Minor League Games - Saturday, June 24, 2017

[phillychuck]

Yeah, some good hitting going on, even Moniak and Hall for Lakewood who is losing pretty badly.

Walding hit two more HRs (seems to have a lot of multiple HR games) to get to 16.

LV game 3-2 LV winning with a long way to go.

[Austinfan]

Tromp is threatening to make a crowded OF picture even more crowded. 9th HR, 4 in his last 10 games and an .826 OPS.

[Lucky_Beagle]

Clearwater pitchers give up 10 walks but only 1 run in the game. That has got to be hard to do.

[Austinfan]

Darrick Hall is someone to watch, he was injured and had a cold April, warmed up in May and is hot in June, increasing his BB rate and pounding the ball.
Big LH 1B, still only 21 at Lakewood, so he's on schedule to be 23 in Reading.
14th rd pick that was an afterthought out of Houston Baptist, playing his way ahead of 4th rd pick Martin as a prospect.

[phillychuck]

Hall was very good in Williamsport last year. I think he set the WMPT record for HRs with 9 (short season, big park). He has 12 already this year and missed a couple of weeks with an injury.

[Austinfan]

Williams has two walks tonight, which is really important, he has the tools, if they can teach him how to work a count, and to take a walk instead of widely swinging at pitches outside the K-zone, the sky is the limit for this kid, he has the bat speed, speed, power and arm to be special, but it's all useless if you don't make contact and get on base.

[andyb]

2 interesting HRs at Williamsport from Guzman (17 years old) and Encarnacion (still 19).

Walding is also turning some heads. Not sure he will ever make it but the combination of defense and power might at least push Franco a bit in a year. He might only need to be a 725-750 OPS guy to be as good as Franco in the majors.

[schooldoc]

Walding is going to have to prove he's not an artifact of that ballpark. So far, 13 of his 16 HR are at home.

[andyb]

As does every hitter in Reading. But he has a solid defensive foundation to build on and some patience and power.

He is not among our top 50 prospects but he'll get himself to LHV next year and then he'll get the chance to prove his stats are for real.

[Squire]

Williamsport now a disappointing 1-5.
Glad that Moniak seems to be picking it up a little.
Kingery just productive nearly every day.
Crawford with a 3 hit, 2 Xbh night

[andyb]

Williamsport really does not have great pitching without Gowdy and before the college draftees get there. We seem to be facing a bunch of 22 and 23 year olds as well. This will improve. On the offensive side we knew we were young and would struggle some. What has happened so far with some flashes of good but some other bats struggling to hit .200 is also not too surprising.

[julio]

Walding is also turning some heads. Not sure he will ever make it but the combination of defense and power might at least push Franco a bit in a year. He might only need to be a 725-750 OPS guy to be as good as Franco in the majors.

Umm... You might have wanted to look at baseball-reference.com before you posted this.

Walding is a good/very good defender at 3B; Franco is... well, Franco. Walding's defense should offset some offensive gap between him and Franco. This was, I think, your point.

But Maikel Franco's lifetime OPS as the Phils' 3B is .726... so Walding "might" only need to equal or exceed that offensively to be as good as Franco?

Yeah, I know. We think of Franco as more than a .726 OPS player, offensively (based on his half season on 2015, I guess, looking at the stats. Since the middle of 2016, though...). As of now, it has not happened. He has not made adjustments.

[SussexJay]

I saw the Lakewood game. Medina was throwing 94-95 but was all over the place. Was tagged for three homers in three innings. The Lakewood offense was pretty sad except for Moniak and Hall. Hall hit a line drive homer right down the right field line and a double to the right center gap. Moniak was 2 for 4 and was robbed of another double on a diving play down the line. Lartique hit a homer but looked bad in his other at bats and looked poor behind the plate.

Gamboa did not hit but he sure looked good in the field. Looked like a big-time shortstop.
J

[andyb]

But Maikel Franco's lifetime OPS as the Phils' 3B is .726... so Walding "might" only need to equal or exceed that offensively to be as good as Franco?

