CheeseheadInQC

I think the home run power that Boeve displayed in the ACL caused a lot of people to move him up (me included, I think I had him 40th immediately after the draft) because every bit of power he showed gave his profile a little more margin for error. I fully expected him to be great in the ACL. Advanced college bats with his profile should be great in the ACL, especially with how great the league was for offense this year. It was the method that was surprising. The question is, is that sustainable against better competition? The thing about Black is that while he is hardly a prototypical power hitter, he gets to the power he does have with such stunning regularity that it doesn't matter. The guy had the third best ISO of any Brewers minor leaguer with at least 200 plate appearances last season, trailing only Clarke and Hiura. The competition level in the ACL simply isn't sufficient to convince me that Boeve is going to be able to do it long term, at least not enough to put him before my third tier drop at 13. Similarly, if you believe Brown's the .788 guy from the stretch pre-injury, then he was one of the best offensive shortstops in the Midwest League. If you think he is closer to the totality of his season, then he was simply OK. I'm kind of in the wait and see camp on both, but Brown plays shortstop. That's what bumped him up to the higher tier for me.

I ended up with Brown 13th, but I think I had him 9th in an earlier version I lost. I must have just gone for youth in the final one (rest of that tier, including Knoth at 8, were all teens for a sizable chunk of the year). His year was so disjointed with the injuries that I just don’t know that there was enough there to bump him up a tier or even to the definite top of that one like Knoth (I am a sucker for upside pitching). The 9-13 spots, I had them basically even.

Looking at the votes (note, all these numbers are really unofficial, just me doing rough calculations by hand): 1. You want clear early tier breaks, we've got clear early tier breaks. If my calculations are correct, 19/27 votes had the same top 4 in some order and 18/27 had the same top 7 in some order. Guys other than the big 4 who had multiple top-4 votes: Gasser had five and Wilken had two. Guys outside the top 7 who had multiple top 7 votes: Lara (3), Pratt (3), Brown (2). 2. No one else was really that close to cracking the top 20, but Areinamo and Clarke appear to be the top ones who missed. 3. I counted 42 different players getting votes 4. The "We Like You But We Don't Love You" award goes to Shane Smith, who made four ballots but always in the 20th position. Among the guys who didn't get a vote, in my opinion: Best hitting prospect: Hendry Mendez Most surprising they didn't get a vote (other than above) among hitters: Isaac Collins, Pedro Ibarguen Best pitching prospects: Yerlin Rodriguez, Tyler Woessner Most surprising they didn't get a vote among pitchers: Bishop Letson Overall: Underrated: I can understand the reasons, but I'm a bit surprised Aquino didn't get more support Overrated: He performed really well, and I ranked him in my top 20 because of it, but I still can't shake the thought that we could easily be talking about Boeve being the seventh best prospect from his draft class this time next year. Hopefully if that is the case, it is just because Wilken, Knoth, Pratt, Bitonti, Birchard and one of the other high school pitchers all really broke out.

Not counting chickens, but based on some of the results so far, it feels like they might have already beaten the seventh and eighth best teams in the conference. And five of the remaining games are against teams I would not put in the top six. I don't know that this is a really good Badger team, but the Big Ten depth seems like it is down this year.

Never doubt the Brewers JUCO pitching scouting.

Calzadilla really was this year’s Pablo Garabitos, holding a struggling pitching staff together from the bullpen.

I probably should have spent a bit more time on Wood once he showed up in the research. I wanted a second item to pair with the Cornielle one so I decided to see how common it was for a hitter's profile to be as balanced as Areinamo's is. Wood showing up was a last-minute surprise. The thing is, I am completely convinced that this is the best profile for Areinamo. He seems to have the best success when he is just spraying line drives all over the field. I'm not convinced it is the best profile for Wood, in part because Wood was never really that guy so much as he averaged out to be it. While he wasn't extreme in either stop, neither his individual time in Carolina nor Wisconsin would have qualified. In Carolina he favored the pull side more and was hitting more fly balls. In Wisconsin, he hit grounders and was balanced pull vs. opposite field. To tie the two together, a similar thing happened to Areinamo last year after his promotion. His ground ball rate jumped and his extra base power disappeared. This year, Areinamo was back to his Complex League batted ball metrics. Hopefully Wood can rediscover his Carolina power next season. He makes enough contact, he just has to get back to a place where more of that contact is quality.

