M’s Come to Terms with Walker, Ten Others
Divish on the Twitter, pt. 1, pt.2. The second part also notes that Woodinville’s RHP Luke Taylor has spurned his commitment to Hawaii to sign with the hometown team. Considering we’ve poached three players off their incoming class, the Rainbows must really hate us now. A press release also lists RHP Tyler Burgoon (10th), 3B/1B Stefen Romero (12th), LHP Jason Markovitz (13th), RHP Jandy Sena (23rd), C Andrew Giobbi (32nd), OF Ethan Paquette (35th), RHP Joshua Krist (39th), C Billy Marcoe (41st), and RHP Tim Boyce (44th). Marcoe’s been long rumored as being on the way to Everett too. Walker will be at Safeco later today.
That Walker signed at all shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Certain people were concerned that with so much more press on him as a potential D-1 recruit for basketball, he was still more focused on that than baseball these days, despite his own comments in interviews to the contrary. Signing him was probably the easy part. Getting him to learn how to pitch like a natural will be a little trickier.
That brings us to another point, which is that of all the M’s vaunted top four picks, he was probably the easiest sign. Paxton, who’s tied to Boras, may take a little while, but given that he’s without much leverage, has an offer from his “hometown” team, and the track record is not great for indy league draftees, I’d say it gets done. More difficult will probably be Littlewood, who had agreed to play at San Diego, and Stanek, who has the commitment to Arkansas. I see Stanek as maybe being the toughest one. That’s not even touching on later picks like Jordan Shipers, who are wild cards at the moment.
We’re making progress, and still have a lot of work to do before August 15th.
Rainiers Game Thread, 6/17/10
Got to do something on the off day, right? Why not listen to Mike Curto? Game starts at 6:05 pm.
LF Ezequiel Carrera
SS Jack Wilson
1B Brad Nelson
DH Tommy Everidge
2B Jack Hannahan
CF Gregory Halman
C Guillermo Quiroz
RF Mike Wilson
3B Matt Mangini
P Andy Baldwin
That’s a different looking lineup. Mainly for Mangini being so low, and also the Jack Wilson factor.
Some minor league notes:
* 6th-round pick C Keanu Carmichael signed for $150k a day or two ago.
* Adam Moore’s rehab stint has been shut down.
* LHP Mauricio Robles gave up four runs in the first inning of a game against Chattanooga. The Diamond Jaxx are two games out of first with three left to play in the half.
* The Aquasox start their season in Salem-Keizer tomorrow.
2010 Everett Aquasox Preview
I’m not hot on writing Aquasox previews, because as much as love games at Everett Memorial, I realize that this early in the season, the roster is only going to feature guys who signed quickly, lesser short-season entries from last year, and various players promoted from Venezuela or the Dominican Republic. That’s this roster in a nutshell, but on top of that it also lacks a bit of star power that you’d ordinarily expect from the Latin American entries, fewer early round signings, and the most interesting player on the whole team is probably the closer. Nonetheless, this is what we have to work with for the moment, and I’ll note changes as the wraps get rolling with them. Who knows, the team might end up being good later on. Let’s get to it then…
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Minor League Wrap (6/7-13/10)
Just so everyone has it on their calendars, the Aquasox season starts on Friday (homestand starts on Monday). I should have a preview up that morning, if not a little earlier.
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Jay on KGA
I’ll be making my radio debut this afternoon on Spokane’s 1510 KGA around 5:15 pm, talking about the draft as I am wont to do. Tune in, if you will, but I must warn you beforehand that I don’t speak nearly as fast as Dave does.
M’s Select RHP Taijuan Walker with #43
The Mariners have built a farm system around Midwest scouting for many years. Ryan Feierabend, Tony Butler, Nate Adcock, the list goes on. When #43 came up, it seemed logical. It seemed like the Mariners were going to pick Ohio right-hander Stetson Allie, widely regarded as a top ten prospect, who had somehow managed to drift all the way to them. And then the Mariners picked California RHP Taijuan Walker.
This wasn’t really what we expected. It wasn’t really what anyone expected, but that doesn’t automatically make it a bad pick. It is a signability pick, however, as Walker has no known college commitments and is likely to be brought in with some ease. He’s certainly not lacking on overall ceiling either, it’s just that he hasn’t had all that much experience to this point.
Walker is roughly 6’5 and 200 lbs, which would project him to around Michael Pineda’s body type in the long term. He throws in the low 90s and can touch 95 on a good day. The arm action is a little whippy and he’ll throw across his body, but the delivery itself is not so damning as his mechanical consistency.
A team that picks Walker is likely to be in love with his athleticism. He’s a two-sport star at his high school and known as a competitive basketball player, which leaves him a little unrefined on the baseball front. Last season, he was even tried out on the infield for a while before they ultimately decided he was uncomfortable out there and better suited to starting on a regular basis.
Unfortunately for Walker, the extra focus on pitching has not helped his performances a great deal. He showed signs of a plus curve in the past, and that went south on him this spring. The slider he developed to compensate has been nothing extraordinary, and the change-up is merely an offering he has, not one that he uses, or demands to be used. A chart climber in summer and fall play for last year, this spring he wasn’t doing a lot to attract scouts on a regular basis.
Like their confidence in his athleticism, the Mariners will also have to be convinced that they can build a consistent motion for him in order for this one to work. This isn’t a bad pick, but it is more long-term than most of us might have hoped, with the potential of giving us some of that high-end pitching that the system so desperately needs at the lower levels.
MLB.com Player Profile
Baseball America Video (via YouTube)
First Round of ’10 Draft, Today
This isn’t nearly as exciting as last year, but I could say that and it could apply to a lot of different things at this point. As you may know, the MLB draft is starting up at 4 pm PDT today, 7 pm EDT, and the teams will make their first and supplemental first round selections and then call it quits until 9 am tomorrow, when they’ll go through round thirty. The Mariners will pick 43rd out of 50 when we get to that point.
After they make that pick, we might have a lot to say about who’s still on the board and where the team might go from here. Until we get there, we’ll have the usual exclamations of “I never expected (player) to go to (team) at (slot)!”, of both the good and bad variety, local product Josh Sale will come off the board, the Yankees and possibly the Red Sox will buy a promising but unpolished prep player out of his college commitment, and the Astros might do something stupid (they’re attached to Sale’s name at the moment, which is decidedly not stupid).
I’ve heard two names attached to the M’s so far, which is surprising given their usually clandestine dealings and how silly it is to project that far out. One of them is another sort of local guy in Langley B.C. catcher Kellin Deglan, who turned eighteen four days ago and I think went to the same high school as former farmhand Tyson Gillies. Deglan hits from the left side and has a good amount of raw power, though given the background, you can emphasize the rawness. He’s also regarded as a guy who’s nearly certain to stay behind the plate, as he has good pop times and his athleticism and arm strength are much praised. Baseball America has mentioned that Deglan worked out with Twins star and fellow Canadian Justin Morneau in the offseason, and his stock is definitely on the rise, but for those of you hoping to uproot Johnson or Moore from behind the plate, he’s more of a long-term option and would almost certainly take a few years to get going.
YouTube:
Baseball Factory TV, Deglan at Under Armour All-America, Aug. 2009
Baseball America, Deglan hitting at Wood Bat Championships, Oct. 2009
The other name that has come up a few times in the local and national media is Utah prep shortstop Marcus Littlewood. ESPN’s Keith Law claimed that the M’s were expected to take Littlewood with their first pick, which prompted a write-up from Larry Stone earlier in the week. The exact opinion you’ll get on him will vary depending on who it is you’re talking to. Some say that his stock is on the rise, that he possesses some of the best hands in the draft, that he’s a real gamer and a baseball kid through and through, and that he’ll hit at least fifteen home runs as a pro and is likely to stay at short. Others look at him and see the slow footspeed and less than ideal reactions and see him as a defensive-minded third baseman, without the rocket arm or the power to justify staying on. Any team that picks him up would have to be pretty confident in their ability to either get him to stick it out at short, hit for power, or both.
YouTube:
Hitting, 2009 WWBA World Championship
Fielding, 2009 WWBA World Championship
Right-handed at-bat, 2009 Tournament of Stars
Left-handed at-bat, 2009 AFLAC All-American Game
Minor League Wrap (5/31-6/6/10)
I’ve got a draft post coming scheduled for a couple hours from now. Reading, for your Monday morning.
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Minor League Wrap (5/24-30/10)
Sorry about this one being a few days late. Computer issues bogging me down and then I had to sift through everything again, so it’s a bit slapdash. Anyway, let’s get to it.
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Tenn for Tenbrink
Dave may be missing out on seeing the system’s best pitcher in Michael Pineda (Robles isn’t a bad consolation prize), but one player of interest that he will be seeing is LF Nate Tenbrink, who was promoted on the off day with Joe Dunigan hitting the DL.
Tenbrink is one of the bigger stories in the minor league system right now because he was hitting .379/.452/.649 for the High Desert Mavericks while going fourteen for fifteen on stolen base attempts. With a month and a half in the books, he’s maintained a 1.100 OPS after he hitting only .282/.357/.431 last season. He’s nearly surpassed his triple and home run totals for all of last season in just forty-three games played, and is on pace to increase his walk totals by 50%. So what in the blue blazes is going on with him?
Coming into the ’08 draft, Tenbrink was lauded for his physical tools, but was regarded as a guy for whom the game didn’t come naturally. Brilliant in batting practice, he’d show a mediocre approach in the games. On the field, he’d make a flashy play one inning and then botch the next grounder. His arm was strong, but he threw too many balls away. If tools had been the main criteria for judging a player, he would have easily gone in the first five rounds, but as it stood, he slipped to the M’s in the seventh.
So what can we say about Tenbrink’s performances now? For two straight months, Tenrbink has run a BABIP of over .400. His overall line drive rate is around 12.5%, if the splits are to be believed, but he seems to be hitting everything hard and the balls are dropping in for him. Ordinarily, there would be reason for a great deal of caution in evaluating these stats, but here are a couple of reasons why Tenbrink might be different.
One is the home/road splits. We’d expect that he be able to hit in Mavericks Stadium, because frankly, everyone competent does. The unusual thing with Tenbrink though is that he hits better on the road. In Adelanto, he’s posting an average of .395/.490/.556, with a BABIP of over .450. While touring the rest of the California League, he’s hitting .366/.416/.731 noticeably lower walk numbers and a drop in BABIP, but it’s accompanied by a spike in power. Unlike Poythress on the other side of the diamond, these aren’t necessarily park aided either. Where Poythress has five or more dingers in a known hitters haven in Lancaster, two of Tenbrink’s home runs have come in San Jose, which has a park factor of 81 of 100 for home runs off left-handed bats.
Another reason to think that Tenbrink might be turning into a legitimate prospect is his left-right splits. Acknowledging that the left-handed sample is only 53 at-bats, there’s no BABIP difference between the two and he only loses about fifty points of OPS against southpaws. He does seem to hit them a bit differently, with a 17% line drive rate and 56% fly balls, compared to less than 11% line drives and 39% flyballs on right-handers, but that and eye numbers aside, the results are close, and normalizing for luck only brings them closer.
Tenbrink’s true level of talent is not likely going to be this kind of production going forward, but a .900 OPS at the minor league level doesn’t seem unreasonable for him. Aside from whether the offense is sustainable or not, one major question I do have for him is what position he’ll play in the future. He has all the tools to play the infield, but inconsistencies have pushed him primarily to left, where he’ll likely spend most of his time for the D-Jaxx.
It’s not easy to place his performances in a good context just yet, but his stock is certainly on the rise.