Diverging Parallelism: The Tale of Two Prospects

Contributor: Seamus

As of May 16, two of baseball's elite pitching prospects have combined to start fourteen games in AAA.  What's more, the two phenoms have combined for only two wins, while suffering seven losses.  Still, one kid has industry types giddy, while the other has pundits from Fort Meyers to Tuscan scratching their heads.  This is not to say the auspiciousness of either prospect has changed much in the past month and a half; each projects as a true #1 starter, an All-Star type who should dazzle for the next decade, perhaps longer.  Still, after a quarter of the season, the campaigns of these future staff aces couldn't be more different.  One, a 6'6" righty flamethrower, is sporting an ERA of 1.99 for the Gwinnett Braves, striking out 57 batters in 40.2 innings, while walking only 2.88 per nine.  The other, a 6'6" southpaw sporting an equally impressive fastball, has struck out 26 in 29.1 innings for the Durham Bulls, however this comes with 16 walks and an ERA of 4.60.

  

In case you haven't deduced it already, the two players are RHP Tommy Hanson, a Braves farmhand who completely demolished the offense-happy AFL in 2008 (0.63 ERA, 49 K in 29.2 IP), and LHP David Price, a post-season hero despite his current banishment to minor league purgatory.  They are arguably the best two ML-affiliated pitching prospects in baseball, at least until SDSU's Steven Strasburg is drafted (or until Nippon Ham Fighters' righty Yu Darvish and/or Cuba's Ardolis Chapman find their way to the United States).  And the similarities between the two are striking: large, athletic frames, electric stuff, unflappable poise, ETA of 2009, etc., yet this only serves to highlight the radical difference in results these hurlers have seen in early '09.  Each has a legitimate case to be a part of a big league staff right now, yet it appears that their respective teams have equally legitimate reasons for keeping them down on the farm; so what gives?

In fairness to Price, it should be noted that his pitch counts have been limited to <75.  This has resulted, for better or worse, in many an opposing team simply 'waiting him out.'  While this has no doubt exacerbated his control problems, Price does deserve his share of the blame for failing to get consistently ahead in counts and for being decidedly uneconomical with his pitches, that is, pitching away from contact.  But is this enough to explain the minors' top pitching prospect posting an ERA above league average through a quarter of his team's games?  Perhaps a foray into amateur pop-psychology is in order...

  

Indeed, many have done just that, positing a "let-down" effect after the resounding success Price experienced during last year's ALCS.  Thus the Rays deserve lampooning for messing with the psyche and morale of their top prospect, right?  Hardly.  While there may be some truth to the earlier assertion, Price's control problems indicate that his transient demotion was not without merit, especially in light of his difficulty locating a slow-to-develop changeup (the mastery of which was one of the key reasons for his opening day absence in Fenway Park).  The Rays deserve to be commended for this, particularly in the light of their early season struggles; Price was very effective in the high-octane, testosterone drenched ALCS deciding game, working primarily with his fastball (while mixing in a sweeping breaking pitch).  This is not the Price one should expect to see over seven innings.  For one thing, his fastball generally sits at 91-93 mph, a far cry from the 97+ he showed against J.D. Drew and Co. last fall.  Additionally, going into last post-season, he was essentially a two-pitch pitcher--while it is not without precedent for major leaguers (esp LHP's) to succeed with only two dominant pitches (think Johan Santana (FB/change), former D-backs duo Curt Schilling (R, FB/split) and Randy Johnson (L, FB slider)), Price's repertoire is certainly not on that level yet.  If he were to work out of the pen, he could absolutely get by with only two pitches.  The Rays, however, are correctly adamant on starting him, and recognize that he would benefit greatly by threatening to mix in a changeup, granted he becomes comfortable enough to throw it with conviction.

The Braves, on the other hand, may be making a mistake keeping Hanson down.  True, Braves currently have a team ERA of 4.00, good for forth best in the majors, and this is in no small part due to the efforts of their starters (Jurrjens 2.06, Vasquez 3.71, Lowe 3.80).  However Kawakami has been less than impressive as the four starter, posting a 5.79 ERA, and Jo Jo Reyes has been exponentially worse in the five spot (6.58, 20 K:12 BB in 26 IP).  Prior to the Mets posting an 8-2 record over their past ten, each of the top four teams in the NL East was mired in a state of dreadful mediocrity.  Even now, with the Met's starting rotation (2-5) as unsettled as ever, Phillies pitchers giving up longballs at a record pace and Florida experiencing a serious swoon after a gang-busters start, the NL East is completely winnable.  Atlanta is a mere two games back , one game over .500; with Hanson banging down the Turner Field doors, the Braves may have found the X-factor they need (see: 2006 post-AS Break MN Twins, Frankie Liriano).

