Minor League Ball Gameday, May 13

Good afternoon prospect watchers. Let's get right down to business.

***Yesterday's Minor League Ball Gameday thread.

***Cardinals super-prospect Oscar Taveras hurt his ankle yesterday. X-Rays were negative but he'll be out a few days.

***Toronto Blue Jays prospect Sean Nolin, a significant sleeper prospect, threw six shutout innings in his second start for Double-A New Hampshire yesterday and now has an 11/3 K/BB in nine innings since being activated from extended spring training.

***Tampa Bay Rays prospect Taylor Guerrieri threw five shutout innings for Bowling Green, fanning 10. He now has a 2.00 ERA with a 25/6 K/BB in 27 innings with an outstanding 3.64 GO/AO ratio. Doesn't "Taylor Guerrieri" sound like he should be a celebrity chef on the Food Network?

***Boston Red Sox prospect Anthony Ranaudo threw six shutout innings for Double-A Portland yesterday. David Jay was there and posted this report in yesterday's comment thread:

Fastball mostly read 91-93 on the two guns I was watching over shoulders. Hit 95 once or twice, but those were on pitches he totally overthrew and missed the zone a lot. The four-seamer had nice run on it. His breaking ball was sloppy all day. A few nice tight sliders, but most of them I honestly couldn't tell if they were supposed to be sliders or curves (that's a combination of a statement about my pitch recognition out of his hand and the low quality of the pitches.) Whatever they were, they were loopy and the break was VERY early. I don't know that he got more than 5 swings and misses on the breaking stuff. Definitely a step up from where he was last year, but I was expecting to see better from him - even in a scoreless performance.

***I linked to this Fake Teams article that mentions New York Yankees prospect Mason Williams yesterday, but it is definitely worth a look if you didn't read it the first time. Jason Hunt links back to this Trentonion piece with scout notes about Yankees prospects, Williams most notably, with this comment from a scout about Mason standing out: "He didn’t run anything out. He trots down the line almost every at-bat. Every groundball, you look (at your stop watch), and you’re like ‘I can’t get a good time off this because he doesn’t run.’" Scouts have been complaining about Williams not hustling for about a year. Given that the Yankees have been on him about that since last summer, I really have to wonder what is going on.

***The Indians sent Lonnie Chisenhall to the minors. He's a good case to study, since his minor league performance record never really matched the glowing scouting reports. The assumption was that the numbers would eventually catch up with his perceived level of talent, but that hasn't happened.

***Burch Smith of the San Diego Padres will be Prospect of the Day tomorrow.

***Royals Review rounds up some early Mock draft picks for Kansas City. My next big project in progress is a Mock first round. They mentioned my Kevin Ziomek mock pick but that was many weeks ago after he got off to a fast start and shot up draft boards. KZ is much more of a second or third round type at this point. The new version will have someone else.

***Today's slate of minor league games.