Minor League Games - Wednesday, May 2, 2018

[bigegypt0417]

Hall goes yard again in the CLW game. He has 9 on the season now; seems to be adjusting to the FSL. If Moniak, Randolph, or Haseley were hitting like he is we'd be talking about them non-stop.

Read an article that he's gotten kaplers attention now as well. Could be the prospect rise of the year...

[phillychuck]

Nice to see that Kapler pays attention to the minors. I can't remember any previous manager commenting on an obscure prospect in A-ball.

[schillingfan]

Ha! I remember a long discussion on whether Kapler's minors' experience would be a positive or a negative as manager. I agree with you that it's good to have a manager with an interest in performance of some players in the minors and don't think it has taken away from his job as manager.

[Philsmania]

And, the Threshers win! 3-0 day so far.

[Philsmania]

Ooh. We'll be getting our losses in earlier today.

You should reverse jinx us more often!

[allentown]

Cozens had an .800+ OPS going into last night's game. If any of our 1st round OF draft picks had 6 HRs or an .800+ OPS, we'd consider them prospects. Unfortunately, they do not. Perhaps they have been promoted too aggressively, but other top prospects from other organizations move fast. I saw the Toronto AA team play Reading last Sunday and they have multiple 21-year old top offensive prospects, featuring kids of former MLB players. Moniak and Randolph have simply not done anything as pros to cause one to look at them as top prospects. A great day from Cozens won't change that. I was at the Allentown game last night and Cozens looked mostly lost, until he smoked a hit against a reliever. He was respectable in CF and came in very nicely on a ball, which could easily have dropped in front of him. One of Moniak's big selling points was speed. He has 1 SB; Cozens has stolen 6 bases -- he has been caught twice.

[andyb]

Really small sample, but Cozens is 6-23 with a HR and a 7/10 BB/K ratio against LHP. 859 OPS/972 L/R splits.

When Cozens and Hoskins were dominating Reading I always noted that Cozens was a year younger and that mattered. Hopefully that is correct. He still has huge holes in his swing, but if he can just decrease his swing percent on stuff out of the zone, the other parts of his game might actually be good enough for a platoon role.

No idea if he or Williams is better long term, but it is nice to have 2 options as opposed to 1 for LH corner OF power.

[Austinfan]

ITYS on Hall. Forget the 14th rd, he's 22 in Clearwater, will turn 23 later this season, at which time he may be in Reading.

He's a true sleeper, needs to work on his plate discipline, as pitchers will work the ball off the plate until he shows enough patience to force them to throw strikes. But the power is there, and he makes consistent contact.

If we can consistently find guys in the 2nd (Kingery), 5th (Hoskins), 8th (Altherr) and 14th rds (Hall), we can live with a few misses in the 1st rd!

[Philsmania]

Claws win 5-2! A perfect day for the pharm!

[phillychuck]

Nice game for Will Stewart; 7 strong innings--Brito with 2 hits and 3 RBI, but still hitting less than .200.

[schillingfan]

If we can consistently find guys in the 2nd (Kingery), 5th (Hoskins), 8th (Altherr) and 14th rds (Hall), we can live with a few misses in the 1st rd

Well, sure, we can live through it. But obviously it would be better to hit than miss, just think if we had picked some of the players taken after our pick our we would do more than just "living."

[EDmuch]

Plus it was not just a one time screw up with our first round pick. It was 3 years in a row with a top ten pick. Someone needs to answer for that.

[Philsmania]

Let us not forget that the Astros blew two #1 picks along the way (Appel in 2013 and Aiken in 2014). And for Haseley, it's still very early. The sample size isn't so small for Randolph and Moniak, though.

[zambonir]

If Kingery turns out to be for real I think we can call that year a wash, and it's far too soon to write off Haseley (or even Moniak really. Even at the time of the pick his ceiling wasn't perennial all-star).

Once again, I view each of those three drafts as being by different regimes. The old regime, a transitional year and the new regime. Not to mention three different area scouts for three different first-rounders. Neither Almaraz nor Klentak got to work with people of their own choosing those first two years (or with much in the way of analytics). A lot of changes were made just since last year (and even more since 2016), and at the developmental level too, so for all we know people actually have "answered" for some of the disappointments already. That the 2016 draft was so different from the 2017 was also telling, though now that they only have one pick in the first three rounds it might be a bit harder to say they have a particular approach or philosophy.