Kuzul

Almost certainly the worst job Major League Baseball teams ever did of handicapping baseball talent happened in the 1975 Draft. It was a bad, bad draft on many levels.

The first player selected was my all-time biggest draft bust: Danny Goodwin. Adding to the fact that this was the second time Goodwin was the first player selected in the draft, he was also given what was then almost certainly a record bonus for a drafted player of $125,000.

The last of the great bonus babies, Rich Reichart, received $200,000 from the then California Angels in 1964 after a frenzied bidding war, which was the impetus for the teams to adopt a draft of amateur players to prevent competitive bidding. In 1965 the first No. 1 selection, Rick Monday, received a $100,000 bonus, which likely stood as the record until Goodwin surpassed it in 1975. Once the owners had gotten used to the idea that no one could bid against them for the top players they drafted, bonuses for top overall picks quickly dropped to the $65,000 to $75,000 range.

What makes the 1975 Draft special is that the picks didn’t get any better after Goodwin when Mike Lentz, Les Filkins, Brian Rosinksi, Richard O’Keefe, and Butch Benton rounded out the top six picks. Ever heard of any of them?

The first pick to really amount to anything was catcher Rick Cerone, taken with the seventh pick by the Cleveland Indians. Cerone had a long major league career, but he wasn’t really much of a hitter except for one good season with the New York Yankees in 1980. I remember during his playing days being of the belief that Cerone milked that one good year for a much longer career than he in all rights deserved.

The picks didn’t get much better after Cerone. Clint Hurdle was taken ninth by the Kansas City Roylas while Dale Berra was selected at 20 by the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The first really great player selected was Lee Smith by the Chicago Cubs in the second round at 28. Carney Lansford was taken in the third round with at 49 by the Angels.

Rounding out the top 100 players selected that year, in terms of players who eventually amounted to something, were Frank Pastore (46), Don Robinson (68), Paul Moskau (70), Jason Thompson (75), Dickie Noles (84), Jim Beattie (91) and “Sweet” Lou Whitaker (99th).

That’s a weak, weak Draft.

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As you may have noticed, it’s Draft Madness Week here at Burly’s Baseball Musings.  However, no matter how much die-hard baseball fans get into the Draft (and I do every year), it’s a whole different ballgame selecting amateur talent in MLB than it is in the NBA or NFL.

To give you some idea of how difficult it is to choose the studs from the duds, here’s a list of the seven starting pitchers who won their ballgames tonight and where they were drafted.

Trevor Cahill, selected in the 2nd round, 66th overall, by the A’s in 2006.

Mat Latos, selected in the 11th round, 333rd overall, by the Padres in 2006.

Jake Arrieta, selected in the 5th round, 159th overall, by the Orioles in 2007.

Roy Oswalt, selected in the 23rd round, 684th overall (out of Holmes Community College), by the Astros in 1996.

Brett Cecil, selected in the 1st round (supplemental), 38th overall, by the Blue Jays in 2007.

Josh Johnson, selected in the 4th round, 113th overall, by the Marlins in 2002.

Jonathan Niese, selected in the 7th round, 209th overall, by the Mets in 2005.

Starters Livan Hernandez and Bruce Chen also won tonight, but as Latin American players (Livan is from Cuba, Bruce is from Panama), they were not subject to the draft.

Not as many first rounders as you would expect, although this could certainly be a fluke based on a small sample size.  The point remains, however, that there is a lot more blind luck in baseball in terms of the draft picks that develop as opposed to the ones who don’t.

In fact, the best pitcher in terms of career to date, Roy Oswalt, was the lowest drafted of the bunch.  Aside from the fact that he was a junior college pitcher from a school that most people have never heard of, he is a small right-hander, and there is a bigger prejudice against small right-handed pitchers than there is against any other identifiable group in baseball.

It just goes to show that you have to beat the bushes pretty hard for baseball talent because it could be lurking anywhere.

