Minor league Pitching

[TheCrew07]

Just for the sake of discussion......is Wily Peralta still the #1 pitching prospect in the system? I think a real case could be made for Tyler Thornburg.

 

After he had that tremendous season in AA last year I vaulted Peralta past Thornburg and have been regretting it since, if I would make a list again today Thornburg would be #1. My gut was telling me that I needed to see 1 more excellent campaign from Peralta to officially jump on his bandwagon but I found it hard to deny his success at a higher level. I don't have the same faith in Wily as I do Tyler at this point and that could certainly change by the end of the season if Peralta jumps up to MLB and pitches the way he can.

 

I'm guessing that both pitchers will be pitching on the same staff in AAA after the break and I'll be pissed because the Brewers are passing up an excellent opportunity to get a young arm acclimated to the big leagues at the tail end of an already strong rotation. We don't need our young pitchers this year like we will next year, I'd much rather break one as a #5 letting him get his feet under him that way then counting on maybe as many as 3 young pitchers to have initial big league success next season as mid to back of the rotation starters. Yes Estrada is "proven", I understand and appreciate that point of view, but he's not someone you build a rotation around but both Peralta and Thornburg could be. We won't know until they get an extended look or 2 in MLB, but all the minor league experience in the world won't tell us more than their performance in MLB will.

 

Marco is a fine pitcher, but his talent is replaceable, and it's foolish to block legitimate impact talent with that kind of player. You don't pencil him into your rotation as a long-term solution anymore than you should Brady Clark in CF or Casey McGehee at 3B. They are "good enough" until you find someone better, and for all we know Peralta could outperform Estrada. I'm fine with Wily staying down until the end of June, but at that point we lose nothing by starting his clock, he'll have the same service time with organization if he comes up in July or starts next season in the rotation. The only difference is that he'd pickup 20-30 more innings pitching through Sept stretching him out to 170-180 which would put him on track for 200 in 2013 and he'd have 3 months of invaluable experience.

 

I'd much rather send Henderson to the MLB pen and bump Sanchez to AAA than mess around with Fiers in the bullpen this season.

[paul253]

Peralta struggled again last night. His control has taken step back this year. 22 walks in 42 innings. Not good. I think Thornburg is closer than ever to claiming that top spot.

[HiAndTight]

I'm tempering my enthusiasm about the Brevard County guys simply because of TC07's post about Beloit back in '03. I hadn't followed the minors that closely until that season and was sure we had at least three sure fire MLB starters on that team. So while I am certainly enjoying the success of Bradley, Nelson, etc. I'll wait until AA before I get too excited (like I am with Thornburg).

 

 

 

I don't get this logic. It's like saying you're tempering your enthusiasm because of random pitchers who have absolutely no connection to the players we have now, and the pitchers developing him.

 

Yeah, we've had pitchers who've flamed out or gotten hurt. It's just a part of young pitchers weeding themselves out.

 

I see no reason why you shouldn't be encouraged by our two 1st round picks in one of the deepest drafts for college pitchers in a while, the success of Nelson a guy who throws in the mid 90's who consistently pitches deep into games, Brooks Hall, my personal favorite among the BC guys, a project-able young pitcher....

 

Frankly, I think TC07 can pretty much take the positive and put a negative spin on anything.

[HiAndTight]

Just for the sake of discussion......is Wily Peralta still the #1 pitching prospect in the system? I think a real case could be made for Tyler Thornburg.

You have a case, but it is still Peralta in my book. Similar stuff, results and age with Wily at a higher level and some modest big league success.

Really cool question, Paul. And overall what an awesome place for the Brewers to be in as an organization.

 

Honestly, at this point, I think I lean Thornburg... but it's really close. Peralta's consistently been at higher levels relative to age, but Thornburg's career MiLB 2.37 ERA is just really, really impressive. I can't wait to see him reach his ceiling as just another RP!

 

 

It's obviously close, but I think Thornburg may rank lower, but I honestly think he has the upside to be an ace for a stretch in his career. I think Wily Peralta has more of a Jamie Garcia type upside(in terms of numbers, obviously they pitch very differently as a RH'er and LH'er). Of course those are ceilings. Peralta likely won't be a #2 like Garcia arguably is and Thornburg probably won't be an ace. But I think Peralta has a better chance to be reach that ceiling than Thornburg. Higher risk, higher reward for TT, more of a safe bet with Peralta.

