Sleeper Alert Analysis, Part One
by John Sickels on Jun 23, 2009 5:24 PM EDT
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In the Baseball Prospect Book each year I put Sleeper Alert tags on players who look like possible "come out of nowhere" prospects, guys who haven't received a lot of mainstream attention yet but who could shortly do so. There were 44 such players in the 2009 book, which sounds like a lot until you remember that the book had 1,117 players in it.
I want to review these 44 players and take a look at how they are currently doing. Here are the first 14, alphabetically.
Manny Banuelos, LHP, Yankees
18 year old Mexican lefty, is 5-3, 2.51 with a 58/14 K/BB in 61 innings for Class A Charleston, 47 hits allowed. Looks like a good call so far. Undersized at 5-10, 160, but has a live arm.
Anthony Bass, RHP, Padres
21 years old, 6-3, 2.14 with a 53/24 K/BB in 71 innings for Class A Fort Wayne, 64 hits allowed. Pitching well thus far though would like to see improvement in his strikeout rate. Fifth round pick last year out of Wayne State in Michigan.
Joel Carreno, RHP, Blue Jays
22 years old, just began his year with short-season Auburn. Not enough data to know if this was a good call yet. Throws hard, but was at the same level last year and needs to prove something against better competition.
Dexter Carter, RHP, White Sox
22 years old, 3-2, 3.35 with a 94/20 K/BB in 78 innings for Class A Kannapolis, 75 hits allowed. Love the K/IP ratio. Drafted in the 13th round out of Old Dominion last year, he has good stuff but had severe control problems in college. Has turned that around as a pro, much more effective against the wooden bat. K/IP makes this look like a good call so far.
Jose Casilla, RHP, Giants
20 years old, just starting his season at short-season Salem-Keizer. Not enough data to know anything at this point. Throws hard and showed excellent control in rookie ball last year.
Richard Castillo
19 years old, 1-7, 4.00 with a 45/35 K/BB in 72 innings for Class A Palm Beach, 81 hits allowed. From Venezuela, uses a strong curve as his out pitch but his component ratios have been mediocre this year. He's young enough to improve obviously, but I don't count this as a sleeper success right now.
Simon Castro, RHP, Padres
21 years old, 4-4, 3.56 with a 69/21 K/BB in 68 innings for Class A Fort Wayne, 58 hits allowed. He throws quite hard and has been moderately successful this year; his ERA could easily be lower given these components. I'll count this as a conditional success so far.
Joseph Cruz, RHP, Rays
20 years old, 2-3, 3.22 with a 52/12 K/BB in 45 innings for Class A Bowling Green, 49 hits allowed. Hittable, but shows good control and has a strong K/IP ratio. I like him so far, just need to see the hits come down a bit.
Stephen Fife. RHP, Red Sox
22 years old, activated from extended spring training in late May, 0-2, 0.90 with a 19/1 K/BB in 20 innings for Class A Greenville, 12 hits allowed. Sample size is small but excellent; right now this looks like a good call.
David Francis, RHP, Braves
21 years old, 3-4, 3.28 with a 43/14 K/BB in 47 innings for Class A Rome, 50 hits allowed. Not bad, good K/BB ratio and a solid walk rate with good command, strikeouts OK, rather hittable.
Parker Frazier, RHP, Rockies
20 years old, 3-5, 5.50 with a 50/20 K/BB in 69 innings for Class A Asheville, 93 hits allowed. He doesn't walk a lot of guys, but has been much too hittable this year. He gets grounders with a 1.96 GO/AO, but I'm not impressed with the rest of it, and clearly a breakthrough is not in progress.
Austin Gallagher, 3B-1B, Dodgers
20 years old, hitting .262/.329/.350 in 54 games for the Class A Great Lakes Loons. Very undistinguished performance with lack of power.
Kennil Gomez, RHP, Rangers
21 years old, 2-6, 4.64 with a 75/36 K/BB in 74 innings for Class A Bakersfield, 82 hits allowed. Holding his own in the California League, good K/IP ratio, 1.98 GO/AO, needs to sharpen his command. Not exactly a big breakthrough, but not a failure either.
Jesus Guzman, 3B-1B, Giants
25 years old, hit .311/.360/.521 in 61 games for Triple-A Fresno, 1-for-10 in the majors. Much older than the other Sleeper Alert players, and more of a useful role player type than a young breakthrough guy.
Of these 14, the ones I'm really disappointed in are Frazier and Gallagher. The others I'm either very happy with, or still reserving judgment.
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Kennil Gomez
Good call. Bakersfield is loaded with pitching this year. A rotations of Gomez, Michael Main, Blake Beavan and Tim Murphy, plus an incredible bullpen.
Another sleeper to watch from that team is second baseman Matt Lawson. Pretty decent hitter with some pop, but defensively one of the most impressive second basemen I’ve seen in some time.
Matt Lawson
I agree, he’s the one player that has stood out on that team with his at bats and defense at 2nd.
Awaiting his arrival in SF: Jesse English
Yep
too bad Main got sick with Mono and Murphy has started to rebound after an awful start.
The 2009 Texas Rangers offense: sigh...
by Kinslerhomer on Jun 23, 2009 8:55 PM EDT up reply actions
Also
WTH does Zack Phillips have do to get the call to Frisco?
The 2009 Texas Rangers offense: sigh...
by Kinslerhomer on Jun 23, 2009 8:56 PM EDT up reply actions
Zach*
The 2009 Texas Rangers offense: sigh...
by Kinslerhomer on Jun 23, 2009 8:57 PM EDT up reply actions
He needs the 25-man roster pitchers to figure things out.
While I won’t say that Frisco is loaded with bullpen talent, there’s enough there that the Rangers won’t just start dropping guys (Diamond, Diaz, Strop, Garr, Laughter, Jones). The alternative to dropping them is promoting them.
The problem there is what’s going on with the Major League and AAA bullpens. Oklahoma City has a number of guys who could conceivably be short term solutions for the Major League bullpen but wouldn’t really enter into any 40-man conversations when the season is over (Corey, Ramirez, Gordon), a prospect (Madrigal) or two, while Willie Eyre rehabs.
Beau Vaughan and John Bannister are caught somewhere in between AA and AAA, and Dustin Nippert has been rehabbing with Frisco.
When Eyre and Nippert run out their rehab clocks (I believe both are on the 60-day DL), you could see some guys move around. Corey and Ramirez are decent candidates to be released at any given point in time as long as someone is more deserving of that spot. So far, no one in Frisco has had the success to warrant such a move.
That leaves Zach Phillips, Evan Reed, Ryan Falcon, and Corey Young to kick ass with their sub-2.00 ERAs in the California League.
by NoNameOnCard on Jun 24, 2009 3:19 AM EDT up reply actions
Phillips is actually starting now, and has had two dominant outings in a row. Seems his improved control is legit. He could be a months worth of good starts away from a promotion. That’s just my take on things, but the way Frisco is playing this year, might serve them well to move him up sooner rather than later.
I'm aware of this.
It doesn’t change the logjam that’s preventing his promotion.
by NoNameOnCard on Jun 24, 2009 10:55 AM EDT up reply actions
Oh, I was just sayin’. You sound like you know a lot more about the Rangers farm system than I do. What are your thoughts on Moreland?
Meh.
Long swing; goes back and forth between being patient and impatient; power outage since his promotion to AA. One heck of an arm from RF. Seems to hit into a DP every time there’s a guy on 1B for him.
He’s a borderline guy for me in RF. He hasn’t butchered anything, but I haven’t seen him really go after anything either (lack of chances for great plays). His range is probably slightly below average. He could stick there, but he might be destined to pull 1B duty or DH, both of which would waste his arm.
If he’s gonna get to the bigs, he needs that power to show up.
by NoNameOnCard on Jun 24, 2009 5:01 PM EDT up reply actions
Joel Carreno
His start to the season was delayed because of visa issues.
The Blue Jays have not been very aggressive with him despite strong performance and BA’s OK scouting report on his stuff.
Dexter Carter
Great call on this kid in my opinion. The kid can flat out throw! He obviously needs to work on his control a bit, but I think we are looking at a future #2 – #3 guy in Carter. Plus, The WhiteSox don’t have that much depth, so with Carter and my man Dan Hudson, things might be looking up.
Brilliant article idea John
I love it, If you don’t get too burned out on the idea of going through this year’s sleeper alerts I would love to see the analysis from the last couple of years. I know that often in the book you say “I had this guy pegged as a sleeper last year” but it would be really interesting to see them all at once and see which players sprung forward and which ones faded away
Don't believe the lies Bill!!!! look at the sparkly ERA!!! Sparkly, Sparkly!!! - McCovey Chronicles
idea
Yeah, I think I’m going to do that. Not all at once though.
by John Sickels on Jun 25, 2009 9:18 AM EDT up reply actions
Parker Frazier
What you’re missing here, John, is that Asheville (from best I can tell) has a poor infield defense and a catcher (Jordan Pacheco) who’s a converted second baseman and is still learning the position. Any pitcher can look bad with a bad defense behind him, but that’s especially true for a pitcher who relies on pitching to contact. Put a major league defense behind him, and I think he’ll be fine.
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