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01.17.2008
A Bright and Distant Tomorrowland
Once again, El Lefty Malo brings you the best of baseball and technology. We’ve vaulted into the year 2002 by adding nested comments, which, like the Astrodome, will always be cutting-edge stuff no matter how many roof panels cave in.
And all the better to compliment your fellow readers on their keen insight, so on your mark, get set, get nesty. More cool stuff to come in the next few weeks, too.
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Speaking of the future: In my last post I linked to minor-league dude John Sickels’s top-20 list of Giant prospects. Let’s dig into it some more.
No surprise to anyone who follows the Giant farm, the list is nearly bereft of near-term help for the big club. The top guy is Angel Villalona, whom Giants fans hope and pray will soon become the next Miguel Cabrera.
(By the by, Baseball Prospectus farmhound Kevin Goldstein tells me his Giants list comes next month and that Villalona is also #1 “by a wide margin.”)
Villalona’s sky-high ceiling — a 17–year-old as the consensus, not-even-close #1 pick — is cold comfort, considering that many other teams have top prospects ready now for the bigs (The Cubs’ Geovany Soto, Cincinnati’s Jay Bruce, Oakland’s Daric Barton). We’ll be lucky if Villalona makes the team before 2011.
The only Giant in Sickles’s top five who should see big-league action this year is Nate Schierholtz, and there are major questions if Nate’s batting eye and power will develop against big-league pitching.
As noted in the last post, Sickels likes Eugenio Velez but admits it’s sort of a man-crush on a guy who’s fun to watch run, the rest of his (questionable) skills be damned. Chris Haft says Velez could compete for the second-base job this year, but it’s a stretch. Barring a cascade of injuries, Velez will at best be a utility/pinch-runner guy, which would be great. If Rich Aurilia goes on the DL or is traded, Velez should be the first guy up.
The other players Sickels lists who might see major-league time in ‘08/’09:
Jose Capellan (#14), whom the Giants snagged in the Rule 5 draft, only because the team has to keep him on the big squad all year or send him back to Boston, where he never pitched above A ball. He’s a raw 21–year-old lefty and a longshot to stick.
John Bowker (#10), the 24–year-old outfielder who did little of note until he inexplicably busted out last year at double-A Connecticut, the place hitting prospects often go to die. I’d give him a decent shot to see some time in 2009.
The sleeper to make an impact is Tim Alderson, the first-round pick from last summer whom Sickels ranks #3. Again, it’s a longshot; he just turned 19 in November. But consider this: After 21 games in the minors, the 21–year-old Huston Street was in the A’s bullpen and closing games with authority.
More likely, the crop of promising youngsters at the low rungs won’t make an impact until 2011 or 2012. It makes you bang your head against the wall that the Giants didn’t start restocking the farm system a year or two earlier.
Here’s my best guess at the Fresno starting lineup to start the year:
C: Guillermo Rodriguez
1B: Travis Ishikawa
2B: Velez
SS: Ivan Ochoa
3B: Justin Leone
OF: Bowker, Schierholtz, Clay Timpner
SP: Sanchez, Begg, Pereira
Comments
Call it intuition. Ish is running out of time, and it doesn't make sense to put him back in the Connecticut house of horrors. So might as well see what he can do at AAA.
Besides, who else is there to play 1B? Perhaps EME is another choice. Does anyone know his status?
Isn't McClain back? He could/would play 1B. At least that's what I'm afraid of. Ishikawa is out of options this year, they may as well try him in AAA, particularly since they are aware of the park problems at Dodd (two futile years of trying to get the fences moved in; hopefully they don't renew the agreement with them)
>> Isn't McClain back? He could/would play 1B. At least that's what I'm afraid of.
Yup, he's back. If the Giants give him a spot on the major league team as a platoon guy then Ishi could play in AAA.
I'm somewhat of a McClain supporter even though I'd only want him platooned at most with the Giants. My reasons aren't entirely rational but I like him as a hitter against LHP in a platoon.
I think Ishi is about done, he's still got some power but he struck out at 35.1% of the time in A+ ball in '07 against much younger competition, that doesn't bode well for his future.
Kudos on the new comments system, Lefty.
The average age of pitcher in the California League is 23.0 years so he's just about the same age as everyone else in the league.
Yes, he strikes out a lot. He also walks a lot and hits homers at a high rate. That seems to go together in baseball.
Here's my problem with how Ishikawa is viewed. In 2006, he played in Dodd which killed power, plain and simple, and to a very significant degree, close to 30-40% if I recall right, that is a huge skew. I don't think you can trust any of the numbers that come out of that park. If you rely on his road numbers, he had an .801 OPS. Looking at the hitters who were his age (22-23) that season and hit approximately .801, I came up with Jacoby Ellsbury, Brandon Moss, and Curtis Thigpen, and checked their MLEs from Baseball Forecaster. They all had an MLE around .750 OPS.
That is not great for 1B, but that would have been better than the 1B we had in 2006-2007 except for Dan Ortmeier (and looking at Ortmeier's position splits, he was a horrible 1 for 8 pinch-hitting, remove that and his BA goes up 8 points, which bumps up overall to .826 OPS).
Instead, he gets his ego and confidence crushed by having to repeat in AA, which is big comedown after playing in the majors the year before.
I still think he can play, I've never said he'll be great. But with power and a lot of walks, he'll be OK enough at 1B, which allows us to spend money on good hitters for other positions since he'll be cheap at 1B. I think he'll do OK if he's given the chance. Plus he's young and heading into when hitters show MORE power, so he could even improve.
Oh, and I understand that those players are at positions where that's OK to have a lower OPS like that, not like Ishikawa at 1B.
Still, that MLE would have looked OK at 1B for rookie minimum with very good defense attached, plus the potential for growth since he is young.
And thinking more on it, he hit's RHP much better, Ortmeier hit LHP much better, they should platoon together until we can figure out a better long term solution.
Thanks for the bone! :^D
I know people think I have a man-crush or something, but really, it's the cheap Chinese in me: I hate to see anything go to waste, particularly when we spent $1M on him.
I understand sunk costs means that we don't take that into consideration in future decisions on cost, but the thing is that the skills he showed in San Jose in 2005, showed up on the road in 2006 (very similar peripherals from what I recall), so he really should have started 2007 in AAA, but instead had to repeat AA.
I think the Giants underestimated the kick to the ego to go from making the majors at such a young age as he did to repeating AA, particularly as I'm sure the hitters there know what the park does to their power, it's so obvious from the stats, I'm sure the players must have noticed it.
Now some may say that he's weak to let something like that get him down, but it is just pure human nature: imagine you did your job well one year, and the next year you did it just as well, except that the boss put you on this project where you know that you can succeed, and you didn't, so then the third year, you get put on that same project again. How would you react?
No matter how mature you might be, after a while of banging your head against the wall and getting nowhere is going to affect you.
If he gets put in AA again, I expect him to not do well again and force the team to release him, either get waived to another team or declare himself a free agent, to get away from that hellish park.
I know some still think I'm going overboard on this, but the park is skewed so badly that essentially for every 2 doubles or homers a batter should be hitting at the park, you have this "devil in the outfield" (to paraphrase that movie title) who grabs 1 of them and make it into an out or maybe hold you to a single.
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Ishikawa? Last time I checked he was going backwards, from AA to single A. What makes you think he'll get a promotion to Fresno?