Good, Bad, Interesting — Vol. 2

11 Commments

1. I know I know – JT Snow not Nonds grabbed small Darren out of the way of WS action …
   Baseball altzheimers I know .. Jon Lovitz voice saying I know 3.
   Luke great work during this celestial mid point of season before we may hear the beep beep of that truck backing up at the deadline

2. K.J. Harrison strikes out too much, but he’s still hitting like .390/1.100 since June 12, which is one heck of a hot streak. I’m not convinced he can hit MLB pitching when he strikes out as much as he does, but I also wonder if there’s a way to harness that contact-oriented approach and end up with a bat-first C/1B with a chance to play, and maybe stick, in the majors.

   Jake Alu increasingly looks like a real prospect. Waiting for some inevitable reversion to the mean, but he’s basically hit well all season now and doesn’t seem troubled by the move up to Double-A, which I’ve seen quench many a hot streak in my years of prospect-watching.

   Low-A Fredericksburg just does not have a whole lot of guys worth watching. The vaunted Jeremy De La Rosa has a .515 OPS. Viandel Peña has been a little better than that, but only a little.

   1. Agree a lot here, what struggles Gage Canning has had transitioning to AA is normal. What Jake ‘no respect’ Alu is doing is not, it’s like it didn’t affect him at all.

      Been waiting to see about the big 3 in Fredericksburg to no avail so far. Pena, De La Rosa & Emiliani, and to a lessor extent Martina, none have broken out yet.
      Emiliani is tearing it up on his rehab assignment in the FCL. Let’s see how he does in Fredericksburg. I still expect at least 2 out of those 3 to really get hot.

   2. It’s not just Harrison’s strikeouts that are the problem, it’s his plate discipline in general. He’s walking at a 5.5% rate, and hasn’t taken a BB in the month of July. Together that’s a 0.16 BB/K ratio, which just isn’t going to cut it at the major league level. Even Michael Taylor posted better rates than that, and that was in the majors. And Taylor could always fall back on the fact that he was a good defensive CF. Harrison is a DH/1B.

      I wonder if he’s really bad enough at C to not player there anymore, because his batting profile would play there, assuming he had even a decent glove at backstop.

3. Not sure if others already posted this, but Cavalli got a lot of hype during his inning at the Futures Game. Cavalli hit 100 MPH a couple times, turning heads.

   MLB.com featured Cavalli (one 18 pitchers to feature in the game) as their only noteworthy pitching performances at the game: https://www.mlb.com/news/2021-futures-game-highlights. There’s a good video of him blowing hitters away too.

   CBS Sports also wrote about Cavalli.

4. I’m hoping Cavalli makes it, but he also walked two in his futures game inning. His walks have increased since he was promoted to AA.

5. More moves today for HBG! Losing Alex Dunlap and Pearson McMahon to Rochester. Could Pineda be coming our way??

   1. Dunlap is temporary; everyone above him is injured.
      McMahon has seen his last day in AA. His numbers are great and he needs a new challenge.

6. FWIW, Harrison has only caught two games this year, and only caught three in 2019. I really don’t know why the Nats haven’t tried harder on that angle, considering the “defense” they’ve endured from Read for years, but they haven’t.

7. Big club desperately needs LH relief options. Sam Clay lost three games in the last week. Yet they insist on keeping guys like Braymer, Troop, and S. Romero as starters? Why? They’ve done that with so many guys, kept them as starters long after it was clear that they aren’t.

8. Snarkle snarkle
   Erik Tolman returning from … drum roll please … TJ …
   A future loogie or starter in lower farm ??

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