Minor League Notes, October 8, 2010

I'm not in the right mental place today to write a big extensive thematic blog post, so I'll just throw some random thoughts together.

**Some further thoughts on yesterday's young pitcher post. Community Member Slurve pointed out that points 2 and 3 seem to conflict, that according to point 2 each pitcher has to be treated as an individual, but according to point 3 I think pitchers need extensive time at each level. I can see the tension here, but point 3 does mention that there are exceptions. A particularly advanced prospect, someone who is almost a finished product, can be advanced more rapidly than the ideal timetable laid out in point 3.
     I certainly didn't mean that someone like Strasburg needed more minor league time. Even Zack Greinke was not truly rushed in my view; I saw one of his last starts at Omaha before he was promoted to the majors, and he was so far ahead of the hitters mentally that he had nothing more to learn in Triple-A. In my mind, point 3 is sort of the "ideal timetable," but each pitcher should still be evaluated on his own merits. The point is risk mitigation. Few pitchers suffer from too much minor league time, but many suffer from too little.

**On the same post, community member blackoutyears asked me what I thought about the Rangers and other teams who consider "stress innings" more important than pure pitch counts. I think we need to see how that works out in practice, but I do think the concept is theoretically sound, in the sense that not all innings, or all pitches, are equal in terms of the stress they put on the body.

**Looking over the Young Player Reviews for the playoff teams, I don't think I realized how stacked the Reds are in young talent until I actually sat down and wrote the piece.

**The Baseball America Eastern League prospect list....Very interesting, but I think I would have picked Eric Thames over Kirk Nieuwenhuis, and where is Zach Stewart? I'd take him over Romine at least.