Quote:
Originally Posted by Three7s
(Post 10688671)
I looked at our minor leaguers last night. All of our "prospects" are pretty awful, other than maybe Hunter Dozier. That Sean Manea that everyone was jazzing about has a 5+ ERA. Not to mention, he's walking the house according to the numbers.
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You can't base everything off of statistical performance, as it doesn't take into account their age for the level, scouting reports, development schedule, etc. You're working with unfinished products in a lot of cases, especially at the low minors. A lot of pitchers have their bread and butter second pitch taken away from them at A+ by the Royals, to work on developing additional pitches.
Manaea's scouting reports have been universally glowing. Everyone who has seen him in person has walked away from the experience gushing about him. His biggest issues right now are building up his arm strength and endurance (he didn't throw from July on last year after having hip surgery) and developing his changeup. His strikeout numbers are off the charts... walks are high, but when a guy is working to develop a pitch, you're going to see some of that. He's also been working on strict pitch counts for games and for innings, so there have been several times he didn't get an opportunity to pitch out of trouble.
Almonte, also at A+, is in the same boat to a certain degree. He's working on developing a breaking pitch to complement his excellent fastball/changeup combo, and his numbers have suffered a little.
Last guy at Wilmington whose numbers don't tell the story is RA Mondesi. He was dominating until missing a few weeks due to back spasms. Looks like that was bothering him both before he sat down and still a bit when he got back, too. He's also an 18 year old playing against guys 4-5 years older than him, on average.
Bonifacio and Cuthbert have been mildly disappointing at Northwest Arkansas (Boni probably more so out of those two). That's the level where you really want to see hitters start producing. Cuthbert is still showing strong OBP skills... just hasn't hit with the authority you want from a corner guy. Still... power develops with age. OBP skills like that usually don't.
Orlando Calixte and Christian Binford are far exceeding expectations so far. Calixte, whom I've been high on for 2-3 years, is an intriguing bat and probably the closest bat to helping in the major leagues.
Binford is a guy who, if you looked at just his stats, you would expect is a future ace of the staff... but bring in his scouting report, and he becomes more of a middle-back-end rotation guy. Kind of shows the other end of the spectrum when 'scouting' from numbers alone.
