Thurs. 9/19: Shuckers Try and Stave Off Elimination; Sounds Matinee

[Joseph Zarr]

@wiguy94:

[wiguy94]

20 minutes ago, Joseph Zarr said:

@wiguy94:

Criminal that he was still in A ball. If he was in the Padres system he would have been in AA a month ago.

[Joseph Zarr]

9 hours ago, wiguy94 said:

Criminal that he was still in A ball. If he was in the Padres system he would have been in AA a month ago.

It was just really weird. It was just so obvious he, in the very least, needed to be given the High-A challenge. With Clemmey, the walk issues were a real thing. Facing Low-A hitters made sense as he hadn't really found consistency in and around the zone - we saw this to a 'T' in the Mudcats' Game 1. With Sykora? My goodness. It was such an overmatch. Just a really strange decisions within the Nationals' org to keep him in Low-A the entire season. I'm sure they had their reasons (and, we are probably uninformed here?) but from an outside observer it was just an odd approach from the jump. Here he is discussing his early season after the Nationals kept him in extended spring training until May 1st:

Quote

“I don’t know why I had to stay so long in extended, but that is how it’s done for most high school arms, so I still had to prove myself,” Sykora said. “It being my first year, I wanted to get out of the (Florida) complex as quickly as possible.

This was a great (short but sweet) little read, btw, recently in Baseball America (subscription pay wall):

Sykora Article from Late August