Delgado (the tall pitcher in the 2nd post) struck out 4 of the 6 batters he faced today before the game was called due to lightning. The other batters were a ground ball double and a pop out. He's struck out 45% of hitters he's faced, has a 68% GB rate, >50% of his flyballs have been caught by infielders, and he has surrendered only 1 line drive on the season. Only real knocks on him are walks (13%) and the fact that he hasn't racked up a ton of innings. Fangraphs should drop their Astros list sometime this week, I hope they give some insight into some of these DSL guys.
Jackson Nezuh pitched a rehab assignment in the FCL this morning. Gave up a HR to Elijah Green (remember when he was going to be a superstar?) Walked one and struck out 2 over 1.2 innings. It's good to see that he's pitching again, as he was one of the pitchers I was most excited to see progress this year. He had pretty good peripherals in the 8 AA games before going on the IL. 20 year old Mexican pitcher Jesus Carrera struck out 4 in 2.1 perfect innings. That's 19 Ks to 2 walks in 11 innings with a 0.00 ERA. He was pretty good in the FCL last year too, not sure why he hasn't gotten a chance at Fayetteville yet.
Esmil Valencia has two stolen bases so far for Fayetteville to give him an organization-leading 39 on the season. Joseph Sullivan is 2nd with 32.
Looks like Zach Greinke post Dodgers. He hides the ball extremely well up until release which allows his fastball to play a bit stronger. Deceptive is a great thing if you can also locate.
Man, Brice Matthews sure strikes out a lot for someone that doesn't hit a lot of homeruns. He struck out 5 times in a game against RR about a week ago and he's only had a few games all season where he didn't strike out at all.
I am surprised he has been promoted so quickly considering how relatively raw he was/is for a college draftee. Theres still quite a bit of potential for development for him to improve his plate discipline and contact rate, which would result in more HR and fewer k’s. But that might take another full season to materialize, if it ever does. But his ceiling warrants patience.
His OPS is still close to 900 so being in AAA is warranted. He just needs to have a heart to heart with Cam and develop some plate discipline because they are very similar in talent. Cam just has excellent plate discipline even for a major league player.
I'm not sure Matthews' plate discipline is the problem. He walks a ton, and swings at fewer pitches outside the zone than Cam does by a fairly significant margin (21 vs 29%) while swinging at pitches in the zone at about the same rate. The average MLB hitter whiffs at 18% of 4 seam fastballs in the zone. Cam is at 21.9%. Brice is at 33.6%.
That may be why he was promoted to AAA. Maybe the thinking was to get him to a level where he will see near-MLB quality 4S FB so he can work on his whiff rate on those. I will be kind of surprised if Matthews is called up this season.
I was hopeful but I don't think it happens until the roster expands. They have had every opportunity to do so and they called up a bunch of no names.
I could see it either way. The whiffs may be just a limitation in Brice's game. With the deadline less than a month away, they can shop for LF/2B upgrades. If nothing materializes and Brice stays in the organization, they could call him up and hope does something like last year's Zack Gelof at the bottom of the lineup. His bat is kind of the opposite of Dubon's so there may be some non-traditional platoon opportunities. With no need to put him on the 40 man this off-season, they could just let him try and figure it out in the minors this year and see what he looks like in spring training.
5’7” Venezuelan 2B Sandro Pereira is off to a great start in his stateside debut in the FCL. He hit a triple in today’s game and his ops is up to 954. He has more walks than strikeouts this season.
I’m very bullish on Matthews even if he doesn’t make it to the bigs this year. 2 notable examples of players with a high strike out rate and a lot of talent at a similar age are George Springer and Jeremy Pena. All Matthews needs to work on is getting his strike out rate down from 29% to low 20s, it’s not an impossible task considering he’s still raw and has had a pretty good walk rate thus far in his career.
George struck out a lot at the lower levels when he was younger. Pena never struck out that much. George also hit a lot more homeruns. It's the strikeouts in absence of homeruns that says he's not ready for me.