In one final interesting note, all seven of these drafted starters won for the team that originally drafted them.  I suspect this is a fluke, made possible only because Josh Johnson out-dueled Roy Halladay in a game that was 1-0 through eight innings after which both starters were pulled.

It does make the point, however, that if you want to build a successful ball club, you draft well throughout the Draft, and not just in the first couple of rounds.

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Here’s a list of the first 18 players selected by the Twins in this year’s  MLB draft from mlb.com, which may grow as the Twins continue to draft players. 

The players selected thus far look like what we’ve come to expect from the Twins: a lot of college pitchers and athletic high school position players.

Of the college pitchers the Twins have selected so far (excluding Alex Wimmers, who I have already written about), the ones who most intrigue me are Steve Maxwell of Texas Christian (375th pick) and Ryan O’Rourke of Merrimack College (405th pick).

Maxwell blew out his elbow and had to have Tommy John surgery two years ago.  In 2010 he was a fourth year junior and had a terrific season, going 11-1 with a 2.51 ERA for a top program. 

The rest of Maxwell’s line was also good: 97 IP, 79 hits, 31 walks allowed, and 87 Ks.  Even with the past elbow problems, it’s surprising that Maxwell would go this low after the season he had at a high-level college program.

Ryan O’Rourke played for a very small school and put up some ridiculous numbers. He had a 1.25 ERA for the year with a line of 79 IP, 44 hits, 14 walks allowed, and 93 Ks.  It will certainly be a big jump to the pros for O’Rourke, but he at least appears to have some talent.

The college position players the Twins selected are all kind of interesting. 

With the 165th pick (5th round) the Twins took outfielder Nathaniel Roberts of High Point.  Playing for a small school, Roberts had a 1.319 OPS and stole 36 bases in 39 attempts.

With the 255th pick, the Twins selected outfielder Lance Ray from Kentucky.  Ray hit .365 and had a 1.178 playing for a big school, but he may have had injury problems this year as he appears to have played only about 60 percent of the season.

Finally, with the 285th pick, the Twins chose local catcher Kyle Knudsen from Minnesota.  Knudsen had a solid year for a catcher, hitting .342 with a .911 OPS.  However, he is a senior who turns 23 on September 12, which means he’s already getting up there for player just entering professional ball.

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Second Round (74 overall) Jarrett Parker OF Virginia:   Parker actually hit better his sophomore year than he did this year.  In 2009 he hit .355 with a 1.114 OPS.  Both numbers fell this year to .338 and 1.033, which is probably why he fell to the bottom of the second round.

Third Round (105 overall) Carter Jurica SS Kansas St:   Jurica had a fine year in 2010, finishing with a .363 batting average and a 1.068 OPS.  He hit .353 in 2009, but with much less power, finishing his sophomore season with a .925 OPS.  Baseball Draft Report rated Jurica as the second best college shortstop in the draft, behind Christian Colon, who the Royals took with the fourth overall pick.  Looks like a good pick for this place in the draft.

Fourth Round (138 overall) Seth Rosen RHP Minnesota:   Rosen has a good arm, but wasn’t a great college pitcher at a big school program.  He went 9-4 in ’10 with a 4.72 ERA and line of 103 IP, 100 hits, 13 HRs, 12 walks allowed, and 95 Ks.  In ’09, he went 7-1 with a 4.21 ERA with a line of 77 IP, 82 hits, 16 walks allowed, and 65 Ks.  He clearly has a good arm and can throw strikes, but he looks like he needs to learn how to be effectively wild.

Fifth Round (168 overall) Richard Hembree RHP College of Charleston: Hembree was drafted solely on his arm.  In what appears to have been his first season at a four-year college, he had a 6.52 ERA with a line of 29 IP, 33 hits, 18 walks allowed, and 42 Ks.

The Giants have had some luck with guys like this (great arm, can’t throw strikes).  The Giants selected Dan Runzler in the ninth round (284 overall) in the 2007 Draft, after a junior year at UC Riverside in which he had a 5.06 ERA and trouble throwing strikes.  Runzler was almost like a new pitcher when he hit professional baseball, which suggests he had a mechanical glitch the Giants organization corrected and/or he responded extremely well to professional coaching.

