NationalsProspects.com

Instructional League Roster – Final Thoughts

Late last week, the invitees to the Florida Instructional League were announced, broken down by pitchers and position players.

One of our commenters (markfd) broke down the ’10 invites into three categories or buckets, if you will, and for ’11 it still holds water (dear Liza, dear Liza)…
1. Very Young
2. Changing Roles/Position
3. Guys That Need To Work On Specific Skill/Pitch

All but one of the position players moved up a level from 2010 to 2011. Russell Moldenhauer was the exception. Among the pitchers, the “spent time at multiple levels” exception still holds true (Danny Rosenbaum, Trevor Holder, Rob Wort) but with the influx of DSL talent and more importantly, the organization getting younger, there were more repeats at the short-season/rookie levels (DSL, GCL, NYPL).

Overall, there were 20 repeats from 2010 to 2011 — 12 position players, eight pitchers. Like last year, nearly all of the newbies are 2011 draftees or DSL rookies. The exceptions? Nathan Karns, Jack McGeary, Chris McKenzie, Elvin Ramirez, Cameron Selik, and Matt Swynenberg. All but the last two were injured or have missed significant time due to injury.

I think folks need to be careful reading too much into who’s not on those two lists because not being invited is not necessarily an indictment. Josh Smoker, for example, probably didn’t go back because the organization has seen enough from him in 2011 and believes he’s on track for 2012. Likewise for Roberto Perez in Auburn. And of course, there’s always the explanation of injuries, for which we have little information and the organization shares very sparingly.

Unfortunately, stories out of the FIL are few and far between. Last year, we were fortunate enough to have one of our readers issue a couple of dispatches, and of course, Bryce Harper made an appearance. Stephen Strasburg has been mentioned as possibly making some appearance for a week or two, which is probably our best hope of anything, given our budget and the biases of the traditional media outlets on which I have to rely for anything I can’t see in person.

As I did last offseason, I’ll try pass along whatever information I come across, FIL or otherwise, until the Arizona Fall League starts. In the meantime, as VladiHondo said: Let’s enjoy watching “our kids” in DC this September.

9 Commments

  1. Also unfortunately, http://www.spacecoastbaseball.com is no longer with us – they would provide videos updates of the Instructionals, etc. (look under the Videos tab for 3 from last year’s instructional opener) Last I heard, the guy was laid off so labors of love get shoved to the back burner ’til funds become available.

    2. The news on the loss of spacecoast is a bummer. Here’s hoping you’re still keeping an eye open on Winter League postings & activities. Any prospect news is welcome news, imo.

  2. Sue thanks for your work and all the guest bloggers for doing y’all’s thang, bro… You’ve added a lot of features and details. I don’t know how you find the time, but it’s appreciated. Thanks again for a wonderful summer of baseball reporting.

    1. Believe me, the effort of my volunteers is very much appreciated — especially when Potomac is at home and all seven affiliates are playing, and when the transaction wire is buzzing like a Cheech & Chon…er, overloaded transformer.

  3. Yeah, it’s too bad TBRFan is concentrating on trivial things like paying the rent and feeding her family when she should be doing more important work like giving regular updates from the Intstructional League.

  4. Sue- thanks for the mention from the 2010 post I had almost forgotten about that. I think in 2011 we need to add a fourth category:

    Boras guys who signed at the deadline so the only place for them to find meaningful work is the FIL

    🙂

    1. I’m not one to begrudge Boras for being good what he’s paid to do, which is to extract as much money and leverage as possible on behalf of his clients.

Comments are closed.