Archive for March 2009

Monday Morning Update

Just a few idle thoughts to get the week going strong. The past few days have been more about research (tons of data input) than writing, but expect plenty of good stuff (college team profiles, finally!) coming your way in the coming days. For now, enjoy some amateur observations made while slaving away on some of that oh so much fun data collecting from the past weekend…

• I saw this fact somewhere over the weekend and it totally floored me – Alabama has won seven of eight all-time series against the number one ranked team at the time. Can that be true? It sounds almost unbelievable to me, but there it is.

The Crimson Tide took down top-ranked Georgia this weekend with a little help from senior slugger Kent Matthes. His numbers so far are astounding: 12 homers in 59 official at bats (1.169 SLG). That’s almost exactly one bomb for every five at bats…crazy.

• Answer: 127, 124, 122, 121, 125, 120

Question: How many pitches were thrown over the weekend by Austin Hyatt (Alabama), Kyle Gibson (Missouri), Grant Dayton (Auburn), Deck McGuire (Georgia Tech), Tim Clubb (Missouri State), and Nick Hernandez (Tennessee) in their most recent respective starts?

Hyatt, Dayton, and Clubb can all be called sleeper prospects on a generous day, but the other pitchers (Gibson, McGuire, and Hernandez) are big-time talents pitching for big-time professional contracts every time they take the ball. I know it can’t be easy for a college coach to balance the pressure of winning ballgames in the short-term with the obligation of keeping these young arms healthy for the long-term. It’s also difficult to pass judgment as an outsider without knowing all of the details surrounding each individual coach, player, and specific in-game situation. But, come on, 120 pitches is 120 pitches. I’ll do my best to stay off the soapbox for now, instead opting to just report on pitcher abuse when it happens. You see the names, you see the numbers…let’s see what happens next.

• The weekend saw plenty of excellent pitching performances, but we only have time to highlight the best of the best.

Out of all the players I inputed data for this weekend, Erik Stavert (Oregon) had the highest number of groundball outs. Stavert recorded 19 outs on balls in play, 15 of them on the ground.

Dallas Keuchel (Arkansas) shut down a good Florida lineup with the following line: 7 IP 4 H 1 ER 1 BB 9 K  (9 GO/2 AO)

Kyle Blair (San Diego) was outdueled by the next player on our list, but his complete game line deserves props all the same: 8 IP 7 H 1 ER 1 BB 9 K (10 GO/6 AO)

The most dominating performance of the weekend belonged to Anthony Ranaudo (Louisiana State): 6 IP 6 H 3 ER 3 BB 13 K. Thirteen strikeouts in six innings is pretty impressive, sure, but how he did it was what made it fun. First five batters – KKKKK. Then a dropped foul ball followed by a walk. Next four batters – KKKK. Ranaudo’s first nine outs came via the strikeout. Through three innings the man had 9 strikeouts. I think it works better visually when ripped right from the game log:

Kentucky 1st -
C. Bisson struck out looking (0-2).
N. Johnson struck out swinging (1-2).
K. Wiley struck out swinging (1-2).
0 runs, 0 hits, 0 errors, 0 LOB.

Kentucky 2nd -
B. Kapteyn struck out swinging (2-2).
C. Wright struck out swinging (1-2).
Dropped foul ball, E2. M. Nidiffer walked (3-2).
C. Farris struck out swinging (3-2).
0 runs, 0 hits, 1 error, 1 LOB.

Kentucky 3rd - 
C. Wade struck out swinging (3-2).

A. Burns struck out looking (2-2).

C. Bisson struck out looking (2-2).

0 runs, 0 hits, 0 errors,0 LOB.

Mailbag!

Photo Credit: Quiz Law

One of the most appealing aspects of doing the blog thing is the ability to actually interact with people who care about college/high school ball and the draft. I like the diverging opinions people seem to have about the placement of players on some of the lists posted thus far. The comments have been of excellent quality and they always give me a chance to reevaluate how I’ve assessed a particular player’s value as a prospect – sometimes it takes nothing more than a kick in the butt from a different perspective than mine to remind me that, hey, Player X should/shouldn’t be ranked where he is…so long as there is some kind of reasoning to back it up, I’m always willing to listen and potentially change my mind.

To those that have comments featured in the mailbag, please let me know if you want attribution and I’ll add your name and a link or whatever so that you get proper credit. I wanted to do it right off the bat, but I figured I’d play it safe and ask just in case. I’m not sure if there will be any interest in this, but it’s something I feel like trying – my apologies to anybody who actually reads my responses in the comments and catches on that these are essentially re-runs…I’m not tryinig to pull a fast one, just wanted to give good comments (and hopefully well reasoned responses) the proper amount of recognition they deserve.

Reader comments/questions along with my answers after the jump… Continue reading »

MLB Draft Combine

Random tangent to buy me a little more time until new content is polished up and ready to see the light of day – wouldn’t it be cool if there was a combine for baseball? As it currently stands the timing wouldn’t really work out with the way the draft and the college baseball season overlap, but I think a televised combine event would be a great investment for MLB to make. A MLB Draft Combine would help players get noticed, provide scouting directors more data to help make their decisions, and generate interest in both amateur and minor league baseball through the development of interesting narratives for individual players leading up to the draft.