 

Still, I'll always take the higher reward players, especially at the higher level as that it what playoff teams are built on.

 

 

Re-sign Greinke

 

(I'm going to end all my posts like that from now on....like that Roman Senator who ended every statement with "destroy Carthage," so as to make it the top point of emphasis so they'd never forget how important it was....I know I'm a broken record, but re-signing Greinke just totally changes how I look at ALL these pitchers. You hit high on ONE of them, Bradley becomes an Andy Petitte type pitcher who throws in the lower 90's, Thornburg becomes an ace who can hit the upper 90's, and so on taking a ton of pressure off those pitchers and even the second tier guys, allowing Peralta to be a #4..kinda like Edwin Jackson is in Washington now(though again, a very different pitcher, just how he fits in).

[DHonks]

HiAndTight, it was Kato the Elder saying Delenda est Carthago (other variants exists...just gave what I teach). I like it...I'm of the same belief

[Dollarbill13]

Is anyone concerned that Jungman only has been averaging 6 K/9 so far this year? His control has been solid but 6 K/9 in high-A doesn't seem very good for a 1st rounder out of college.

[Tedaldtada]

Is anyone concerned that Jungman only has been averaging 6 K/9 so far this year? His control has been solid but 6 K/9 in high-A doesn't seem very good for a 1st rounder out of college.

 

Jungmann is blaming it on "pitching to contact".

[Menace II Sobriety]

You can't have it both ways. I think it is fairly obvious that the franchise has chosen to pitch to contact at all levels. Jimmy Nelson is a prime example of this. I don't think that Jungmann needs to "blame" anything on anything this point in his career. This is still only his second month in pro ball and his job is to focus on specific things each start not to go out and blow away every hitter to max his k rate and bounce out of the game in the 4th innning.

 

Some people on this site complain about the way that Yo doesn't get deep into games but he gets that deep k rate. I think a 1st year player that skipped a level and is putting up the numbers like Taylor is doing just fine.

[TheCrew07]

You can't have it both ways. I think it is fairly obvious that the franchise has chosen to pitch to contact at all levels.

 

First I would ask, "Why not?", and second I would say that depends on what pitching to contact means.

 

The problem many pitchers including Gallardo have is that they waste too many pitches and Schroeder's "spike the next one in the dirt" line that he uses every time a batter has 2 strikes on the broadcasts drives me insane.

 

My intention isn't to turn this into a pitch count debate but I am going to use the 100 pitch count limit for my example even though I personally have a ton of issues with the methodology or lack there of in which we've arrived at that number.

 

I'm just going to guess here, because the criteria for what a "good 6 innings" would be is fairly subjective but there are 18 outs in 6 innings, so a pitcher would have to face at least 18 batters, then figure an extra 5 batters for hits, walks, hbp, errors, whatever. So for my pitcher pitching a good 6 innings he's going to see 23 batters, well at 100 pitches he isn't even able to average 5 pitches per batter and make that pitch limit. Which leads me to my second point about pitching to contact. In order to pitch deeper into games pitchers have to be more aggressive. In my opinion, way too often our pitchers have hitters 0-2 and 1-2 but end up in even or full counts. I've never understood the "waste a pitch" theory, if you waste 1 pitch to all 23 batters in my example you lose an entire inning of pitches. You exit the game in the 6th when you could have pitched through the 7th.

 

Over the course of the season there is a huge difference between the bullpen picking up 2-3 innings each game vs 3-4 innings each game. Rock's, "waste one in the dirt" is only a quality pitch if it starts out looking like a strike, what hitter isn't expecting a 2 strike pitch in the dirt? Part of the problem of course is that many pitchers just don't work inside anymore, but other problem is that many pitchers also don't throw that high inside FB just out of the zone that's also a great strike out pitch. Putting the ball in the dirt is fine, but throwing a pitch that never looks like a strike provides incredibly little value, how many of those pitches that don't start out looking like a strike actually get swung at? 1-10? Maybe less? How many of those pitches do our pitchers throw in a game? 10-15? That's a whole inning right there...

