Minor League Ball Morning Report: Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Hello everyone and welcome to the Minor League Ball Morning Report for Wednesday, June 27th, 2018. Here are a few tidbits from yesterday.

****Milwaukee Brewers right-hander Freddy Peralta was outstanding yesterday, giving up just one hit and one walk with zero runs allowed over seven innings against the Kansas City Royals, striking out 10. He now has a 1.59 ERA in 22.2 innings with a 35/9 K/BB and seven hits allowed.

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****Kyle Glaser at Baseball America had a highly-informative chat yesterday. This stood out in regards to Cleveland Indians prospect Francisco Mejia:

But what’s changed is his defense behind the plate has really, really stalled, to the point evaluators prefer Eric Haase as a catcher. Mejia can hit enough to play anywhere, but it just means he’s going to need some time learning a new defensive position, which delays his ETA a bit.

This is certainly the current industry buzz but the actual numbers don’t quite match up with what everyone is saying. He’s thrown out 38% of runners this year and has played errorless ball behind the plate, both numbers good obviously. On the other hand, his passed ball rate is up, with five PBs in 288 innings compared to seven in 614 last season and 6/761 in 2016.

As for Eric Haase, he’s nailed 50% of runners this year with three errors and six passed balls in 363 innings. He’s clearly better than Mejia at controlling the running game but the other aspects of his catching aren’t much different.

Sample size is a peril, of course. My interpretation of the numbers is that Haase is more polished, especially with this throwing, but since he’s three years older than Mejia that’s not exactly a huge surprise. While the increase in passed balls is noted, it may not really mean anything given the sample size. Even so, Mejia’s numbers when viewed as a whole are not those of a butcher by any means, especially given his age.

That’s all on paper. Of course, to fully evaluate the situation we’d need day-to-day video and reports from scouts, coaches and his manager.

The Indians have that information, we don’t.

****More highlights can be found in yesterday’s Gameday thread.