Mark Sheldon has up some notes from Dusty Baker on Aroldis Chapman from Arizona.
“He’s been kind of like how he was last spring — inconsistent,” Baker said. “A guy that throws 100 mph is like trying to tune up a race car. It takes time to tune that race car up. But he’ll get it. He’ll be fine. I’m not worried about (Aroldis) Chapman.”
There is a little more at the link, so go give it a read.
Hal McCoy has a few notes up at the Dayton Daily News. Two things jumped out from them:
“Then we have young guys looking good like Devin Mesoraco, Zack Cozart, Dave Sappelt – different guys like that,” said Baker. “We haven’t had the surprise yet like Mike Leake last year, but we still have three weeks to go in exhibition games. That person might still be out there.”
Apparently hitting .500 (Mesoraco and Sappelt) isn’t a surprise? Then he had this on Ronald Torreyes:
“They told me he could hit,” said Baker. “I sent him up there to see if he could hit. And he can hit. You don’t hit .370 by mistake. He has a good approach.”
Torreyes is one of the guys who has perhaps the most interest from me early in the season simply because of the lack of information on him. While we have bits and pieces of information on him, I would love to see him with my own eyes over a few games.
Barry Larkin is impressed with Billy Hamilton. John Fay has a quote from him on Billy Hamilton on his blog:
“He’s incredibly athletic,” Larkin said. “Great, great athletic ability. He’s smart kid, good personality. He has a great baseball body. Loose arm. He’s young so he’s going to get stronger. Serious ability.”
Juan Francisco has been a long time controversial player among prospect fans of the Reds. One side loves his average and power, while the other side questions his plate discipline and thinks it is not going to play at the MLB level. Daniel Moroz looks at players developing plate discipline over at Beyond the Box Score. It seems that players don’t make much improvement in their plate discipline when it starts out so poorly. The players looked at were guys who had a K/BB of 4.00 or higher over 5 seasons (minimum of 1000 PA over that time). Francisco has never posted a season with a K/BB better than 4.55.
Here is how the prospects performed in yesterdays loss to the Giants:
- Chris Valaika went 1-2.
- Todd Frazier went0-2.
- Devin Mesoraco went 0-1.
- Juan Francisco went 0-2.
- Yasmani Grandal went 0-1.
- Jeremy Horst threw 0.2 perfect innings of relief.
- Aroldis Chapman threw 2 innings and allowed a run on 2 hits with 3 strikeouts.