I guess the biggest thing of the day is that there is now a message board up and running on the site. There are probably still some bugs around the board, so if you see something that is off, please leave a note in the forum. I hope the spam filter works, but we shall see.
Kevin Goldstein over at Baseball Prospectus ranks the Reds farm system as the 9th best system in baseball. The article is a premium article though. Chapman seemed like a big boost to the system.
John Fay had some good stuff on his blog and twitter. First he reported that the Reds officially are listing Juan Duran at 6′ 6″, which is lower than reports earlier that he had grown to 6′ 8″. Walt Jocketty had this to say about Chapman:
“We can’t let one or two outings sway our decisions,” Jocketty said. ”I don’t think our position has changed. We’re still evaluating. Our plan is the same”
That is clearly good to hear. I don’t think you should ever make a decision based on spring training stats, as its too small of a sample to take anything from. I feel that the Reds are going to take it easy with Chapman and place him in the minors to start the year to help him get more acclimated to the culture and keep the pressure off to start the year.
Bryan Price also had this to say on Chapman, also from John Fay:
“It’s not unrealistic to see (him making the club),” Price said. “But in the same respect, there’s a lot of spring to go. There’s a lot of decisions to be made. I don’t think that decision that’s going to make until we get a lot closer to end, and there’s a lot more involved that performance. But, right now, I hope he forces our hand.”
Mark Sheldon has up an article on Enerio Del Rosario. Given what we had heard about Del Rosario getting the help from Mario Soto in changing his arm slot, it seems like the story got mixed up somewhere along the line, from Sheldon’s article on Reds.com:
“[Then Gulf Coast League Reds manager] Pat Kelly and I [AA pitching Tom Brown] sat there and said you know what? Let’s give it a shot.”
The process of changing Del Rosario’s arm angle was gradual. First, he went from overhand to three-quarters side arm and now he’s at what could be considered lower three-quarters. At Sarasota, catchers Devin Mesoraco and Jake Long led him through the game and reminded Del Rosario between pitches to “change his slot” if he slipped back to overhand.
Its a pretty good article and gives some insight into Del Rosario and some of the coaches in the system.
Here is how the Reds prospects performed in yesterdays game:
- Yonder Alonso went 0-2.
- Juan Francisco went 0-2.
- Todd Frazier went 0-2.
- Chris Heisey went 1-2 with a double and a run.
- Devin Mesoraco went 0-1 with a walk.
- Matt Maloney allowed 4 earned in 0.2 innings.
- Sam Lecure pitched 2.1 shutout innings.
- Alexander Smit allowed 3 earned runs in 0.2 innings.
- Jon Adkins threw 1.2 scoreless innings.
Maloney may have set himself back in the race for the #5 pitcher with this outing. Hopefully he returns strong next time out. Lecure had an impressive game.