Link Report for Monday 5/30

[TheCrew07]

Thinking we can pretty much give Gatewood a pass on his third base play in 2016, still brand new for him, and this is only his age 20 season. Of course we should look for incremental improvements in future seasons.

 

He can improve, but I'm not giving him a pass. Yes, the angle is different but you are still throwing a baseball from point A to point B. It should not be an adventure every throw. A few errors here and there fielding is to be expected, but he's been awful fielding and throwing.

 

I see both sides here, and as more people who typically don't deal or take interest in the volatile nature of prospect performance are contributing in this forum there is a danger of judging prospects too harshly.

 

Jake has some serious flaws in his game, but he's also made tremendous improvement in being able to barrel up pitches, and he's still very young as MH noted. His batting average in high school was extremely pedestrian by top prospect standards so he had a very large plate discipline hill to climb from the get go.

 

When it comes to fielding I'm more interested in how a player moves than their error total, and at 3B the ball gets on players much quicker, which is why Neuhaus benefited defensively being moved to 2nd, he just didn't seem to be able to react quick enough to make the plays at 3B.

 

Personally I try to offer shapshot views... as in this a player's strengths and weaknesses today, as that's how I've always viewed player development as a coach and I have a difficult time moving away from. I do that with every sport now, I'm not able to root with the blind enthusiasm as I would have before I coached, my perspective has been forever changed.

 

I believe criticism needs to be tempered on the minor league side which is why I will occasionally point out issues but I won't harp on them daily. For example the Gatewood "walk watch" is extreme because if you were to objectively determine how to progress a hitter from nothing to a complete package, step 1 would be to start with making solid contact and barreling up hitter's pitches. Every player has a somewhat unique learning curve and in my case I'm basically looking for some sort of progression both statistically and visually over the course of the season.

 

Athletically Gatewood could easily be a 3B but I think the jury is still out on him over there, he certainly didn't take to it naturally so it's going to be a process.

[FVBrewerFan]

Discussion was about his defense, not overall progression as a prospect. Agree there's plenty of hope for him. And yes, switching to 3rd you'll boot a few balls. Nothing to panic about. But his throwing has been awful, and that does worry me. Any player over 11 should be able to consistently throw the ball to 1B. It's all his head I'm sure, but there have been players that never got over that.

[TheCrew07]

i understand that, but I lean towards the "cut em some slack" camp.