Christmas Present

John, your description sounds like a grade B to me, but let's not quibble. I think too often people get hung up on a particular letter grade or a particular numerical ranking of a prospect, as if a single mark now could somehow describe the range of probabilites in a baseball career -- it can't. Maybe he'll make it, and if he does maybe he'll look like a grade B at times and a grade B+ at other times. Thanks for your take!

But, I am not sure if he will put it together.  Granted he has played in some hitter-friendly leagues, but I am concerned about his propensity to give up the long ball and his SLG% against is not where you want it to be.  His G/F is good, but considering that his pitches can be driven, he will need to induce more ground balls (or miss more bats) to succeed

I'm part of the Volquez apologist's. I don't think he's destined for greatness. I just know he's got great stuff. The kid doesn't have a clue of how to pitch yet.

I thought he was very predictable with his pitching mix at the major league level.

When you've got a Young guy who throws 95 with decent control for his age I can understand MLB guys wanting to see him. I think they put a lot of pressure on him.

My belief is that the good ones make it regardless of what pressure is put on them. If you are going to be a baseball player you eventually need to come to grips with failure.

As a real life Rockies fan, I've always thought we babied our prospects far too much.

I disagreed with John in that I liked Volquez's changeup an awful lot. This isn't the first time a young guy's been hit hard at 21 years of age.

I think he should repeat AA or perhaps pitch in AAA. I wouldn't call him back to the Majors untill he's dominating AA.

I think B is a very good grade. I think he's young enough that you could grade him a B+ on potential and still sleep at night.  

cabrera (p balt) be graded..

mlb batters have seen it all before and a guy with one solid, above average pitch and overall semi-so-so control, meaning they can throw stikes but can't consistently locate, go somewhere below the  "get eaten alive" category..

may or may not improve from there upon regular mlb duty.

doesn't seem like an exception...

c+  

I guess the reason I'm excited for Volquez aside from the stuff is that I don't see him walking a lot of people at high A or AA. Remember he's a pretty young guy.

I would like to see Volquez strike more guys out. However, I think that's going to change in the next 2 years.

If anything, I think Volquez throws too many hittable strikes and I think his sequence is too predictable.

I think the key to his success as pitcher is his slider or breaking ball or whatever he's throwing. I love the fastball, like the change.

He must command the slider. If he can throw all 3 pitches he's going to start striking guys out at a much higher rate. Combine that with the reasonable walk totals and you have yourself a very nice pitcher.

C- here.....nothing special.

I like Volquez and saw him in Frisco once last year.  He threw hard but also labored to throw strikes and at times even to miss bats.  Anyone who can throw 95 with movement has possiblities, but if they don't slow him down a bit and let him perform well in AA before giving him the opportunity to do the same at AAA he could really flame out.  Possiblities but not yet high probablities of developing into a star is what you define as a B.  That is Volquez to me right now.

I don't think giving Volquez a B grade is disrespecting his raw talent whatsoever.  If Volquez puts it together and becomes an Ace or a #2, I don't think critics will go back and look at Sickels' grade as an instance where he was short changing his talent.  

I have been reading John's books since 1997 and B grade, tools laden prospects have always drawn my attention.  

Everybody here reads Baseball America for further analysis, let the traditional scouting publication tell us about Volquez's ceiling based on his physical attributes.

Sickels has plenty of respect for the traditional scouting side of evaluation, but he's always leaned towards the performance aspect as the bottom line.  John's tough grading scale is the reason why I keep purchasing his books.  When in doubt, John should go back to his sabermetric roots and tell it like it is.  

love the off-the-cuff analysis, and looking forward to the book.

you do terrific work...

and Merry Christmas!

From that picture of him, I would bet money his shoulder blows before he ever sees the show.  

Look up "bad mechanics" in the dictionary and you'll see that picture, wow.  

maybe I should get my own dictionary

http://www.calleaguers.com/VolquezEdison05.html

Volquez has a 2004 report on the site as well. Apparently his stuff did make a big leap from '04 to '05.

For what it's worth, something interesting happened to the Frisco pitchers last summer.  After pitching coach Steve Luebber was let go in the middle of the season, they came under the leadership of Rangers minor league pitching coordinator Rick Adair (formerly of the Braves and Blue Jays orgs) and  were essentially ordered to throw almost nothing but fastballs.  So from about mid-July on, all of them were throwing fastballs about 90% of the time.  One night, Diamond threw something like 88 fastballs out of 90 pitches.   This trend wasn't lost on the Texas League.