 

So from a minor league perspective when I see a guy like Gagnon change his approach and "pitch to contact" who's FB has nice movement but he doesn't command it exceedingly well, I'm okay with him pounding a spot working on his control plus his secondary stuff. Also, there is value in pitchers learning differences in hitting between aluminum/wood bats and the difference (hopefully) between the defenses they had behind them as amateurs and the defense playing behind them as professionals. Batters making contact is a good thing if the pitch is in the proper location and pitch type, let hitters swing at pitchers pitches all day long, I'll take weak grounders and pop ups for 27 outs. You want them to be thinking that if they fall behind in the count they are doomed and won't get anything good to hit. What you don't want to do is continually let hitters get out of the hole by being too cute off the corners or in the dirt. The bottom line here from my perspective is you want to force your young pitchers to continually challenge the hitters. So to me, pitching to contact means that I'm going to keep coming after you on every single pitch.

 

As far as having it both ways, I think it's possible to be a high strike out and yet efficient pitcher, we had one, Ben Sheets, and he didn't even have a 3rd pitch to mix in. He just located his FB/hammer curve and you were done. Parra's nibbling on the corners literally infuriated me, just challenge a guy for goodness sake! Gallardo falls into that trap too, just missing with FBs off the corner, wasting a pitch in the dirt, etc, so he ends up getting into way too many full counts. If a pitch has zero chance of being a strike by location or by a batter swinging at it, it's a worthless, meaningless pitch. Essentially you've just thrown a pitch for the sake of upping your pitch count by 1. If you're ahead 0-2 or 1-2 there's no reason to ever end up 3-2 if the batter doesn't foul off a ton of pitches and there will be great ABs, but how many times do we see 1-2 become 3-2 because the next pitch is in the dirt and then then 2-2 just misses off the corner? In those pitcher counts you can literally put a pitch just about anywhere but the majority of the time we know our guys are going to go low or low and away, and the hitters know it too.

 

I should say that I understand how important it is to stay away from the middle of the plate and the waist area, or a typical hitter's natural power zone but at the same time I think that getting strike outs has become synonymous with high pitch counts when that doesn't necessarily have to be the case. It has more to do with how individual pitchers approach the game more so than being a "strike out" or "contact" guy. Yes hitters have probably gotten better, but so have pitchers, the average pitcher throws much harder today than he did in the 80s. Pitching hasn't changed, it's still about location and pitch selection and too many pitchers aren't taking full advantage of the entire strike zone anymore.

[Menace II Sobriety]

I was speaking specifically of Jungman and his k/rate not the 6-8 other guys you listed and I agree with not wasting pitches. I know you aren't impressed with Jungman and you stated dozens of times, but I was just stating for a guy with under ten professional starts (and jumped a level) there a lot of other things that would concern me more than his k/rate.

 

As a whole I think it has been a trend in the organization to reduce pitch counts. Of course you go for the k on a pitcher friendly count.

[jjfanec]

The approach has seemed to work with Jimmy Nelson.

 

I can see the logic behind the pitch to contact approach. Younger pitchers tend to try to strike everyone out and can end up walking a ton of guys because they are unable to get pros to chase the same junk high school, college, and lower level minor league player will chase. The Brewers seem to be focusing a lot on getting pitchers to become groundball guys and I like that for the most part. I think the strikeout rates can go up once a pitcher has refined his control. I like what Crew said about the difference between Sheets and Parra/Yo. Now I love Yo but he definitely seems to think he needs to strike everyone out and he nibbles too much. Sheets just went after people.

[DHonks]

Sheets was also special in that he had two great strikeout pitches. Early in his career we all raved about his curve. But as he became truly dominant it was because his velocity spiked and he started embracing throwing the high 4-seamer with 2 strikes. He got tons of K's on high fastballs.

[Dollarbill13]

My post motivated Jungmann tonight.

 

I'm not sure the pitching to contact thing applies so much to Nelson. His worst K/9 rate so far is 7.4 last year which is pretty solid. Regardless, the reason I posted was that there were concerns about Jungmann's velocity at the tail end of his college career. If that was the reason for his lack of K's, I would be very concerned.

[Menace II Sobriety]

Milb.com did an article on Jungmann and it reinforces a lot of peoples thoughts on the way the Brewers are going about developing these young guys.

 

http://www.milb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120522&content_id=32000172&fext=.jsp&vkey=news_milb

 

"I had a good feel for all three pitches," Jungmann said. "I've been working on my breaking ball the last three outings. It's totally different, a different grip. I used my pointer finger as my spin finger, so I got rid of that and moved to a more traditional grip. Today was the best I've thrown it."

