I fully agree with toonster. What there is are two different camps. Camp 1 is hyping Lyles as being the next best thing since sliced bread.

Camp 2 isn’t in the middle ground saying he’s not that good, but he’s good. Camp 2 is closer to saying Camp 1 is a bunch of screaming lunatics for thinking Lyles is significantly better than last year.

When you have no middle ground, no base of support in the middle, you can be overhyped and undervalued. It means that there is a group that hypes Lyles more than he deserves, and a group that detracts from Lyles more than is appropriate, but no one in the middle. Perfect sense to me.

ba is conservative o their speed

If a guy throws a 4-seamer and a 2-seamer, there’s going to be a fairly big discrepancy. Here’s a quote from Lyles mid-season:

I’m kind of surprised by the strikeout totals, but since I’ve gotten into pro ball, my velocity has really gone up

If he was written up as 88-90 by BA before last year’s draft, 88-91 wouldn’t be “really up” by anyone’s standard. I’m thinking someone was looking at a game where he threw a lot of 2-seamers (guys do work on specific pitches at low-A). I’m sure this is what people were seeing with Seaton, as well. Guys don’t lose that much velocity.

Lyles consistently cruises in the low 90s with his fastball, and he has begun to improve his curveball and develop a changeup, which gives him a full arsenal of pitches.

From Callis:

Lyles’ fastball sat in the high 80s for much of last spring, but he pitched at 90-96 mph in his debut and has shown similar velocity this year.

More than pitching up, Lyles learned to pitch inside this season and work both sides of the plate. That gets batters out at any level, not just low-A. He’s not going to be able to strike guys out at a high clip in the upper levels unless he continues to improve his secondaries. But, he just finished his first full season at low-A, so he still has time. The Astros are open to allowing pitchers from last year’s Lexington squad to skip Lancaster and start ’10 at Corpus. I imagine if they feel his secondaries are far enough along, he could be one of the ones in the Texas League.

My appreciation for PP is fair to middling, but there’s no doubt in my mind that their analysis is pretty clearly superior to what you get from all but a select few commenters here.

SenorGato is simply saying that, to dismiss a righty with his current profile, while supporting a lefty, isn’t necessarily fair. I mean, there is a tendency to give the “soft-tossing” lefty (not that 89-91 on a 2 seamer, and higher on a 4 seamer is exactly soft-tossing) the benefit of the doubt moreso than the righty version.

That said, Lyles has more projectability than Minor, both of whom I like.

could be wrong on what SenorGato is saying, though.