Subscribers can read scouting reports on him in those two lists.

http://www.baseballamerica.com/online/features/05top10s/padres.html
http://www.baseballamerica.com/online/prospects/features/263372.html

It’s a shame he got hurt, I really thought he was gonna be a great pitcher. Nice to see him back.

I played baseball with and against him when we were younger until he moved from Chicago to Hammond. He’s taken a full two years to really come back from TJ surgery, but his velocity is up in the low-to-mid 90s again, so hopefully he can bounce back from his first start and stick in the rotation.

At some point (as in, once I figure out why the .VOB file isn’t cooperating with me), I’ll have some video footage of him (and me hitting a ball to the wall off him) from when we were 8 years old. It adds nothing of any real value to the discussion; I just think it’s pretty cool to watch. I’ll post a link to it here once I get the technology issues hammered out. Even when we were kids he threw really, really hard.

So here’s one half inning of Cesar pitching from 17 years ago (makes me feel old!).

First batter he faced was the ninth place hitter, and you can tell he was slowing the pitches down because he would strike the guy out anyway. It’s actually pretty impressive. I was the second batter, and as I explained in the description, I was actually safe at second because the guy dropped the ball (the umpire – the Bill Swerski wannabe in the Payton jersey – was the father of a kid on Cesar’s team. Real blatant cheating going on throughout. I digress). After that play, I did a quick edit. I cut out the mother of one of my friends up on the bleachers screaming at the umpire. Felt it wasn’t really ok to keep that in. The rest is as is.

My apologies for the amateur camera work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThemTHhJJbA