minor lines, 7/5/10

Gillaspie does seem like a douche. Plus he’s wasting a space on the 40-man!

I was going to say that hopefully his line will keep improving and Cavan can get promoted but I guess with Culberson, Ehire and Bierry at SJ there isn’t much room for another infielder.

I should have written what I was thinking: “we knew he could hit, for a SS”

Well, I’d have to take the con position on that. I’m interested in all three, but I wouldn’t even want to begin discussing their chances of ever being major leaguers, much less within three years. I don’t even begin thinking about whether someone’s likely to be a productive major leaguer before they’ve handled A+ ball pretty well, and it’s not too wise to think about it before AA. On top of which, making it from a complex league to the majors in 3 years (not to mention off-shore summer leagues to the majors) would be an extraordinarily unusual metioric rise. Mike Trout might well accomplish that feat (but not by a lot) but he was a bit unusual in the first place in that 1st round draftees don’t normally stay in the complex leagues for the entire season.

Just by way of comparison, looking back at the 2006 lists of top prospects in the AZL and GCL I see Clayton Kershaw and Neftali Feliz as guys who made the majors in three (or even four) years. While the best remaining prospects on these lists are Hank Conger, Carlos Peguero, Chris Marrero, Adrian Cardenas and Gorkys Hernandez. Not a lot of folks banging on the doors.

And spot checking one more time because I happen to hae the book here, looking at the 2004 lists we’ve got Yovani Gallardo, Jesus Flores, and Carlos Gomez are the three (out of 40) who rocketed to the majors in 3 years, plus that year included Pablo Sandoval (4 years) and Neil Walker (6 years). The tops of the lists that year were Matt Tuiasosopo, hernan Iribarrn, Luis Soto (Red Sox ss) and Gaby Hernandez. In ’06 the top 2 were Conger, Jeremy Jeffress, and Kershaw and Chris Parmalee.

So, not exactly the greatest success rates. But we’ll keep watching and hoping for good development and take it from there.

I think toolsy players wash out at a much higher rate than that.

I’d agree with that assessment and the Giants seem to have the same continual problem in developing position players. I don’t know if it’s who they draft or how they’re developed in the minor leagues, but they seem to have a ton of guys who do well in San Jose, but struggle as they progress which isn’t necessarily uncommon, until you factor in that the ones who do progress to AAA and then to the MLB haven’t produced. Obviously, this could be who they’re drafting, but judging from the way prospects are handled upon reaching the MLB level, I have a sneaking suspicion that they’re not being developed properly at the lower levels, but I could be wrong. The Giants system really has taken a hit this year due to some promotions, but also due to the play of some of their prospects, and outside of Bowker I don’t see anyone in there system who will make any kind of impact in 2011, and of course Bowker’s impact will probably be with another team.

there’s very rarely any such thing as an "impact relief pitcher"
I disagree with this as a general statement. Just off the top of my head I can name guys like Storen, David Price, Neftali Perez, Broxton, Bellisario, and Romo from the past few years. And going further back you can find guys like Wilson, Papelbon, Street, and K-Rod, that showed up and made an impact at a young age. What I will agree with you on is that the Giants rarely have had an “impact relief pitcher” from the minor leagues in the BS era. He much prefers to sign aging veteran FAs or trade for them.

As for Runzler, I still believe he can/will be an impact arm in the pen if we can just get rid of Bochy. As he does with all of the young guys (Bowker, Nate, Buster, …) Bochy has totally mis-used Runzler this year and destroyed his confidence. You can’t be an effective pitcher if you know that you’ll be yanked the first time that you walk a hitter.

I’m interested in seeing Brown and wish we’d get him signed, I don’t know that the addition of him and Parker is going to upgrade our system depth much

A couple of things about this statement.

1. In all likelihood Brown’s signing can’t be announced until the deadline, because he’ll be over-slot and the Giants won’t want to defy the MLB front office. The same will probably be true of Parker.

2. To say that Brown and Parker’s addition won’t upgrade our system depth much until next year doesn’t bear out with what has happened in prior years. The minute Wheeler and Joseph were signed last year they vaulted into our top 5 and top 10 prospects list, respectively, before they even got in a game. Their presence in the system was surely used by evaluators when assigning such a high ranking to our farm system after last season was ended. And the same held true for every team that signed 2009 draft picks at the deadline. Now, I agree with you that draftees should not be rated so highly before they even pick up a ball and bat, but that’s not how systems get ranked by guys like Callis.

Well, i’d be for it, possibly in September?

This

Well, now I’ll take a backseat to nobody when it comes to appreciating Sandoval, but to say he “had nothing left to prove in AA” seems to overstate things a bit to me. He only played in AA for 44 games, so if, say the Giants had been brain-numbingly awful in August of ‘08 and they’d left him to play in AA for a while longer, things he could have proved in that time could have been:

1) that he could develop a more advanced approach to hitting than “swing at everything possible”

2) that he could hit left-handed pitching (his platoon splits that year were very bad)

3) that he could sustain his hot hitting for a full season (in the event, he proved this by continuing his success at the major league level after his call up, but this is something that all players at all levels are always struggling with, as Panda has been forced to reckon with this year. For the record, I’m glad at this point that he had that awful awful year at Augusta, so that he has experience with real failure and finding his way back from it).

I guess the “NOW” threw me off.

Pablo also had nearly 5 years in pro ball up to that point that could be evaluated. But under the current circumstances, such as the team being contenders, they aren’t likely to call up Belt at any point this year, even if he continues to rake in AA.