  

Hanson sits in the low-to-mid nineties with the fastball, a pitch that he buries in on the hands of righties.  In addition, he features a filthy slider with good depth, a 'plus' overhand curveball, and a straight change that scouts view as improving.  He knows how to use his big frame to his advantage, both to generate velocity and to hide the ball during his delivery.  Yet despite his seeming readiness, don't expect to see Hanson with the big league club for at least the next couple weeks.  In fact, June 1 is likely the earliest he could make his debut, with the possibility existing that the team will wait until after the All-Star break to make the call-up.  All this is circumstantial, of course; if the Braves are winning and remain within striking distance of the NL East frontrunner in the coming weeks (while continuing to get subpar production from the back-end of their rotation), the call may come earlier than expected.  Conversely, if the Braves suffer a swoon in the coming weeks and club officials become leery of the team's potential to make a post-season splash in '09, they might view additional development time as advantageous to the future of the franchise.  With uber-prospect Jason Heyward (OF), as well as fellow minor league starters Cole Rohrbough and Jeff Locke in the pipeline, its easy to be bullish on the Braves' future; this conservative approach may in fact represent the most likely scenario for Hanson and the team this season.

  

(note: With the call-up of Hanson's AAA staff-mate Kris Medlen on Saturday, a former reliever who dominated down the stretch for AA Mississippi last year after a rocky start, its become increasingly clear that the Braves are in no rush to graduate their top talent to the major league ranks just yet.)

Time to Send Carlos Gomez Down

Contributor: Migs

Two stubborn decisions cost the Twins the AL Central crown last season. One was the prolonged demotion of Fransico Liriano following some early-season hiccups in his comeback from Tommy-John surgery. In lieu of Liriano, who was busy dominating his AAA competition (to the tune of a 10-2 record, 3.28 ERA and 113 K in 118.2 innings), the Twins were riding the Livan Hernandez express to an early offseason. Livan did "earn" ten victories (versus eight losses), but his peripheral stats were abominable; a 5.48 ERA, 1.63 WHIP and only 3.5 K/9. Liriano's AAA tune-up could easily have been cut in half; this, in concert with the release of Livan Hernandez (which happened anyways, though far too late in the season) would have certainly resulted in the Twins gaining the game of separation needed to edge the White Sox in the AL Central (in case you don't remember, they ended in a 89 W tie, forcing a one-game play-in in Chicago, which the Sox took 1-0 on a Thome moon shot).

The second decision that ultimately cost the Twins the playoffs was leaving Carlos Gomez in the lineup for the entirety of the season. Perhaps even worse than his extended stay in the lineup was his extended stay in the leadoff spot (.298 OPS), which he occupied during the early part of the year, prior to the Denard Span explosion. "Go-go" repaid the organizations faith in him by posting a .686 OPS in 577 AB's, and displaying questionable timing and marginal effectiveness as a base-stealer (75 SB%, 10% below the elusive "effective" SB% threshold). Gomez's EqA was a paltry .243 adjusted for the season, and his BRAA (batting runs above average, the # of runs better than a hitter w/a .260 EqA, given the same number of outs) was -12. And all this time, Jason Kubel (perhaps the Twins' third-best hitter, .284 EqA) was receiving inconsistent playing time at best.

In fairness to Gomez, he did grade out as the second-best defensive outfielder in the game, trailing only Boston's Jacoby Ellsbury, by posted a 116 Zone Rating (16 runs above average) last year. In fact, when considering purely defensive contributions, Gomez was a very effective player last season (the only caveat being questionable decision making, leading to a high number of errors and ill-advised throws). In this way, he was integral to the surprising success of the Twins' young starting rotation. However, the Twins were not without another stellar defensive option in CF, Denard Span (who was manning a right-field spot that could have easily been handled by Kubel and, when healthy, Cudyer).

Its hard to buy the argument that the Twins were playing to win in 2008 by starting a player with a sub-.300 OBP. Rather, the company line will be that Gomez was taking the proverbial lumps, developing as a player and maturing as a person in the major leagues. Equally likely was that Twins management wanted quick returns on what many industry insiders considered a disappointing haul for Johan Santana, especially in light of the names that had been thrown around early in the process (Hughes, Lester, Ellsbury). From a player development perspective, playing 2008 in the results-based major leagues, even through long periods of offensive ineptitude, likely hindered Gomez's development, compared to what he should have been able to accomplish in double or triple-A. Further, adding another offensive black hole to a team that (at one point or another) featured Nick Punto, Adam Everett, Mike Lamb, Craig Monroe, Brendan Harris and Brian Buscher was something that the Twins could ill afford, especially when it took AB's away from Jason Kubel and fellow offensive savant Delmon Young.