 

"The stats are nice, but that's not what I'm looking for," Jungmann said. "The progress on the breaking ball is what I'm looking for. I've been trying to throw it the past three weeks, it just hasn't been very good. Today was the first time in a game it really showed up."

 

As for recording his first win in eight starts, the Texas native, said, "Well, that's not something I can worry about. It's about progressing every day, it's about getting the changeup and breaking ball going. Wins are nice, but it's about getting better every day."

[CheezWizHed]

"I've been working on my breaking ball the last three outings. It's totally different, a different grip. I used my pointer finger as my spin finger, so I got rid of that and moved to a more traditional grip. Today was the best I've thrown it."

 

This was also the main knock some BF.net people had on him when we drafted him: his "loopy" curveball.

[TooLiveBrew]

Another perfect example of why MiLB stats should always be taken as a relative description of a player's success, & not absolute.

[TheCrew07]

I'm not sure what you guys are trying to say?

 

Mass actually posted the Jungmann article in the LR because it was about a specific game and not necessarily a player feature.

 

Every pitcher, especially the pitchers in AA on down are going to be working on specific aspects of their game but that doesn't excuse away poor performance. In fact every player from every organization is working on specific things, our pitchers are no different that way than any others in all of MiLB. If we're talking specifically about Jungmann not wowing anyone until his most recent start that was the same criticism as Peralta received and we haven't witnessed a dominant performance from him either. In fact I wouldn't even call it a criticism, it's more of an observation.

 

I agree that the minor leagues are definitely almost entirely about development but how many guys put up consistently mediocre on down to poor performances through their minor league career but have successful MLB careers? Performance relative to age, league, and experience may be the single most important evaluation tool we have, at some point every prospect has to step up and start ascending or he ceases to be to be prospect.

 

I'm going to leave my specific criticisms of Jungmann's short stride and secondary pitches to my previous posts. I'm happy he realized he needs to do something different and is working on developing plus secondary pitches, but if anything the article validates my exact concerns, he's not refuting anything I've said. The most difficult thing to evaluate from a pitcher is his athleticism if all you can see him do is pitch. I brought up Sheets earlier, and as good of a pitcher as he was, he was a horrible athlete for his level of competition, he literally ran like a duck waddled. He was one of those guys with a big arm but not much else which is why watching him do something other than pitch was so painful. One of the reasons I'm so high on athleticism in general is that the better athlete a player is, the quicker he can make adjustments and learn new skills.

 

A couple of our guys who got out to fast starts have cooled off a bit as of late like Thornburg, Gagnon, and Bradley before his DL stint. Other guys have exploded recently like Burgos and now Jungmann while some guys like Nelson and Moye have been dominant all year. I make an extreme effort to be objective, maybe to a fault, I'm not going to blow smoke and effuse glowing praise of every prospect all the time, I don't see the game that way. At the lower levels I tend to pull my punches but the higher up we go or the higher a player was drafted the more I'm going to focus on both the positive and the negative. As much as I like Wily Peralta, he's pitched poorly relative to his talent this season, and he's not the only top pitching prospect struggling in AAA this year.

 

There are actually 3 or 4 highly thought of pitching prospects like Montgomery (KC) and Perez (TX) that are struggling, I understand that AAA is a tougher jump for pitchers as well but at some point Wily has to take advantage of the opportunity that's in front him. Obviously I don't have much love for Melvin, I respect him for what he is, but that's about it. However if I was in his shoes there's no way I would call Wily right now to fill that rotation spot, he's trending the wrong way and I wouldn't call up Thornburg either as he's walked 9 batters in his last 18 IP. His overall numbers are still very good but teams have begun to adjust to him, he needs to level it off and start ascending again, hopefully that starts with his performance tonight which just got under way.

[Menace II Sobriety]

I missed the article in the link reports. It is hard to read every thread every day. My point was specific to a poster asking about his k/9 and if we should be worried. I thought it fit well within the singular point.

[HiAndTight]

HiAndTight, it was Kato the Elder saying Delenda est Carthago (other variants exists...just gave what I teach). I like it...I'm of the same belief

 

 

Thank you....I was thinking Kato.

 

I was tought he said something about "remember Carthage, or death to Carthage," but I'll defer to you on this one.

 

Nonetheless, we're of the same mind, it's ALL about Greinke. I can't emphasize enough how important I think keeping him is.