Sixth Round (198) Mike Kickham LHP Missouri State:   Another “arm” pick, Kichham had a 4-9 record with a 5.25 ERA this year, but a line of 96 IP, 101 hits, 14 HRs, 30 walks allowed, and 103 Ks.  Again, it looks like he needs to learn to be effectively wild.

Seventh Round (228) Charles Jones CF High School (Boonville, Missouri) :  Jones was the first high school player selected by the Giants in the 2010 Draft, which is a big surprise, since the Giants usually like high school pitchers.  I can’t find too many specifics about him online, but he is listed as 6’3″ and 235 lbs, which is huge for a high school player and makes me think he might also be a football prospect.  We’ll have to wait to see if the Giants can sign him.

Eighth Round (258) Joe Staley C Lubbock Christian University:   Staley had a fine year in 2010, hitting .443 with a 1.254 OPS playing for a power-house team with a very weak college schedule.  Whether he sticks in professional baseball may depend on his defensive skills, because he may find the jump to professional ball leaves his bat behind.

Ninth Round (288) Chris Lofton OF Jones County JC (Mississippi): Lofton’s a junior college player the Giants liked enough to take in the ninth round.  Whether he signs or transfers to a four-year school to improve his draft chances in 2011 remains to be seen.

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The first round (including supplementals) of the 2010 MLB Draft is in the books. There were a few surprises (at least based on the mock drafts I saw), with Cal State Fullerton SS Christian Colon (4th Royals) and Texas RHP Barrett Loux (6th Diamonbacks), going higher than projected. Middle Tennessee State outfielder Bryce Brentz, The Citadel’s RHP Ascher Wojciechowski and LSU’s RHP Anthony Ranaudo going lower than expected.

I’m not sure that I consider Loux or Ranaudo surprises, though. Loux pitched awfully well this year for a top college program playing top competition, and Ranaudo had elbow problems and a terrible season, following his great sophomore season last year.

The Giants, A’s and Twins selected, respectively, Cal State Fullerton third basemen Gary Brown, Texas Arlington outfielder Michael Choice, and Ohio State right-hander Alex Wimmers. 

Here are my thoughts.

I don’t know that I’m sold on Gary Brown (24th pick). He’s projected to be a professional outfielder, and he looks an awful lot like something the Giants have already in Nate Schierholtz. 

Brown can clearly hit, hitting .438 this year, after hitting .340 in 2009. However, he doesn’t have a whole lot of power and he doesn’t walk much. He had a 1.180 OPS in 2010, which looks good, but really isn’t great for a college player selected in the first round. His OPS numbers his freshman and sophomore years were .800 and .897.

Brown can definitely hit, and he played for a good college program that plays good college competition. However, I like guys that can get on base, and that doesn’t seem to be Brown’s best suit.

Michael Choice (10th pick) looks like the kind of player the A’s would draft.  He hits for power (16 HRs in 2010), walks a lot (76 times) and strikes out a lot (54 times in 196 ABs).

Choice makes me think of a young Jack Cust or Matt Stairs: a player looking for a pitch to drive and not swinging at much else. His high strikeout total, which projects to 152 K’s in 550 ABs, is my major cause for concern. A guy who strikes out that much in college, which is probably roughly equivalent to Choice starting at A+ ball in 2011, is a concern, particularly when he reaches AA ball.

Alex Wimmers (21st pick) isn’t a surprise for the Twins either. He’s a college pitcher who played for a Mid-West university. The Twins have had a lot of luck with these guys, and they haven’t changed their formula.

Wimmers is a good pick for the Twins aside from the reasons mentioned, and he looks a lot like the guy the Twins took last year with the 22nd pick of the ’09 Draft, Kyle Gibson.  Like Gibson, Wimmers is coming off an injury. Wimmers went 9-0 this year with a 1.60 ERA and a line of 73 IP, 58 hits,0 HRs and 23 walks allowed and 86 Ks.

