Minor League Ball Gameday, July 11

Good morning prospect watchers. Here are the items on the agenda for today.

***Tomorrow's Prospect of the Day will be Sonny Gray of the Oakland Athletics. I should also have Futures Game Roster Reviews for you, plus a look at who I would have personally picked for the game. Generally I think the rosters were done well but there were some changes I would have made.

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

***The Houston Astros promoted right-hander Jarred Cosart to the major league roster today. He had a 3.29 ERA with a 93/50 K/BB in 93 innings for Triple-A Oklahoma City, with a 2.48 GO/AO ratio and 74 hits allowed. The K/IP and hit rates are quite strong, especially in combination with his heavy ground ball tendency, but his walk rate remains quite high and command will likely be a problem in the majors. The stuff should be fun to watch though. I wrote a Prospect of the Day article for Cosart back in late May and the analysis still stands.

***Texas Rangers second base prospect Ryan Rua hit two more homers last night, giving him 28 on the season with an overall .260/.366/.632 line in 81 games for Low-A Hickory. A 17th round pick from Lake Erie College in 2011, Rua wasn't really on the radar as anything more than an organization player pre-season. He's old for the league at age 23 and I want to see him against better competition before getting excited.

***Baltimore Orioles Cuban import outfielder Henry Urrutia went 5-for-5 yesterday for Triple-A Norfolk. He's hit .365/.411/.481 in 13 games since being promoted from Double-A and is hitting .365/.429/.536 overall on the season in 65 games combined between the two levels. He's already 26 years old, so at his point I'm not sure what Triple-A pitching is going to teach him. Cultural assimilation is probably as important for him right now as anything else. It seems likely to me that we'll see him in the majors later this year.

***Seattle Mariners prospect Tyler Olson threw a nine-inning complete game one-hit shutout for the Everett AquaSox in the Northwest League yesterday, fanning 10. A seventh-round pick out of Gonzaga this year, he has a 3.54 ERA with a 26/9 K/BB in his first 28 professional innings. He went 9-4, 2.48 with a 91/31 K/BB in 102 innings for Gonzaga this spring. Olson doesn't throw hard but is polished and should continue to perform well at the lower levels, as college-trained finesse lefties often do.

***Craig Goldstein has more on Urrutia here.

***Jeff Sullivan at Fangraphs has a good article about how pitchers are changing their pitch sequences to Yasiel Puig in an attempt to slow him down. Will he counter-adjust?