 

And for those who think that it's going to cost too much money, I'd argue you'd be completely right with Prince, and with CC to a lesser degree(though we were operating with a whole different revenue stream then).

But with Greinke, I think keeping him won't really cost the Brewers that much money. Keeping him, IMO, keeps us as a potential 90 win team year in and year out. And if we do get a couple of these guys to really pan out, really take that next step and you're paying Greinke and Yo 32 or so million and your rotation as a whole 34 million. No possible world we can't swing that.

And with that, you keep the attendance up around 3 million plus, you keep the team winning or at least giving them a chacne.

 

Without him, I'm afraid you start a slow decline into the 78 win range and the attendance drop negates the money you'd have spent on Greinke.

 

 

Assuming all the regular risks, that he's actually a viable pitcher throughout the deal which I usually never bet on, but would for Greinke, just as I would for Sabathia. And that's exceedingly rare to find in a pitcher(and I could be wrong, he could go under the knife next year and miss 15 months).

 

But I think with Greinke's pinpoint control, he's nasty slider, he's easy, easy delivery, change and curve and I think his fastball will still sit at 90-92 throughout most of a 5-6 year deal, ie, I think he'll be worth the money in production and worth more in value to the team.

[HiAndTight]

You can't have it both ways. I think it is fairly obvious that the franchise has chosen to pitch to contact at all levels.

 

First I would ask, "Why not?", and second I would say that depends on what pitching to contact means.

 

The problem many pitchers including Gallardo have is that they waste too many pitches and Schroeder's "spike the next one in the dirt" line that he uses every time a batter has 2 strikes on the broadcasts drives me insane.

 

My intention isn't to turn this into a pitch count debate but I am going to use the 100 pitch count limit for my example even though I personally have a ton of issues with the methodology or lack there of in which we've arrived at that number.

 

I'm just going to guess here, because the criteria for what a "good 6 innings" would be is fairly subjective but there are 18 outs in 6 innings, so a pitcher would have to face at least 18 batters, then figure an extra 5 batters for hits, walks, hbp, errors, whatever. So for my pitcher pitching a good 6 innings he's going to see 23 batters, well at 100 pitches he isn't even able to average 5 pitches per batter and make that pitch limit. Which leads me to my second point about pitching to contact. In order to pitch deeper into games pitchers have to be more aggressive. In my opinion, way too often our pitchers have hitters 0-2 and 1-2 but end up in even or full counts. I've never understood the "waste a pitch" theory, if you waste 1 pitch to all 23 batters in my example you lose an entire inning of pitches. You exit the game in the 6th when you could have pitched through the 7th.

 

Over the course of the season there is a huge difference between the bullpen picking up 2-3 innings each game vs 3-4 innings each game. Rock's, "waste one in the dirt" is only a quality pitch if it starts out looking like a strike, what hitter isn't expecting a 2 strike pitch in the dirt? Part of the problem of course is that many pitchers just don't work inside anymore, but other problem is that many pitchers also don't throw that high inside FB just out of the zone that's also a great strike out pitch. Putting the ball in the dirt is fine, but throwing a pitch that never looks like a strike provides incredibly little value, how many of those pitches that don't start out looking like a strike actually get swung at? 1-10? Maybe less? How many of those pitches do our pitchers throw in a game? 10-15? That's a whole inning right there...

 

So from a minor league perspective when I see a guy like Gagnon change his approach and "pitch to contact" who's FB has nice movement but he doesn't command it exceedingly well, I'm okay with him pounding a spot working on his control plus his secondary stuff. Also, there is value in pitchers learning differences in hitting between aluminum/wood bats and the difference (hopefully) between the defenses they had behind them as amateurs and the defense playing behind them as professionals. Batters making contact is a good thing if the pitch is in the proper location and pitch type, let hitters swing at pitchers pitches all day long, I'll take weak grounders and pop ups for 27 outs. You want them to be thinking that if they fall behind in the count they are doomed and won't get anything good to hit. What you don't want to do is continually let hitters get out of the hole by being too cute off the corners or in the dirt. The bottom line here from my perspective is you want to force your young pitchers to continually challenge the hitters. So to me, pitching to contact means that I'm going to keep coming after you on every single pitch.