Wimmers season ended early due to a hamstring injury, which is better than an arm injury.  Kyle Gibson’s 2009 ended with a forearm stress fracture, which is better than an elbow or shoulder injury.  This year so far, Gibson has a 2.27 ERA with a line of 75.1 IP, 60 hits, two HR’s, 20 walks and 67 Ks, after seven starts at A+ and five starts at AA. 

Needless to say, Gibson pitched better at A+ ball, but his ERA so far at AA is still an excellent 2.81.

Clearly, the Twins are making decisions based on their past experiences, and in this case (and the case of Gibson) the strategy makes a lot of sense. They are taking top college pitchers whose stock has fallen on draft day due to injuries, not involving their elbows or shoulders. This is a good way to get top 15 upside when your first pick is not in the top twenty.

For what it’s worth, Wimmers recorded 273 Ks in 217.2 college innings pitched.  He only really found his control this last season, for a player his age that’s certainly soon enough.

The player with the most upside of the three I’ve discussed is probably Michael Choice.  However, when taking into consideration the draft slots, I think I like the Twins’ decision to take Alex Wimmers with the 21st pick as the best decision of the three.

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How good has Ubaldo Jimenez been through 11 starts in 2010?  Almost unbelievably good.

Everyone knows, or should know, that Coors Field in mile-high Denver, is far and away the best place to hit in the major leagues.  Jimenez has a 1.29 home ERA this year, and only an 0.52 ERA on the road.  Based on that performance, I’d guestimate Jiminez’s current ERA (0.78 in fact) at 0.60 if he played his home games in a completely hitting/pitching neutral park.

By way of comparison, the modern record (since 1900) for ERA is Dutch Leonard’s 1.01 ERA in 1914 (in 223 innings pitched, which was only 15th most in an eight team league).  BTW, the lowest post-1900 ERA for any pitcher who pitched significantly over 100 IP that I am aware of is the immortal Ferdie Schupp, who had an 0.90 ERA in 140.1 IP for the 1916 NY Giants. 

The truly modern (since 1946) record is, of course, held by Bob Gibson, who posted a 1.12 ERA in 1968.

These records were set in extreme pitchers’ eras in baseball history.  The fact that Jimenez has an 0.78 ERA pitching in his home games in probably the best hitters’ park in baseball, at least since they closed down the Baker Bowl in Philadelphia, is truly amazing.

According to wikipedia, the Baker Bowl was only 280 feet down the right field line and an even more astounding 300 feet to right center—around 1920, the Phillies added a metal fence at the top that made the right field wall 60 feet high, but at those dimensions it simply turned a lot of routine fly balls from homeruns into doubles and triples.

By way of comparison, the current dimensions of Fenway Park, according to the Red Sox, are 310 feet down the left field line, 379 to left center and the Green Monster is 37 feet high.  The wall at the Baker Bowl long had a huge painted sign stating, “The Phillies Use Life Buoy Soap,” but, of course, the Phillies of that era still stunk.

It’s definitely time to wonder whether the pendulum is swinging back from the extreme hitters’ era that ended with a proper testing regime for performance enhancing drugs. 

I always though that PEDs helped hitting more than pitching, because even if PEDs allowed a pitcher to throw harder, ‘roids weren’t necessarily going to help command or breaking stuff, and the faster the ball comes in, the faster jacked-reflex hitters like Barry Bonds could turn the ball around.

We’ve now had what should have been three perfect games in less than a month, and you have to start to wonder if this isn’t going to be a strong pitchers’ year when all is said and done. 

Keep in mind also that the strike zone is definitely bigger than it was a decade ago, since MLB has made a concerted effort to make umpires call pitches between the letters and the belly button strikes.  There are a lot more fastballs at the letters called strikes now than there were 10 years ago.

All that being said, I’m certain that Ubaldo Jimenez will not finish the 2010 season with an ERA of 1.12 or lower in 200+ innings pitched.  There will be a hot night in Denver in July or August when the air is absolutely still, and everything Jimenez throws up there will be hit into a gap or will carry off somewhere into the Denver night.  It only takes one such game in Denver to end all hope of a record setting pitching season.

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The Giants called up Pat Burrell after five games at Fresno in which he went 5 for 14 with a homerun.  To make room, they designated Brandon Medders for assignment.

In fact, Medders has already been reported to have cleared waivers and been assigned to AAA Fresno, which is not particularly surprising given Medders’s 7.20 ERA so far this year and his recent minor arm problems.

I kind of wish the Giants had left Pat Burrell down at Fresno for the full two weeks.  I don’t think you learn much from 14 ABs.  Burrell was terrible for well over a year with Tampa, and getting him as many everyday ABs in Fresno as possible before you call him up wouldn’t be a bad thing.

In San Francisco, Burrell is expected to be mainly a bench player, although he will likely get a few starts right out of the gate to see if he can be the offensive shot in the arm the Giants need.  I’m not especially optimistic, although there’s still a chance that Burrell is simply a National League hitter who will get his stroke back in the Senior Circuit.  At his age, though, he may have already lost something he won’t get back.

I saw this article today which states that the Blue Jays completed the deal for former Giant Freddie Lewis for cash, possibly as little as $75,000 total.  Sure, the Giants had no room for Lewis, but not to take even a player to be named later seems like a mistake, if they received so little cash in return.

Lewis has an .862 OPS after 180 plate appearances as a Blue Jay in 2010.  Even if he doesn’t hit a lick the rest of the way, he was a tremendous bargain for the Jays if he only cost $75,000—remember the major league minimum is now over $400,000. 

The Jays would have had to pay a replacement level AAA outfielder (roughly .700 OPS) roughly that much to hold down Lewis’ roster space for two months.

Of late, you only hear about the players who have sudden jumps in performance when they go from the AL to the NL.  Lewis is proof that there are at least a few who have the big jump going the other way.  I still don’t have any reason to change my past opinion that the AL is the better of the two leagues, but they are close enough that there are going to be players whose skills better suit the style of play in one league than the other.

This last item doesn’t really have anything to do with the Giants, except that I argued all of last Winter that the Giants should sign the player in question because the Giants needed a right-handed hitting power bat, and he was cheap and originally from Sonoma County. 

Mlbtraderumors.com reports that the Reds have a 2011 option on Jonny Gomes for $1.75 million, which looks like a tremendous bargain considering his .885 OPS after 175 plate appearances entering tonight’s game.  His 2010 so far OPS is awfully close to his 2009 OPS of .879, so there’s reason to think it isn’t a fluke, at least compared to Freddie Lewis.

Small market teams absolutely need to take advantage of market conditions to make deals like these.  This past offseason was so bad for players that even after a fine 2009, Gomes couldn’t get a major league contract out of the Reds (or any of the other 29 major league teams) to bring him back. 

The 2011 option comes with a $50,000 buy-out if Gomes gets 200 plate appearances, escalating by $50K for each 50 additional plate appearances, up to $200K for 350 plate appearances (thanks, cot’s baseball contracts!).

Well, those are just absolutely fantastic terms for the Reds.  Gomes isn’t going to get 350 plate appearances this year unless he continues to play reasonably well, and even then the Reds can tender only $200,000 to get out from under a very reasonable $1.75 million contract.  I can’t see a downside for the Reds.

I don’t really see Gomes as more than a 350 plate appear a year platoon player, but at that price, he’s good one, at least through the end of 2011.  A team like the Reds needs to find it’s low-cost bargains where it can, and they appear to have found one.

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How do you hurt yourself jumping on home plate?  Injuries can happen any time in a million different ways. Ask Kendry Morales.

No one has ever been hurt (at least as far as I can recall) jumping on home plate after a walk-off homerun, but there is always a first time for everything, and it was bound to happen soon or a later.