This season, Gomez is off to a terrible start. And not just in the batters box, where he is currently hitting .103 (3 for 29, with 2 XBH). Gomez started off spring training by stating his desire to become a middle-of-the-order bat, a thirty home-run corner outfield type, essentially nullifying all of his most positive attributes as a baseball player. He backed up this claim by reporting to camp noticeably thicker in the midsection and legs; make no mistake, the added weight was muscle, but early returns are not good. Gomez appears to have lost some of the eye-popping explosiveness he displayed last season, especially when initially leaving the batters box. Additionally, this extra mass has not resulted in additional power. After posting a .360 SLG last year, squaring up the baseball certainly should have been an emphasis, however adding more loft to what was already an uppercut swing was clearly not the solution the Twins were hoping for, nor has it worked in the early-going (.207 SLG in '09).

To be fair, because of his defensive contributions, Gomez will remain an adequate player this season. Last year he was eight runs above replacement level offensively (BRAR) and a robust forty runs defensively (RAR). This dwarfed that of Delmon Young, 25 BRAR offensively while being essentially neutral defensively vs. a replacement (1 RAR), equating to approximately ten runs below average (-10 RAA). 46>>26, especially at a premium defensive position. (Perhaps a better way to read this is that Young is one of the worst defensive outfielders in the majors, but with enough speed around him, he may be able to be hidden.) Additionally, Young played LF, downplaying his best defensive attribute, an 75-80 arm, which plays best in right. Denard Span occupied this right field spot, where he was 38 RAR (along with 30 BRAR), making him by far the most valuable asset in the Twins outfield. A highlight machine, Span's defensive productivity still compares very favorably to Gomez's. With Gardenhire seemingly intent on Michael Cuddyer manning right (and batting third or forth in Mauer's absence), and Delmon Young (LF) in need of AB's, Gomez's demotion would clear up the OF situation in the short-term.

Based on a purely statistical analysis, one might suggest that it is Young, not Gomez, who should be optioned to AAA. Delmon and Carlos are essentially the same age, but Young has an additional year of service time in the majors and, unlike Gomez, has very little left to prove at the minor league level (career .880 OPS). Additionally, Delmon Young was the first overall pick in the 2003 draft, a testament to his otherworldly natural gifts, and possesses the frame and brute strength to hit 20-25 HR from the right side of the plate (important to balance the left-handed power contributions of Mauer, Morneau and Kubel). His approach at the plate was no doubt broken last year (though he has finally resolved to pull the ball this season), and some have wondered whether he has a fundamental pitch-recognition problem. Nevertheless, at this point in time, he is closer to becoming a competent offensive performer than Gomez, especially as Gomez remains mired in a disturbing liminal state, uncertain of whether he is a speedster or a burgeoning power hitter. A month, maybe two, in a low pressure environment should help him sort out some of the problems that have arisen in the past year, and get him back on track to becoming the star his talent suggests he can be.
 

Cubans and Bulldogs (Clusterf*ckin' up the Middle)

Contributor: Wally

A new idea to address the Chi-Sox centerfield woes, courtesy of Jim Callis (Baseball America): Carlos Quentin moves to centerfield around mid-season, making way for Dayan Viciedo in left.  Certainly beats the upside of the current Brian Anderson/Brent Lillibridge CF platoon (Dewayne Wise, labrum: 6-8 wks, expected to still be terrible following healing period).  Plus, Scotty Podds is back on the 40-man roster, and no Palehose fan in their right mind wants to see him (or Jerry Owens) manning a starting outfield spot in 2009.

Assuming Dayan isn't ready by midseason, I'm prepared with another solution, involving top prospect Gordon Beckham.  Now, assuming Beckham's readiness may be an exercise in futile optimism, nevertheless, the comparisons to Evan Longoria are as astute as they are inevitable.  (So long as they are tempered; unfortunately, they rest on the eye-test criteria..."that guy just looks like a ballplayer," but I digress...).  Gordon Beckham is a competent defensive shortstop--once deemed ready, he can and should slot into that position immediately.  Unfortunately, that leaves the second base clusterfuck intact, with Chris Getz, Brent Lillibridge and Jayson Nix duking it out for one starting gig.  I'll make the (generous) assumption that at least one of these players displays mild competency, providing a stop-gap for the remainder of 2009.  Center field is thus open for Alexei Ramirez.  In fact, this option may be preferable, as talent evaluators believe the Cuban Missile would make a Gold-Glove caliber outfielder (think B.J. Upton lite).  True, the Gold Glove award has become comparable to the Grammy, that is, an unabashed popularity concert rewarding largely shitty performances (see: McClouth, Jeter, Evanescence, Stadium Arcadium, etc.), regardless, the central point stands...Viciedo/Beckham > Wise/Anderson/Podsednik, and it ain't even close, folks.