Starts Friday. The US is warming up with the Americas Baseball Festival with Cuba and Canada. They beat Canada 9-3 today. Hader appeared in that one, but I can't seem to find a box score.
I like seeing what adjective tellitlikeitis uses when he posts about someone hitting a home run. :grin: Ripped, crushed, smacked, etc…
Tyler White is in the midst of a 6-game hitting streak. He's had at least 2 hits in all 6 of them, and 5 of them have come after his promotion to Fresno. 33rd round pick in 2013.
What's yall's expectation/player comparison for Appel at this point? Coming out of the draft, I thought his peak was a top #2 guy, a la Jordan Zimmerman, others thought he was a sure-fire #1. Inconsistency has been an understatement, but he's certainly shown flashes. Thoughts?
He wouldn't be first up in the event of an injury, it'd be Buchanan or Chapman. Maybe even Veras or Downs, who have pro experience. Basically he was never going to see the 40-man on the Astros and other teams probably knew that. The Astros are going to start being really judicious with 40-man spots.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">With so many members of the BA Top 100 now in the majors, who's No. 1 in the Midseason Top 50? <a href="http://t.co/rIlWd4p4zs">http://t.co/rIlWd4p4zs</a> <a href="http://t.co/wgfuRPG8iu">pic.twitter.com/wgfuRPG8iu</a></p>— Baseball America (@BaseballAmerica) <a href="https://twitter.com/BaseballAmerica/status/618404275413094400">July 7, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> Spoiler 21. Brett Phillips 39. Mark Appel
Good news for Phillips (Granted, this doesn't change his value, but BA has done a decent job of identifying guys with talent). Ouch for no Bregman or Fisher.
Ouch for 2015 draft. PS. Just noticed it is only top 50. Would expect Fisher to possibly sneak into top 100, but no where close to Top 50.
Didn't listen to the podcast, but they may have excluded them all from consideration until the end-of-season or preseason lists.
I don't think Fisher warrants top 100 status. An .802 OPS in Lancaster isn't impressive. Of course, a strong finish to the season could always change that. I'm pretty sure they didn't include 2015 draftees due to the signing period not being over.
Has his development hit a snag or is he just running into bad luck with bat but still flashing on his other tools?
That's not all the data on Fisher, though. His BB%, K%, and ISO are all good at Lancaster. He's still young. His BABIP dropped 70 points in Lancaster from Quad Cities and looks to be the sole reason his OPS is "low". BABIP data for 152 ABs is very unreliable. There is only a small chance that isn't just random BABIP bad luck. Granted, I expect his ISO to come down some, but expect it to be relatively small compared to the likely huge push in BABIP.
The biggest knock on him was not getting his power into games followed by defense. Don't know about defense, but his ISO shows he is getting his power into games. He may be sacrificing some contact for power, but it is very hard to believe his true talent contact level has regressed by 70 points in BABIP from A to A+.