Jackson ChourioJeferson QueroJacob MisiorowskiTyler BlackCarlos F RodriguezBrock WilkenRobert GasserJosh KnothYophery RodriguezLuis LaraCooper PrattLuke AdamsEric Brown JrJadher AreinamoLogan HendersonMike BoevePatricio AquinoAlexander CornielleBradley BlalockShane Smith Lots of really interesting prospects here and pretty far down the list. Notes: 1. Wilken is in the tier with the two pitchers rather than vaulting above them simply because I'm holding off until pitchers have a chance to adjust to him. He moved up so fast because of his stellar play that that really never happened. 2. O'Rae and Baez were considered for the top 20, but the fact that offensive numbers were so absurd in the ACL (I don't think Galindez pitching better in Carolina was a fluke) hurt both in my eyes. Plus, I worry that O'Rae's walk totals are likely to drop as he moves up the ladder because the number of really wild pitchers will keep dropping, and he hasn't thus far had the ability to consistently showcase doubles power like Areinamo has. 3. The system flattens out after the top 7, but there are more than 50 players here that I am legitimately intrigued by. 4. Like I said in the other thread, I gave a fair amount of consideration to Luiyin Alastre, who came a few extra base hits away from reaching the 15/10/.1 marks I like to look at (less than 15% strikeout rate, more than 10% walk rate and a .1 or better ISO.

Didn’t take long for Clarke to go deep for the first time.

It's been a while. I had two longer blogs lost halfway through to computer crashes. One was moot by the time I had time to sit down and write long-form again. I still plan to write the other at some point in the offseason, but that 1,000+ word meandering treatise on how the 2022 DSL starters fared in 2023 will wait for another day. I decided to churn out one I could get done in one sitting now, though, to avoid computer issues. So here are two more stats that I (and perhaps only I) find interesting. No Pulling Your Leg Hitters in baseball tend to like to pull the ball. Turning on pitches produces a sizeable percentage of the home runs. No Brewers major league starting pitcher has more balls hit to the opposite field than pulled. Indeed, their with one exception, all of their pull rates fell in a narrow band between 41 and 46 percent (Julio Teheran, with 36.2%, was the outlier, although more because of a really high percentage of balls hit to center than an abnormal amount going the other way). Even among relievers, only Trevor Megill had more balls hit the opposite way off him than pulled. The spread among minor leaguers was wider, with 23 of the 25 pitchers with double digit starts for the Brewers in the minors this season ending up with pull rates between 40 and 51%. The two outliers each had more balls taken the other way than pulled. You can probably guess one. It is going to be tough for a lot of A-ballers to turn on pitches against someone who throws as fast as (and has as electric of stuff as) Jacob Misiorowski. Misiorowski didn't have the lowest pull rate in the system, though. That honor went to Alexander Cornielle at 34.7%, adding another layer of statistical weirdness for the guy who I think it is fair to say had the best disappointing season in the Brewers' system. On one hand, Cornielle's season felt underwhelming coming off his 2022 breakthrough. He posted a 4.55 ERA and never pitched a AA inning after looking like he had an outside shot to start there with his strong 2022 finish. On the other hand, among those 25 Brewers minor league starters, Cornielle was tied for third in FIP, only behind the aforementioned Misiorowski and a prospect who spent the whole season pitching arguably a level below where he should have been (Logan Henderson). One thing that Cornielle did well was limit home runs, which might be partly because of the difficulty batters had pulling the ball off him. I don't have the data or processing capacity to say this with certainty. Anecdotally, however, 10 of the 12 minor league starting pitchers across all teams and levels who had pull rates below 35% also had home run rates below 10%, (Side note: one of the two exceptions was the weird case of Kyle Barraclough, who has logged big league bullpen innings most years since 2015. After not starting more than a single game in any year since he was in rookie ball, the Red Sox threw him into their triple-A starting rotation with surprisingly good results and unsurprisingly weak peripherals). I have no idea if this will be repeatable for Cornielle or how much, if at all, it would help him if he reaches the big leagues one day, but it is an interesting stat to watch. Achieving Balance I've remarked a number of times at the remarkable balance of Jadher Areinamo's batted ball metrics. So, I decided to test out just how rare it is for hitters to have balanced profiles. I applied the following filters: more than 300 plate appearances; 40% or lower pull and opposite field rates, 40% or lower fly ball and ground ball rates, less than 10% swinging strike rate. What remained were six players, four of whom spent at least a chunk of time in triple-A, including former big leaguer Jake Lamb and Cardinals prospect Masyn Winn. Unsurprisingly, Areinamo was one of the two lower level guys. The other surprised me a bit, though. Matthew Wood. (Side note: I believe three big leaguers hit those marks if a quick scan was correct: Freddie Freeman, Andrew Benintendi and Gleyber Torres.