 

As far as having it both ways, I think it's possible to be a high strike out and yet efficient pitcher, we had one, Ben Sheets, and he didn't even have a 3rd pitch to mix in. He just located his FB/hammer curve and you were done. Parra's nibbling on the corners literally infuriated me, just challenge a guy for goodness sake! Gallardo falls into that trap too, just missing with FBs off the corner, wasting a pitch in the dirt, etc, so he ends up getting into way too many full counts. If a pitch has zero chance of being a strike by location or by a batter swinging at it, it's a worthless, meaningless pitch. Essentially you've just thrown a pitch for the sake of upping your pitch count by 1. If you're ahead 0-2 or 1-2 there's no reason to ever end up 3-2 if the batter doesn't foul off a ton of pitches and there will be great ABs, but how many times do we see 1-2 become 3-2 because the next pitch is in the dirt and then then 2-2 just misses off the corner? In those pitcher counts you can literally put a pitch just about anywhere but the majority of the time we know our guys are going to go low or low and away, and the hitters know it too.

 

I should say that I understand how important it is to stay away from the middle of the plate and the waist area, or a typical hitter's natural power zone but at the same time I think that getting strike outs has become synonymous with high pitch counts when that doesn't necessarily have to be the case. It has more to do with how individual pitchers approach the game more so than being a "strike out" or "contact" guy. Yes hitters have probably gotten better, but so have pitchers, the average pitcher throws much harder today than he did in the 80s. Pitching hasn't changed, it's still about location and pitch selection and too many pitchers aren't taking full advantage of the entire strike zone anymore.

 

 

Why not? Because it's two different methodologies.

 

Second, Schroeder's "spike the next one," when Gallardo has 2 strikes is first of all coming from a guy who was a professional catcher and has been around the game for a long time and caught some of the best ones, caught Blyleven's curve with the Angels. So questioning some of what he says is one thing, but this one is ridiculous.

 

Not to mention, what he OBVIOUSLY means isn't necessarily spike the ball....it's don't leave a 2 strike curve in the zone when you're way ahead in the count. Basic common sense that you learn from early on. Give 'em a chance to swing at something outside of the zone if you've got them 0-2.

 

Second, with your math, how many hitters average 5 pitches per AB? So your math is extremely skewed right there.

 

Third "waste," a pitch goes back to not giving the guy something to hit. Not literally just throwing a pitch with no purpose. This is kinda commons sense. You throw it off the plate, hoping he'll bite. Something Greinke's done this year with extraordinary results.

 

I also don't agree that pitchers don't throw that pitch you "waste," as a pitch that's so far outside there is a 1-10 or a 1-15 chance of the batter swinging at it. I can't fathom where these numbers are coming from. And the Brewers go with the high fastball fairly often as well....so...I just don't agree with the premise from which you're starting with here.

 

 

I think pitching to contact in the minors is an adjustment thing....I think part of the development is knowing when to go for the strikeout.

 

So I think a pitcher should get more than 2 months in professional baseball to develop the abilities that make for a frontline starting pitcher.

 

 

 

I do agree with the 100 pitch count thing. I LOVE what Nolan Ryan has the Rangers and their staff doing. No pitch count, no innings limit....you pitch until you're tired. You count on the player being honest with you and when he starts to tire, you take him out. That is of course unless he's not pitching well, then it's not a matter of stress on the arm.

[HiAndTight]

I'm not sure what you guys are trying to say?

 

Mass actually posted the Jungmann article in the LR because it was about a specific game and not necessarily a player feature.

 

Every pitcher, especially the pitchers in AA on down are going to be working on specific aspects of their game but that doesn't excuse away poor performance. In fact every player from every organization is working on specific things, our pitchers are no different that way than any others in all of MiLB. If we're talking specifically about Jungmann not wowing anyone until his most recent start that was the same criticism as Peralta received and we haven't witnessed a dominant performance from him either. In fact I wouldn't even call it a criticism, it's more of an observation.

 

I agree that the minor leagues are definitely almost entirely about development but how many guys put up consistently mediocre on down to poor performances through their minor league career but have successful MLB careers? Performance relative to age, league, and experience may be the single most important evaluation tool we have, at some point every prospect has to step up and start ascending or he ceases to be to be prospect.

