Morning Notes, May 13, 2010

Morning Notes, May 13, 2010

**After some consideration, I've decided to do the Community Mock Draft again this year. I will have full details about the Mock Draft tomorrow and we will start recruiting scouting directors shortly.

**Coming up later today: Prospect Retro for Shin-Soo Choo. Retros for Kevin Youkilis  and Martin Prado are also on the schedule shortly.

**Marlins outfield prospect Michael Stanton continues his amazing tear at Double-A Jacksonville, hitting .353 with five homers and 12 walks in his last 10 games. He's now hitting .349/.493/.844 on the season, with 31 walks and 33 strikeouts in 109 at-bats. His strikeout rate remains high, but his walk rate is keeping pace and he's clearly made adjustments with the strike zone. Everyone is aware of Stanton's talent, but I did receive some interesting information from an "inside source" a few days ago praising Stanton's work ethic and intelligence, factors which have received less attention than his on-field talents. It will be interesting to see how quickly the Marlins move him and if he gets promoted to Triple-A soon.

**Another young hitter making progress (though not to Stanton's extent) is Nick Weglarz of the Cleveland Indians, currently hitting .284/.385/.532 for Double-A Akron, with 18 walks and 23 strikeouts in 109 at-bats. He's been in a batting average slump of late with a .225 mark in his last ten games, but is still showing power with five doubles and two homers in that period of time. I don't think he will ever be a big batting average guy, but his power and patience are intriguing, and his production is up over last year, granted he's repeating the level. That's not deadly at age 22, although given his "old player" skill set, he might not have a normal growth curve. He's also showing a noticeable platoon power split, with a .603 SLG against right-handers but just .389 against lefties.

**Question on the minds of Twins fans entering 2010: can Ben Revere hit .300+ and get on base against better pitching, or will his lack of power preclude such production? Answer is hazy thus far: he's hitting .276/.361/.305 for Double-A New Britain. He's swiped 11 bases in 15 attempts. As usual, he's making good contact with just 16 whiffs in 105 at-bats, but he's only hit three doubles thus far, giving him a frighteningly low Isolated Power reading of .029.  However, while he's not hitting .300 right now, .276 isn't far off and his ability to make contact remains intact. At this point I'm agnostic about Revere; i'm not going to conclude anything either way based on this data.

**The Pirates took some flack for selecting catcher Tony Sanchez in the first round last year, but so far it looks like a nice pick, at least based on his .311/.419/.509 performance in the pitching-oriented Florida State League. He's drawn 18 walks against 27 strikeouts in 106 at-bats. The Ks are a tad higher than ideal, but he's taking the passes to go with them at least. His defense, on the other hand, has been weaker than the hitting: he's caught just four of 33 runners trying to steal on him, for a mere 12% caught stealing percentage. There is more to catching than throwing out runners, of course, and his other defensive skills and leadership draw praise. He'll need to sharpen up the throwing apparently.