This time it happened. At least it’s better than breaking your hand punching out a wall after something goes against you on the field.  That one’s happened too many times to count.

Or you could cut off the tip of your finger using a hedge trimmer like Bobby Ojeda back in 1988.  Actually, I just looked at this wikipedia article about Ojeda, which says that the real story was that he lost the finger when it was slammed in a door when the Mets were drunkenly celebrating clinching a play-off spot that year.  However, the wiki article provides no citation for this alleged “true story”, and I wasn’t able to find anything on the web from what I would consider a reliable source.

Either way, Ojeda probably isn’t one of the sharpest guys ever to put on a baseball uniform. He was also famously involved in the boating accident that killed Tim Crews and Steve Olin back in Spring Training 1993. Crews was the one piloting the boat, but he was almost assuredly not the only one who was drunk as a skunk at the moment of impact.

Sorry Bobby, no one gets to live down an episode that stupid and deadly.

The Angels will be without Morales for a good long time, which is going to hurt their playoff chances. Despite a poor start, the Angels are still only 2.5 games out in the AL West (looking like the weakest division in baseball this year, a title held by the NL West the last few seasons), so they are certainly going to miss Morales.

The Indians’ Grady Sizemore is about to undergo knee surgery, which could cost him the rest of the ’10 season.  One has to wonder if he isn’t going to be the next Eric Chavez.

Like Chavez, Grady had a string of seasons at the start of his career in which he was injury free, but this is the second year in a row which he’s suffered major injuries.  Last year, it was groin and elbow problems.  Now it’s his knee.

Grady turns 28 in August, which is roughly the same age at which Chavez began to fall apart.  I hope it isn’t so, because Grady was a great player, but the cynic in me says it’s a real possibility.

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Matt Cain threw a one-hitter tonight and was absolutely masterful.  He had great command, particularly of the fastball, and there wasn’t much the Diamondbacks could do.

The Giants are apparently on the verge of signing Pat Burrell to a minor league deal.  One report (from Fox’s Ken Rosenthal) has it that Burrell will get an option to opt out of the contract after two weeks, presumably if he hasn’t been called up to the major league club by then.

That seems kind of stupid to me, at least as far as the Giants are concerned.  Burrell has utterly failed to hit since the start of the 2009 season, and if it takes him more than 14 days to get his swing back at the Triple-A level, the Giants should have a little more time to let Burrell work out the kinks, if he can. 

Thirty days, or at least 21 days, before Burrell has a right to opt out makes more sense to me.

SF Chronicle sportswriter Henry (now Hank) Schulman doesn’t like the idea of the Giants trading for Prince Fielder because he’ll cost a lot of prospects and because Fielder isn’t a good long-term bet, given his body type.  I certainly agree with those points, but I don’t know that I agree with the conclusion that the Giants shouldn’t at least consider trading for Fielder if the circumstances are right come the All-Star Break.

A player of Fielder’s caliber will always cost a lot of prospects, particularly if, like Fielder, he still has until the end of next season before he becomes a free agent.  If the Giants are in contention come July 10, but still in a pack of contenders (seems likely), then Fielder would be exactly what the Giants need if they are serious about winning this year or in 2011. 

Getting Fielder to hit behind Pablo Sandoval would solve a whole lot of the Giants’ offensive problems.  That might be worth Madison Bumgarner, Waldis Joaquin, and one other legit prospect.

The Giants have young pitchers, and the Brewers need young pitchers.  The Brewers have Prince Fielder, and the Giants could sure use Fielder for the last two months of 2010 and all of 2011.

Just because you give up prospects for a bona fide star doesn’t mean you have to be the team to shell out the bucks when the star becomes a free agent.  The Giants could offer Fielder arbitration after 2011 and get a late first-round pick in 2012 from the wealthy team that signs him.  Brian Sabean doesn’t like those late first-round picks, even though Matt Cain was one of those late first-round picks (25th in the 2002 draft).

