Last week, we reported on the invitees and broke them down by pitchers and position players. One of our regular commenters (markfd) broke it down into three categories, which I agree with:
1. Very young
2. Changing roles or position
3. Guys that need to work on a specific skill (pitch)
Here are a few other observations I have in looking over the players invited.
… Almost everyone invited in 2009 moved up a level in 2010 if they didn’t spend time at multiple levels.
… The exception appears to be Potomac, which makes sense because it’s the “staging area” for the system
… Repeats? Eleven batters, ten pitchers. (Almost) half of those (four pitchers, six batters) are guys 20 or younger
… Most of the this-year-but-not-last-year are 2010 draftees or IFAs. The outliers? Holder, Wort and Andruth Ramirez
Undoubtedly, there will be some speculation as to who didn’t get invited and why, though I suspect it will be buried amidst the breathless stories about Bryce Harper. Washington has a much larger-than-average camp to begin with and not every organization sends their top guys to “instrux.” Box scores aren’t released to the public, and attendance is very sparse: Mostly family, friends, and SO’s besides the scouts, who aren’t thrilled to be there.
“[S]couts don’t like having to cover instrux, because they don’t believe they can write a good report based on what they see there. It’s a place where coaches are tinkering with and tweaking their players, so you don’t always see the real stuff,” says former scout Anip Sunha on BucsProspects.com, citing an example of a player from 10 years ago that threw only fastballs and changeups, the two pitches he was working on to complement his plus-plus curveball. (Bobby Bradley’s the player, the article from which a lot of this post is based on can be found here.)
What the “intruxs” is, from what I’ve researched, is simply a chance to get the players together to work with more of the organization’s coaches in close proximity for an extra month and work on what the evaluators have spotted over the course of the year. Pitchers are said to benefit the most because they get the chance to work multiple coaches, many of whom are specialists in a particular pitch. Paul Menhart, for example, seems to be the go-to guy for refining the changeup while Randy Tomlin is the guy that John Lannan credits with both making the jump from A+ to the majors in ’07 and fixing him this summer. Like in spring training, it’s workouts and drills in the morning, games in the afternoon.
If I spot something in my travels, I’ll pass it along, but I suspect there won’t be much more to report aside from injuries and Bryce Harper.