battlekow

Jones? No, that was Rogers.

Awesome, Salome got his second dinger.

To his credit, he finished strong, striking out the side in the fourth.

Awesome second inning for Frederickson. He's been amazingly bad, though unusually it was hits instead of walks that really hurt him.

Lawrie's "In the Team Photo" in this week's Hot Sheet:

I'm not even talking about whether Lawrie is going to end up sticking at second base. I'm just a little up in arms over the hyperbolic comment. The kid's been playing second base professionally for a month, so even if he was terrible, it wouldn't really be cause for comment yet, but he's clearly not "borderline laughable" out there, or someone who wasn't anonymous would have said something about it already.

It's not unheard of for players to play first base on an experimental/emergency basis even if they don't have much experience. Ramon Hernandez got just his second career start at first base tonight against the Brewers. Nonetheless, I doubt Gamel will be playing first in Milwaukee this year.

Walk rate in the minors doesn't even really predict walk rate in MLB very well, so I would imagine that it's not very useful to look at it in college.

Somehow Corey Hart got ejected in the 6th inning for BC. Wonder what happened.

Another homer for Mat the Batt.

Jeff Sackmann has a look at third base defense at the college level, though he freely admits the data has severe limitations. X ellence's favorite "rocket-armed monster" Chris Dominguez comes a little below average.

So I don't think Kris Dabrowiecki is gonna make it...

I posted the whole article on Lawrie from Baseball America in the general T-Rats thread, but I'm going to excerpt Jeff Isom's quotes about Lawrie's defense here, since we were already talking about it:

Wednesday Dish: Lawrie Takes On The MWL Posted May. 6, 2009 11:32 am by Jim Shonerd Brett Lawrie has defied expectations before. The 19-year-old became the highest drafted Canadian position player ever when the Brewers pegged him with the 16th overall pick last June. He's a rare Canadian hitter that bats righthanded and has already moved positions from catcher to second base. He was even a member of Canada's last Olympic and World Baseball Classic teams. Now he's doing it again in the low Class A Midwest League. It would have been understandable if Lawrie had gotten off to a slow start. He'd never taken an at-bat in a professional game before opening the 2009 season with Wisconsin. The MWL is notoriously hard on young hitters, especially in the first-half of the season before temperatures warm up. None of those factors have slowed Lawrie, who's torn up the league to the tune of a .326/.375/.616 line through 86 at-bats. "He's a special kid. He's got that hit gene," Wisconsin manager Jeff Isom said. "He's a lot of strides offensively. He's a kid that's going to find a way to put the barrel of the bat on the ball. You kinda just let him go and do his own thing. He's swinging the bat well. He hits the ball hard, finds holes and drives the ball in the gap." Lawrie is the youngest player on the Timber Rattlers' roster, yet he leads the team in home runs (4) and RBIs (19) and is second in average while hitting third in the lineup every night. His .616 slugging percentage ranks fifth in the entire MWL, as 13 of his 28 hits on the season have gone for extra bases. Lawrie brings an aggressive nature to the plate, but his pitch recognition is advanced enough that he doesn't chase balls out of the zone. He's only drawn seven unintentional walks on the season but has also limited his strikeouts to 14 in 24 games. "He's selective at the plate," Isom said. "When he gets a pitch he likes, he's going to swing and he's going to swing the bat hard. He's doing a good job of making sure he's swinging at strikes, that's half the battle right there, and has been aggressive when he does find a pitch that he likes." Lawire spearheaded the Rattlers' offense again last night, helping the team break a three-game losing streak with a 2-0 win over Burlington. Lawire went 3-for-4 and drove in both Rattlers runs. He homered to left field off Bees starter Manauris Baez in the first inning, then added a two-out RBI single in the fifth. Defensively, Isom has been impressed with Lawrie's work ethic and coachability since moving from behind the plate to second base. He's made five errors (three fielding, two throwing) in 24 games, but Isom is confident Lawrie will continue getting better, and he appears to have come a long way from his amateur days, when he was criticized for not taking his defense seriously. "Seeing his first few games in spring training, I thought 'Wow, this could be interesting this season,'" Isom said. "But he's such a great athlete. He's taken to it. He's made himself into a pretty good second baseman. "You see the improvement on a daily basis. What makes him so special is you can tell him what he's doing wrong and then he adapts and changes right away. He applies everything that you say right away. You won't have to tell him a second time, whether it's positioning or the little nuances of the game. He makes adjustments on the fly, picks up things, retains information and throw in he's a great athlete in there. The kid's done a great job and continues to improve daily."

Lindsay Gulin, wow.

Kevin Goldstein on Lawrie today: I'm certainly not a scout, but I'd like to think I could recognize a "laughable" defender when I see one, and I certainly didn't find his defense risible. Raw, maybe, but he showed good range and a very strong arm. I haven't heard anyone else here that's seen Lawrie play second report a hilariously bad quality to his defense, either. Are we all just fanboys?

Finally, the face of the franchise is revealed! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... Rigoberto Almonte! http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/images/players/mugshot/ph_546412.jpg

To elaborate on Lawrie: Check out the MWL batting leaderboards; he's currently sixth in the league in OPS, and there are only two guys anywhere near him on it that are within a year of his age, Johermyn Chavez and Alexis Amarista, both international signings (both Venezuelans, actually) that are almost a year older than him. And according to Minor League Splits, Lawrie's actually been slightly unlucky on BIP this year!

I like the Volquez comp. Let's just hope Dusty Baker never gets ahold of Jeffress.

Lawrie's production has been remarkable, especially in the context of the rest of the team; his SLG is higher than Cutter Dykstra's OPS. I don't know how it will play out with regard to Farris and the other various infielders, alleged and otherwise, at Brevard County, but Lawrie's development will take priority over any of theirs, and he's definitely earning a promotion (it would be nice to find out what Juan Sanchez can really do, too).

Another perfect inning from Chris Smith, with two K's.

Nice to see Salome and Lucroy go deep on the same night, plus a double for Salome. Gamel finally got a hit (a double, natch), and Lawrie is 3-3 with a homer.

First inning for Jeffress went strikeout, walk, walk, HBP, strikeout, strikeout. So talented, so frustrating.

It's funny that you said that, because the actual #6 pick was another HS catcher (Lawrie being drafted as a catcher and all), Kyle Skipworth, and he's been terrible to start his pro career, though of course at only 19 he has plenty of time to turn that around.

With less than a month of games, how would you be able to tell the difference between a fielding "hot streak" and actual improvement? You're not watching the games. As I see it, throwing the former out as an alternative to the latter in no way constitutes irrational bashing.