 20+ home runs for a season and was .276/.360/.494 in 449 at-bats that year with a 144/50 K/BB ratio.
It was enough to get him added to the 40-man in the offseason, but then injuries hit. Between a hamstring and a quad strain, he only played 57 games the next season and was a casualty when the M’s needed room on the roster. In 2008, he hit twenty-seven home runs for the Diamond Jaxx and was added to the 40-man again, only to lose his spot to Griffey after an ankle sprain and oblique strain. Last season, he was reasonably healthy and hit .278/.374/.523 between Tacoma and West Tenn, with another twenty+ home runs and an improved 101/58 K/BB in 392 at-bats. Even though he was a free agent in the offseason, as he has been a couple of times already, he re-signed with the Mariners because Zduriencik seemed legitimately interested in him as a player.
And that brings us to now. Mike Wilson’s career trajectory has been as weird as any. I’ve seen enough players who aren’t native to baseball flounder over my years of watching, so it’s strange to see one seem like he could pan out, particularly after such a slow start to his career. Guys don’t usually get 2200+ at-bats before reaching triple-A on a semi-regular basis (Saunders only had 1200+). He’s 27, and in his physical prime, so the M’s could probably do worse than to have him around just to see what happens for the major league minimum. He’ll strike out. He’ll walk now and then. He’ll hit the ball with an awful lot of authority, but probably not hit for a high average. If spring training was any indicator, he’ll also play some at times groan-inducing defense. Don’t let the CF tenure in Tacoma fool you, they simply don’t have better options out there.
And that’s Mike Wilson. He’ll hit, perhaps. The Mariners would like it if he hit.
Taijuan Walker Promoted to Clinton
Perhaps you’re despondent over the fact that James Paxton was scheduled to start last night and didn’t. This should perk you right up. The Lumberkings announced a short time ago that 2010 supplemental first-round pick RHP Taijuan Walker has been promoted to Clinton from extended spring training, along with RH Jandy Sena. RHP Seon Gi Kim went back to Peoria and RHPs Tyler Blandford and Matt Bischoff went on the DL. Walker is scheduled to pitch on Thursday, but the rotation has been in flux for a while, and that information is subject to change.
Walker came into the organization as a strong arm with little polish, having spent most of his earlier years playing basketball. His pre-draft reports had him pitching 91-3 and touching the mid-90s on rare instances, offsetting it with a curve and a slider. Then over the winter, something started to happen. Reports started coming in of his curve developing into a potential plus pitch and that he was sitting in the mid-90s and touching 98. A recent game in extended had him at eight strikeouts in four innings, sitting 95-97 the whole time.
All this information is counterproductive to what I’m going to try to tell you next: remain calm. Walker is going from nice and sunny weather to the Midwest League in the spring. The weather might not be good, the velocity might be down, and yeah, he’ll probably fall behind hitters. But the information we have now would suggest that Walker is a lot closer to what we hoped he would be than he was when he was drafted, and may have been a pretty savvy pick on the part of the scouting dept.