The theory on Franco is that he projects as a 25-30 HR guy that might have an 800 OPS since he does not walk a lot. We are always comparing the projections of young players. So if Walding projects to a 725 OPS but his defense is 1-2 WAR better than Franco, he might be his equal as a player. Not a very good player, but Franco at 800 OPS with poor defense is not very good either.

I know you have the emojis out there but the comparisons are never quite that literal. For instance one could still think that Kingery PROJECTS as a better 2B than Cesar. So we might want to trade Cesar after the year assuming he gets healthy and finishes strong. Too often we make decisions from a position of weakness and it would be nice once in a while to make them from positions of strength.

[julio]

The question, andyb, is, "At what point do we stop basing our evaluation of a player on projections, and instead base it on his established level of performance?"

Now, Franco is 24.303 (per baseball-reference com) years old. Given that, he's not at the point where further improvement becomes a pipe dream (about age 27). On the other hand, he's not that far from it, either. He will probably plateau within two years (assuming he hasn't already - which appears to be related to whether he can adjust to whatever opposing teams have learned about him).

That said, Mitch Walding is essentially the same age (24.288), and he's in AA. So it's not at all clear that he's really an "answer," either. Can he be as valuable as Franco. Yeah, possibly... but as you noted, "as valuable" in these cases doesn't necessarily equate to "valuable."

[nycphils]

Tromp is .936 Home, .724 away. Don't think he's threatening anything but to continue to demonstrate that Reading is a hitters paradise.

[andyb]

The main point is that Walding's contributions are undervalued because of the low batting average. Franco is the better young player at this point period. But there is also the possibility that Franco will never master the strike zone and always be a low average player with occasional power and subpar defense. Kind of Pedro Feliz without the D.

At that point one posits what we should do at 3B short of trades and free agency. Which is where a guy like Walding with physical tools may be developing later. I am the first guy to point out 24-year-olds in AA are rarely prospect. The difference is that most of them don't have legit big league tools. Walding does. And if Walding could put up a 725 OPS in the majors he'd probably be better than Franco. Franco has a good power tool and part of a hit tool (the hand/eye coordination part) but he is really a poor athlete. As a board we rationalized when he was called a 20/30 runner in the minors. That is actually a significant flaw in Franco and we can see it on the defensive side also.

Tools matter.A Mike Moustakas is a better prospect than Walding and a much higher draft pick. And while he made the majors at 22 he really was not that good till he was 26. Walding is a lesser version of Moustakas but there are some similar tools. Maybe he will not put it together till he is 26. He is a very different player than the Darren Ruf types that I usually dismiss.

[julio]

I don't know that I disagree with andyb about Mitch Walding. That said...

The main point is that Walding's contributions are undervalued because of the low batting average.

The "main point"? This is the first mention of Walding's BA in this discussion. Or did you mean "the low OPS," and the main point being that the low OPS doesn't reflect all Walding's value becaue of his defensive superiority to Franco?

[allentown]

Offensively, the biggest plus on Walding is that he put up an .812 OPS, with a .280 BA at CLW. That was at age 23, which is old for a HS kid. He has a higher OPS this year at Reading, but with a pathetic .223 BA. The home field benefit is huge, especially for SLG which is about twice as high at home. He walks a lot, but he Ks a LOT. It's hard to be hugely positive about a 24-year old in AA who is striking out in almost 40% of his AB. In his hot June, he's reduced his Ks to only a third of his ABs.

[andyb]

The "main point"? This is the first mention of Walding's BA in this discussion. Or did you mean "the low OPS," and the main point being that the low OPS doesn't reflect all Walding's value becaue of his defensive superiority to Franco?

Not sure I ever said anything about low OPS other than that Walding is a better player with a low OPS than Franco is because of the defense. That was pretty clear. Low batting average (this year anyway) is part of why his OPS is low though a decent walk rate has always meant his OBP is not that low.

Walding is a little undervalued because some people look at batting average. This will be a criticism of Crawford too even when he has hopefully good seasons. I bet he gets described as a SS who hit .260 with little power. When that could be paired with a solid OBP and good defense.