Why hasn't Neal Been Promoted?!

Having been to a bunch of games there when I lived back East, I can’t more strongly disagree on the Dodd being a “time of year” thing – in fact, the summer is often worse than the spring. There’s a common misperception about that park, which is that it’s death for hitters. That’s not entirely true, but I’ll explain exactly why you don’t promote Neal if you want him to continue his development.

For groundball hitters, it’s no worse to play than anywhere else. For flyball hitters, it’s bad, but the alleys are so crazy deep that you can still be a decent doubles hitter. Where it’s devastating is for young power hitters, because you have this ugly 1-2 combo of alleys that just balloon out from the temptingly close-in corners (just over 300’) and these nice cool evening breezes blowing in off the ocean from 15 miles south (for the same reason that they do here in California, because the ocean is cooler than the land.)

The latter makes it a surprisingly nice place to watch a game since you never really get roasted – I don’t think I ever bought an ice cream, but definitely did the fried dough – which in the inland part of the Northeast happens an awful lot in July and August. And conveniently they only play one day game a week (on Sundays) and start early for night games (used to be 6:05, now 6:35) for making sure the kids can get in bed by no later than 9:30, which means games start just about as the evening winds pick up.

Unfortunately, home plate happens to face due south, which means the hitters face the wind coming in from center, which means the combination of the deep alleys and wind means hard hit fly balls just go out there to die. (It’s not Candlestick windy by any means, but there’s often a good breeze.) Usually that results in one of two things if you’re a power hitter. Power guys either totally screw up their strokes trying to become dead pull hitters since aiming for the corners are the only way balls go out, or even worse, they try to hit the bejeezus out of the ball every time up. Both adaptations tend to turn someone into a strikeout machine.

Or to quote Steve Decker from Joe Perez’s (the Norwich Bulletin beat writer assigned to the Defenders when they play at home) blog , “Let’s start with Tuesday’s game. I’m glad I spoke with Steve Decker before the game because he was in a closed-door meeting much too long afterward for me to speak with him then. The conversation was foreshadowing. He told me that he thinks guys press too much at Dodd Stadium opposed to on the road. He added the one thing they don’t have at home is the three-run homer.” Amen.

Can’t find splits for home/away for the Dodd over the last few years, but I’ll give you two players numbers this year to really illustrate the points I’m making (you’ll figure out #1 very quickly, but may not know #2):

Player #1

SJG: .371/.445/.600/1.045, 10 BB, 32 K, 2 2B, 6 HR, 17 RBI
CT Overall: .238/.287/.333/.620, 16 BB, 70 K, 13 2B, 2 HR, 15 RBI
CT Home: .241/.280/.330/.610, 6 BB, 35 K, 7 2B, 1 HR, 5 RBI
CT Away: .234/.293/.336/.629, 10 BB, 35 K, 6 2B, 1 HR, 10 RBI

Player #2
Overall: .302/.339/.478/.817, 21 BB, 53 K, 29 2B, 11 HR, 69 RBI
Home: .307/.331/.458/.789, 7 BB, 25 K, 15 2B, 2 HR, 27 RBI
Away: .299/.345/.493/.838, 14 BB, 28 K, 14 2B, 9 HR, 42 RBI

Number 1 is of course Brandon Crawford, and his tough time adapting to AA neither surprised me nor worries me all that much. Two of the things that were known about him in the draft were that he a. chased a lot of offspeed stuff for strikeouts and b. was often pull happy. At AA he’s now consistently seeing guys with decent breaking stuff (=routine but reasonably tough adaptation for a guy like him if he wants to be a big leaguer), and he’s now in a home ballpark that I’m sure has him trying to pull the heck out of the ball every time he gets to the plate (=disaster and clearly affecting him outside of Dodd). I haven’t seen much video, but I’d wager good money he’s screwed up his stroke quite nicely. Get him to Richmond next year, get him to stop pressing, and we’ll get a much better sense of his true talent level.

Number would be Brett Pill, who I will now be paying a lot more attention to since what it tells me is that he’s really learned to adapt to where he’s playing. Remember, he led the South Atlantic league in doubles a couple years back – and continues to hit them. But he’s also showing me something else with those numbers, which is that he gets hits where he can, shows some patience (well, at least more than most Giants prospects), doesn’t worry if what he hits goes out of the park, but when given a neutral park still hits for a decent amount of pop. Rather different than #1, and to me a fairly important characteristic for a big league hitter. Still not really the plate presence you want for a corner infielder and I don’t know if he can play anywhere else, but someone I’m keeping a closer eye on going forward.

With the move to Richmond almost certain to be announced August 1 after a crazy long delay – the Eastern League’s been trying to get a new owner through some not-so-nice methods, the real estate market collapse blew up the deal for a new Richmond ballpark, and local ownership in Richmond backed out – why bother potentially blowing up someone’s development if you don’t need to? This incidentally, is why Posey was never going to AA even if they weren’t high on Williams since you didn’t want to risk him doing the same since you really need him in the bigs next year. My guess is the reason Sandoval did fine is that he a. rarely tries to hit for the fences b. hits ropes a lot more often than bombs which largely offset the fly ball issue and c. minor league pitchers just gave up throwing him breaking stuff since he hit it all over the park.

So that’s the extremely long version of why Neal isn’t getting promoted this year, since there’s no room for him at AAA and it’s too big a leap in terms of pitching talent, it doesn’t make sense to put him at AA if you don’t really need to rush him, and last but not least it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he’s being showcased and gaudy numbers make for a much better window.