 

I'm going to leave my specific criticisms of Jungmann's short stride and secondary pitches to my previous posts. I'm happy he realized he needs to do something different and is working on developing plus secondary pitches, but if anything the article validates my exact concerns, he's not refuting anything I've said. The most difficult thing to evaluate from a pitcher is his athleticism if all you can see him do is pitch. I brought up Sheets earlier, and as good of a pitcher as he was, he was a horrible athlete for his level of competition, he literally ran like a duck waddled. He was one of those guys with a big arm but not much else which is why watching him do something other than pitch was so painful. One of the reasons I'm so high on athleticism in general is that the better athlete a player is, the quicker he can make adjustments and learn new skills.

 

A couple of our guys who got out to fast starts have cooled off a bit as of late like Thornburg, Gagnon, and Bradley before his DL stint. Other guys have exploded recently like Burgos and now Jungmann while some guys like Nelson and Moye have been dominant all year. I make an extreme effort to be objective, maybe to a fault, I'm not going to blow smoke and effuse glowing praise of every prospect all the time, I don't see the game that way. At the lower levels I tend to pull my punches but the higher up we go or the higher a player was drafted the more I'm going to focus on both the positive and the negative. As much as I like Wily Peralta, he's pitched poorly relative to his talent this season, and he's not the only top pitching prospect struggling in AAA this year.

 

There are actually 3 or 4 highly thought of pitching prospects like Montgomery (KC) and Perez (TX) that are struggling, I understand that AAA is a tougher jump for pitchers as well but at some point Wily has to take advantage of the opportunity that's in front him. Obviously I don't have much love for Melvin, I respect him for what he is, but that's about it. However if I was in his shoes there's no way I would call Wily right now to fill that rotation spot, he's trending the wrong way and I wouldn't call up Thornburg either as he's walked 9 batters in his last 18 IP. His overall numbers are still very good but teams have begun to adjust to him, he needs to level it off and start ascending again, hopefully that starts with his performance tonight which just got under way.

 

 

Man.....you could look at a 75 degree sunny day and say, "yeah, but it could rain tomorrow."

 

 

Again, you're complaining about what exactly? Thornburg in his last 18 innings walking a couple too many, Jungman's 2.90 ERA while he's come out and stated he's specifically working on trying to hone his pitches and he's more worried about improving those pitches than the bottom line, and Peralta, a guy who dominated last year, but has had two bad starts this year?

 

With regard to the bolded part, I'd love to know which pitchers you're talking about? Since you've talked about Jungman since he was drafted and almost seem invested in his failure to tout your own scouting ability when you deemed it a bad pick(I believe...now, I'm fairly certain you compared it ironically enough to the Jimmy Nelson pick). Has he been mediocre to bad? Which pitchers have CONSISTENTLY fit this bill?

 

Certainly not the 22 year old Peralta. Obviously not Thornburg, Bradley, Nelson, Jungman and several others.

 

It's a vague way of complaining in general with no actual direction that I can identify.

 

Good god I'd hate to be a neighborhood kid who's ball happened to roll onto your lawn...

[paul253]

Ugh.....what is wrong with Wily Peralta? Another 6 earned runs in an inning and two thirds today. If he keeps pitching like this he may need to go back down to Huntsville to get his act together.

[adambr2]

Looking in AA at possible near-term contributors, I'm wondering what you guys think of Kyle Heckathorn and Evan Anundsen. For anyone who follows Huntsville a little more closely, do you see any realistic possibility that either of these two could have a future in the Brewers' rotation?

 

If so, with what kind of upside? Possible #3, or #4/#5 at best?

[TheCrew07]

Heckathorn's ceiling is probably that of a #3, Anundsen a #4/#5 unless he's picked up significant velocity that's gone unreported.

 

A middle ground projection would be a 4/5 for Heckathorn and Anundsen in the BP.

 

Anundsen's K rate is pretty weak as far as projecting him for MLB success, especially with fringe average velocity.

 

Heckathorn is a tough one to project as he's up and down performance wise but he's made nice strides with his BB and K rates so far this season. His draft report had him regularly working 94-97 and touching 99, he's never thrown that hard though for the Brewers. With that kind of velocity he could be a top of the rotation guy, we'll see.

 

It's not even mid season yet, I'd honestly want more time to follow Heckathorn before forming a definitive opinion but I'd say his worst case is as a BP arm for the big club.

[adambr2]

Any hope left for Arnett? Looks like he's pitching well in relief in High A, without knowing how his stuff is looking I wonder if they will try him in the Stars bullpen in the near future to see if he can progress.

 

If there's any hope it's probably in the bullpen, but any sort of MLB career for him at this point would be more than we thought we'd get out of him.