Since I've got about 20 players I feel like have a legitimate claim on spot No. 20, I decided to go with a random, off the board, call-your-shot type pick. I strongly considered Luiyin Alastre, but in the end, I'm going to request adding reliever Shane Smith. Also, did Myers sign a two-year minor league deal? And if not, wouldn't he be a minor league free agent at year's end if he isn't added to the 40-man?

I guess theoretically they have enough for next year if they go with two catchers at the top three levels, have Clarke catch more, and promote someone not really ready to back up Wood at Wisconsin, but man this looks like an area they will need to address in minor league free agency or the minor league phase of the Rule 5 draft.

I did a double take at this example because I know people who made that move in both directions. As for Counsell, I have no doubt Stearns would want him. Not sure Counsell would take the bait, though. If he does, I think it will be for reasons beyond Stearns.

I wonder what the early releases of about-to-be minor league free agents are about. Favor to the players to let them negotiate with other teams faster? Quirk in the rules where they have to bring guys back from the development list/60-day IL because those teams' seasons are over, but they still have to comply with the overall player limits because triple-A is still going on? Maybe my memory is short, but I can't remember this happening in past years.

I wonder if they move him to the bullpen next season. If the slider is still as good as the scouting reports said when they acquired him, maybe shorter stints would suit him.

I somehow forgot him as well as the most recent one but remembered the guy who won six years before I was born. I did get the Royals one, but looking afterward, Appier didn’t hit the mark by much.

Out of curiosity, does it seem like a technique issue, a concentration issue or a depth perception issue?

Missing from that article among others: Jeferson Quero

I’ve said before that Areinamo’s batted ball profile at Arizona last season was a clinic on how to succeed without a lot of home run power. Pure line drive hitter. Used all fields. Took walks and rarely struck out. Outside of the walks, all of that was still there. Really hopeful he can keep making good contact as he moves up the ladder.

It is going to be interesting to see how things carry over to Carolina next year. The hitting environment was such that for all of struggles, Daniel Corniel was an average pitcher for the league. I don’t know what to make of that.

I wonder if the solution is to have two franchise tags: the current one for QBs and one based on the top 25 salaries or so of all other players. That would at least raise the franchise tag salary of running backs if teams chose to use it. Teams might be less likely to commit $23 million on a one year deal to a running back than $13 million (and that would also give the team more incentive to do an extension rather than the tag).

I understand why it made sense roster composition wise, but I'm a little leery about them waiving Ford. Sometimes it seems like the big defensive linemen take a little while for everything to click into place, and he had done just enough for me to think that he might fall into that category.

Fun fact: Unless I missed something, the entire 11-player 2022 draft class made the roster in year 2 and the only members of the 2023 draft class that got cut were beaten out by undrafted free agents. This is a young but intriguing roster.

Of the four that made it for their defensive work, I would have no issue with any combination of them in the 3-4 safety roles. Savage is going to have to take a step forward and Ford is going to have to prove that the good moments last year weren't an anomaly for the starting unit to be good, though.

I don’t know, traditionally the “team no one wants to play” moniker has excluded the favorites. By that definition, the Brewers have about as much claim as any of teams 3-9