Weekend Recap and the Week Ahead – 4/20

Pitching Spotlight: RHP Zach Eflin – 8.0 IP 3 H 0 ER 1 BB 5 K Outside of the incredible stat line I want to talk about the reason for Eflin’s success so far which is his ability to generate ground balls.  Over the course of his Sunday start Eflin threw a ton of strikes especially … Read more

Early Season MiLB Mailbag

Let’s jump right into the mailbag. Rei De Bastoni 1 – Why are command and control considered separate tools? Isn’t it impossible to have better command within the strike zone than ability to throw strikes in general? 2 – For pitch sequencing, is it enough that either the pitcher or the catcher has a good … Read more

2015 Minor League Predictions

I have had the draft for this post around for a while and keep forgetting to publish it so I get to cheat a little but with a week of data that could be either instructive or misleading.  Anyway I think predictions are fun to think about, and so I viewed making this with more … Read more

Extended Spring Training Roster

Jim Peyton has posted up the first Extended Spring Training roster for the Phillies.  Before getting into the specific players, it looks like the Phillies have brought over a lot of latin players (16 Dominican Republic, 22 Venezuela, 2 Panamá, 2  Columbia, 1 Mexico).  The number of players from Venezuela is bit surprising and I … Read more

Ricardo Pinto’s strong start has shades of Yoel Mecias

This winter Ricardo Pinto turned a few heads with some high rankings on Phillies top prospect lists.   He had just made his stateside debut in Williamsport on a team that does not get a ton of eyes.  On first glance Pinto is not physically what you would expect from a good starting pitcher prospect … Read more

Looking for your Mailbag Questions

I have been trying to find things to say about 5 games of minor leagues, but we are still too early to take anything but small sample size observations of things that look slightly different (like Ben Badler’s report that Windle’s velocity was up this season).  So with that I will be taking all of … Read more

2015 Lakewood Preview/Guide

Team Page Overview: The BlueClaws are far from the most stacked team in the system, the only top 10 prospects are defensive minded Deivi Grullon and Carlos Tocci.  The pitching staff is fairly unheralded, but features a pair of very interesting Latin arms in Ricardo Pinto and Elniery Garcia that join a pair of returning … Read more

In Person Prospect Watch – Lehigh Valley 4/11/15

As I will do 20+ times this season, I had the opportunity to see my hometown IronPigs first hand last night. While the roster is filled with mostly veteran talent, there were a few prospects to keep an eye on. So, in between Walking Tacos and a box of Rivets, here’s are my impressions: Severino … Read more