Community Prospect List #29

I admit that I have no specific knowledge of the SJ routines, but here’s what I do know from going to all sorts of amateur and pro ballgames, reading, and following the game of baseball in the past 40+ years.

1. Pitchers don’t take BP with the starting hitters – this is especially true in the lower minors where there has been blanket usage of the DH rule for at least the last 20 years.

2. Pitchers of Wheeler’s status don’t throw BP, except on very rare occasions (usually during spring training or rehab).

3. Pitchers don’t normally sit in the dugout and watch the hitters on their off-days. They’re usually in the bullpen or in the dugout. Even if they are in the dugout during a game (whether they’re pitching that day or not) they rarely are paying close attention to what their teammates are doing during their ABs. Even if you find a pitcher that is paying attention, they have one of the worst vantage points in the stadium to watch an AB. From the dugout, all the vast majority of dugout observers can really see is the vertical position of a pitch when it crosses the plate and the only way you can get a read on the horizotal location of the pitch is to watch how far the catcher has to move his glove to catch the ball.

4. The only time that a starting pitcher like Wheeler will be in a position to really watch a teammate take a real AB is when they are in the stands behind the plate charting the opposing pitchers during a game. Most minor league teams make their starting pitchers chart 1 game during eac of their 4 or 5 game day-off periods. Even when they have this opportunity, most pitchers are paying much more attention to what the opposing pitchers are throwing and when they are throwing it during the games that they are charting pitches. They’re not paying much attention to what their own hitters are doing – beyond the fact that they got a hit or did something memorable in the AB.

5. Therefore, IMO, the only time that Wheeler was likely to have a scouts-eye view of what type of a hitter Joseph was would have been when pitching against him during inter-squad games in the AZ Instr. League or spring training. I doubt that Joseph would have faced Wheeler very often even in those situations as I have to believe that Wheeler and Joseph would have been paired up on the same team as pitcher and catcher or pitcher and DH. Even if they did face each other often in those cases, I don’t think that Wheeler would have been throwing his full arsenal of pitchers at mid-season speed.

I didn’t know that. Cool inside info. Where was this?

Wow. I knew about your lomg history with Bandilla, but not that he’s already had shoulder surgery. That makes me feel better about sticking him in my Honorable Mention category. Originally, I had stuck him there because the official info coming from the Giants this past summer was that he wouldn’t pitch due to an issue with his labrum. I wanted to see him healthy before I was going to rank him – labrum issues are almost always career-ending.