Minor League Games - Thursday, June 21, 2018

[Jeff05]

Connor Seabold is pitching a 'reasonable' game for Clearwater! (No walks or runs after five innings).

[Jeff05]

I've jinxed him - Dunedin have scored against him in the sixth.

[teabag259]

Young, Romero, and Lindow also with outstanding starts.

Haseley had 2 more hits. Scheiner with 3 hits. Vierling has had a great start In WPT.

I think we are approaching cut bait time with Randolph. If he doesn’t hit in Reading he will never hit anywhere.

[Squire]

Feels like the whole system is hot right now

[Squire]

Rodolfo Duran is a single short of the cycle

[phillychuck]

WMPT bullpen gives up 6 runs in the last 2 innings to blow a 5-0 lead. Wow.

[schillingfan]

Feels like the whole system is hot right now

Not so the Iron Pigs. Their lineup is really awful. Irvin is a strike throwing machine who threw 87 mph fastballs. Don't think he had any three ball counts.

[baseballoldie]

Seriously? Randolph just turned 21 and is playing AA and you are saying it’s time to cut bait on him, a player in which the Phillies have a $3.2 million investment? Are you proposing the Phillies release him? Trade him? Not going to happen. How about giving him time to figure it out and develop? Unlike impatient fans, pro teams actually understand that development of players is not linear and most players will struggle at points in their career. Better they learn how to work through challenging periods while in the minors.

[teabag259]

There aren't many levels available yet for Randolph to flounder at. He is in Reading. Every player worth his salt absolutely rakes there. He is hitting .190. This after lackluster years at Clearwater and Lakewood. I wanted to believe that his supposed hit tool would manifest itself in Reading. But it clearly isn't going to happen.

[phillychuck]

There aren't many levels available yet for Randolph to flounder at. He is in Reading. Every player worth his salt absolutely rakes there. He is hitting .190. This after lackluster years at Clearwater and Lakewood. I wanted to believe that his supposed hit tool would manifest itself in Reading. But it clearly isn't going to happen.

There is no reason Randolph can't repeat Reading next season. We all think he's probably not going to figure things out, but stranger things have happened. There are plenty of ABs in AA/AAA right now given we have a boatload of minor league vets in the AAA outfield.

[Squire]

Blueclaws did their damage last night against a former 1st round college pitcher pick of the Mets who is still in Low A 2 years after being drafted because of 2 missed season of injuries

[phillychuck]

"Anthony Kay" sounds like a mid-day radio host.

[allentown]

f our LA scouting is so good, how come our DSL teams are so bad? I

Because our scouts are paid to find guys who can develop into MLB players. Most of the guys in the state-side rookie and Low-A leagues aren't ever going to reach MLB and really have very little odds of doing so from the day they are signed -- close to half the guys on these teams are either organizational filler or extremely long shots with one tool and a ton of improvement needed on other tools. This is doubly so in the DSL, where the very best signees come state-side quickly, leaving the slower developers, less talented, and those needing to learn English, or wait for their turn to be good enough to merit a visa behind. As with the teams in the lower minors state-side, the scouts should best be judged based upon the perhaps handful of guys on the team who were considered potentially serious prospects when signed. The scouts get a gold star if one of the lesser pitchers they sign can become an MLB middle reliever or if they sign a decent back-up catcher longer-shot who has a questionable bat but whose D helps the young pitchers. Minor league records just don't tell you all that much about scouting. Winning sets a good atmosphere for developing your prospects, but if the winning is due to older players, that isn't a plus for the scouts or the strength of the farm. There are outliers, such as Listi, that you just don't know which column they fall into: Brock Stassi or serious prospect.

[phillychuck]

Let me clarify the point I was trying to make. We have the reputation, I think deservedly, of having scouts who are good at recognizing the 10K-80K bonus LA talent--not the elite guys, but the mid-low-range guys that comprise most of the DSL rosters. The ability to find the high-end guys you're talking about doesn't impact my question since the high-end guys mostly go stateside right away.

So I was asking if our DSL rosters this year were younger than usual (which I would have NOT expected them to be, since fielding 4 rookie teams in DSL and GCL would seem to incentivize us to keep rather than release older LA players and play more college guys in GCL) or whether it was simply how we split the talent and playing time. Or did we just have a bad year signing mid-level talent in LA?

The DSL pitching, in particular, looks awful.

[Squire]

Given the recent promotions of Hall and Listi and the dearth of any reason to currently care about LHV's offense, it would be cool to see Zach Green (still only 24) promoted to LHV. Actually has a reverse Reading effect so its not the ballpark.

[zambonir]

Perhaps Randolph should go down a level for a bit. But yes, he'll play most and quite possibly all of next year at Reading. There's no reason to just get rid of him for several seasons, unless it's as the third guy in a trade.

[andyb]

Age matters. If Randolph were a year older he would still be the youngest offensive player on that team. 2 years younger than Hall, Sandberg, Canelo, Hernandez. A year younger than Grullon.

Repeating Reading would not be the worst thing for him. Of course if he did repeat he would have to improve substantially to not be in danger of being released.

[allentown]

You are correct. I don't think Randolph is very good, but a lot of this problem is on the Phillies. There was absolutely no reason to move him to Reading. His performances at Lakewood and Clearwater could charitably be described as pedestrian for a bat-first LF. He had a good initial season at GCL and then the Phillies cost him his contact ability by getting him to uppercut for loft and power. Now he has neither contact nor power. His Phillies minor league career to date is a blot on both the scouting and development staff. They loved his swing and contact ability prior to the draft... but just had to re-make it. So, we spent a #1 and $millions for nothing: a slow, poor defensive, guy without power, whose hit tool must be greatly discounted because the Phillies changed what had worked for him in HS and in GCL (to the tune of well above .800 OPS).

In the cases of Galvis and