Monday news and notes

Some good news is coming up for the 2011 season. I am upgrading my camera from my current Sony DSC-H50 (9.1MP with standard def video – also for sale on ebay if anyone happens to be interested) to a Canon T2i, which has twice the resolution in pictures as well as shoots in HD. However the best part could be that in the 720p setting it can shoot at 60 frames per second (30 is the standard), which means that breaking the footage down into slow motion can go from awesome, to super duper awesome. I am hopeful that the 60 FPS shooting can help out when looking at swing and pitching mechanics. At the very least though, better pictures and video will be available for the 2011 season.

Some other news related to the site. Despite running the site on the wordpress platform for 3+ years now, I really haven’t taken advantage of the “tag” function. What that is, is where I can “tag” any article I write with words and if you click on those words, it will take you to all other posts with those same tags. I am going to start using those in the 2011 year and hopefully it will help out with finding articles on specific players or specific topics/article series to help better organize everything. I went back and “tagged” the last 20 posts I have made. I also am going to try to link players names within the articles to their “tag” page. Since most players don’t have many tagged posts yet, here is an example of the most tagged item so far this year and how it looks: Prospect Lists. What do you guys think, a step in the right direction?

Tom Nichols has up an interview with Dayton Dragons pitching coach Tony Fossas over at DaytonDragons.com. There are quick breakdowns of  some pitchers written about at the link, but I suggest that you listen to the entire interview (about 25 minutes) to hear everything. Fossas has things to say about all of these guys:

• Daniel Corcino
• Kyle Lotzkar
• Ismael Guillon
• Jonathan Correa
• Daniel Tuttle
• Tanner Robles
• Jacob Johnson
• Daniel Wolford
• Donnie Joseph
• Aroldis Chapman

Again, you should really take the time to give it a listen. There is a lot of interesting stuff in there. Great job by Tom Nichols to get all of that in there.

The Reds signed Edgar Renteria last week and one of the things that has often come up since then is what it is going to do to the placement of multiple prospects in the middle infield throughout the system. I put together a depth chart for the 2010 season and followed it up with a projected depth chart for the 2011 season.

The place where the real issue arises is at the A+ and AA level. In A+, both Didi Gregorius and Henry Rodriguez earned a promotion with how they played in the 2010 season. Miguel Rojas and Brodie Greene could probably benefit from repeating the level as both players struggled to hit in the league. In AA, Kris Negron clearly earned a promotion with his good defense and a solid year at the plate. The problem is, there is nowhere for him to play in AAA with both Zack Cozart and Chris Valaika likely heading back to Louisville. That pushes him back to Carolina and maybe even to second base for Miguel Rojas who is an outstanding defensive shortstop, but likely only gets a promotion so that Didi Gregorius, Billy Hamilton and Devin Lohman can all get their playing time below him. Depth is always a very good thing to have in a system, and the Reds certainly have some strong options in the middle infield sprinkled throughout the system. Right now though, it seems that some players may wind up being promoted or being kept back due to the signing of Renteria who is pretty likely to split time at shortstop. For the record, I am a fan of the Renteria signing. What do you guys think about the depth chart in regards to where guys will be placed?