Photo Credit: John Deere

More on the idea of a potential MLB Draft Combine after the jump… Continue reading »

2009 MLB Draft: College Big Board Report Cards

Things have been quiet around here lately, but for good reason…it’s report card season! Yes, I do have a day job that may keep me updating from time to time, and, yes, filling out report card after report card takes priority over draft coverage – sad, but true. However, with all that grading in the books, it’s time to move on. What better way to celebrate than by doing some more grading!

In case you’ve been busy like me and haven’t kept up with some of the top college prospects, below the jump is a look back at our earlier College Big Board 1.0 (just the top 25 this time) with grades based on their performance through the first three weeks of the college baseball season. Continue reading »

2009 MLB Draft: Top 15 College Righthanded Pitchers – Number 1, Stephen Strasburg

Photo Credit: yoda1 from minorleagueball.com

20.1 IP 13 H 4 ER 4 BB 45 K (2 WP, 1 HBP)

K/9: 19.92

K/BB: 11.25/1

Strikeouts – Swinging/Looking: 36/9

GO/AO/LO: 7/5/2

There has been only one inning this year that Strasburg hasn’t struck out at least one batter, including the two partial innings he has thrown in each start (each 2/3rds of an inning). He has struck out the side in 8 out of his 19 completed innings. He’s good.

2009 MLB Draft: Top 15 College Righthanded Pitchers (5-2)

Better late than never, right? The righthanded pitchers listed below comprise 5 of the top 8 prospects ranked on the College Big Board 1.0. If you’re a fan of a team picking in the top half of round one, these are five names to know forwards and backwards. We continue the countdown of college righthanded starting pitching prospects with the players ranked 5 through 2 (who will be number one??????)…after the jump.  Continue reading »

Quick Schedule Update

Since I’m still wrapping up the the top five draft-eligible righthanded college starting pitching prospect writeups (I love doing 15-10, like doing 10-6, but something about 5-1 really gives me trouble), I figure I’ll at least give an update on what’s in store over the next few days. Sound good?

Wednesday evening: Top 5 college righthanded starting pitching prospects
Thursday: Top 10-5 college catching prospects
Friday: Top 5-1 college catching prospects

The goal over the next few weeks is to flesh out the top prospect positional lists (first college, then back to high school) while also mixing in college team profiles (a feature I’m darn excited for) . After that we should be able to put together a gigantic big board of draft-eligible talent and begin to make better mock draft predictions (the goal is to have the mock updated by the end of the month, by the way). And, of course, they’ll be deviations along the way – either by request (like the forthcoming comparisons between the 08 draft class and the 09 draft class) or whenever the heck I think of something to do.

2009 MLB Draft: Top 15 College Righthanded Pitchers (10-6)

And we’re back. We started the countdown of the top 15 draft-eligible righthanded college pitchers yesterday with 15 through 11. One thing I forgot to mention when players 15-11 were unveiled yesterday was that the list is restricted only to righthanded college starting pitching prospects – it’s a no reliever zone here. The bullpen guys will get their own special ranking at a later date. The top 10 through 6 draft-eligible college righthanded starting pitching prospects right after a very special picture. See, the young woman pictured below isn’t just making an appearance because showing pretty girls is an easy way to increase traffic; no, I’m far too classy a gent to stoop to that level. She is actually the significant other of the player used as a comparison to the sixth ranked player on the list. Hmm…

Photo Credit: DramaWiki

10 through 6 after the jump… Continue reading »

Site Redesign

Astute readers will notice, hey, things look a little different around here. Good, bad, ugly? Let me know either via email, comment, or telepathy. Since I don’t really have a clue when it comes to site design, there is literally no way my feelings can be hurt by any kind of constructive criticism. So if you do comment, be honest – I can take it. One thing that is bugging me is the tags – I hate that they show up at the top of each post and not the bottom, but I have no clue how to fix it. The RSS feed should be working, but if there are any problems with that, let me know. I’ve also been wracking my brain trying to think of a cooler graphic to use for the site title (currently in big red letters at the top), but don’t really have any clever ideas at present. So, again, if you’ve got an idea…let me know. Enough business, back to baseball…

2009 MLB Draft: Top 15 College Righthanded Pitchers (15-11)

Ahhh, actual content. Get your work week off started off right by perusing the first third of the 2009 Rule 4 Draft’s finest draft-eligible college righthanded pitchers. Make sure to check back throughout the week as we count down to the number one spot. I won’t reveal too much information about our number one college righty, except to say that he could potentially be referred to as S. Strasburg. No, wait – too obvious. Let’s just call him Stephen S. Yeah, that’s much better. College righthanders 15 through 11 right after this stunning picture our 11th ranked righty…

Photo Credit: Juan Blas/The Daily Gamecock

Continue reading »