The Giants have four starters right now that are as good as any team’s top four in MLB.  What they don’t have is a second top slugger to pair up with Pablo Sandoval. 

I would not give up the idea of a possible Prince Fielder trade, unless the Giants clearly don’t have a reasonable chance of making the postseason come late July.  The Giants’ aces aren’t going to be at the top of their game forever, and sometimes you have to trade away part of your future for a real shot to win now.

Call it the Fred McGriff Rule.  In 1993, the Braves traded away some pretty legit looking prospects (at least Melvin Nieves looked pretty good) to the Padres for two months of Fred McGriff.  McGriff hit like a fool those two months, and the Braves won 104 games, just beating out the Giants, who finished with 103 wins. 

None of the prospects the Padres got ever really amounted to much.

Sometimes you have to throw caution to the wind and go for it.  With the pitching the Giants have now, it might be the time for the Giants to do just that.

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Here’s a short list of the minor league super-prospects that have been on my radar (and a lot of other people’s) in a big way.

Buster Posey, C Giants.  After 45 AAA games, Buster is hitting .343 with a .973 OPS.  My feeling is that he needs another fifteen games at AAA, at which point, if he’s still has an OPS of at least .950, it’s time to call him up. 

By that time, he won’t be a super-two for arbitration purposes, and given the Giants’ pathetic offense this year (currently 3rd worst in the NL in terms of runs scored—the Giants have four starters with ERAs in the NL’s top sixteen, and they’re only one game above .500), there just won’t be any reason to keep him in the minors any longer.

Mike Stanton, CF Marlins.  Stanton has slumped a little in the last ten games, so his OPS in AA ball is now only 1.164.  I’m kind of amazed that the Marlins haven’t promoted him to AAA.  He has nothing left to prove in the AA Southern League, and the Marlins clearly won’t call him up until there’s no possibility of super-two status, so why not let him terrorize AAA pitchers for a little while? 

Seeing new pitchers at the minor’s highest level can’t hurt Stanton’s development.  Most likely, the Fish have decided to jump him to the majors from AA ball once he can’t be a super-two.

Stephen Strasburg, RHP Nationals. Everyone knows that Strasburg is ready, and the speculation has been entirely on whether he will be called up to start in Washington on June 4 or if the Nats will keep him at AAA Syracuse a couple of weeks longer.

Strasburg apparently has a clause in his contract that limits him to 100 major league innings pitched this year. If Strasburg is called up for a June 4 start, the Nats will probably have to shut him down in September to fulfill this contract term.

Of course, I’d call Strasburg up for the June 4 start.  The Nationals are still theoretically in the NL East race, and if they are still in the race come September, I’d bet dollars to donuts that Strasburg would agree to waive the 100 IP limit. 

It’s hard to tell a young pitcher he can’t pitch when his team is in a pennant race.  As soon as the Nats are eliminated, then you shut him down.

Aroldis Chapman, LHP Reds. He’s definitely not ready for a promotion yet. He’s pitching well for the AAA Louisville Bats after eight starts, with a 3.98 ERA and a line of 40.2 IP, 39 hits, four HRs, 24 walks allowed, and 48 strikeouts. The high walks total indicates he doesn’t have major league command yet, and I’d leave him at AAA until he finds it (or at least until September call-ups, if he doesn’t.)

Even if the Reds have injuries in their starting rotation, right now both Sam LeCure and Matt Maloney look more deserving of a call-up than Chapman. In fact, a fourth Bats’ starter, 23 year old Travis Wood, has pitched as well as Chapman so far this season.  Leave Chapman in the minors long enough until he’s really ready when the Reds call him up.

Carlos Santana, C Indians.  Santana is absolutely ready, hitting .313 with a 1.020 OPS in the pitcher-friendly AAA International League.  Obviously, the Tribe is waiting to call him up only once he won’t be a super-two, but since Santana is already 24 years old (and had a great year at AA in 2009), it’s absolutely time to get his major league career started.

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