hardballtimes article on huntsville.

[piccione88]

The hardballtimes posted an article by Josh Kalk, entitled Seeing Stars. In the article Mr. Kalk profiles Alcides Escobar, Angel Salome, Cole Gillespie, and of course Mat Gamel.

[JoeHova]

I just read this article. It's interesting, but I have to wonder what it is about Gillespie that makes him a better bet than Salome, when Angel is 2 years younger and has basically identical career numbers. Gillespie is faster, but that is more than balanced out by Angel being a catcher.

 

overall, a good article but a few nit-picks (for example, I question how ready Gamel is to hit ML pitching right now. I think he could use some time in AAA. He brought up Salome's very high BABIP, but not Gamel's astronomical one).

[sgtcluels]

Good stuff as always by Josh. He gives me a little faith in Gamel staying at 3rd. Hopefully he can.... fix him Don Money!

[trwi7]

Amazing that Gillespie has been playing all year with a broken foot. He is one tough dude.

[Mass Haas]

Follow-up with more at brewcrewball.

[dixieflatline]

To answer the question about Salome vs. Gillespie I have little doubt that Gillespie will make it to the show at some point in his career and probably have a 3rd or 4th outfielder role for several years. He basically does nothing poorly and while he isn't great at anything he will be a useful piece of the puzzle to some team. Salome is a huge boom or bust kind of prospect. His ceiling is extremely high as any catcher who can potentially hit .300 with power is a very valuable player. The problem is he has kinks to work out in basically every part of his game. He doesn't block pitches well, he doesn't throw out runners consistently, Don Money said that his game calling still needs some work and he said that Salome didn't frame pitches all that well either. At the plate, the stepping in the bucket really scares me. Few players can do that in the majors and even fewer can be a quality player while doing that. It may be that Salome is one of those guys but his nice offensive numbers should have a small red flag attached because of that. Escobar, for instance, is also having a good year offensively and I would trust his numbers going forward a lot more than Salome.

 

I don't want to be that negative on Salome though because he has all the talent in the world. He was/is a perfect mid round draft choice and how teams win in the majors is with star players not a bunch of ok/good ones. Salome has that opportunity where Gillespie probably doesn't. If you ask me which guy I would rather have I would take Salome over Gillespie all the time (though not over Escobar or Gamel). I hope that explains the situation a bit better.

 

josh kalk