The Lineup:
There’s some talent here at the major league level, but let’s
be clear – Buffalo’s Triple-A team is better than the major league club, so
everything is about the future. That future isn’t far away, though.
S43’s #17 pick, Earl Espino, is ready to take over at 3rd
base, while Earl Haynes is set to be a middle-of-the-lineup force for years.
Rangy 2B Rusty Wood looks like the kind of interesting player who will make a
few All Star teams, while Alex Lewis should offer thump from the left side.
If all these players come up soon, they’ll form a solid core
to complement the pieces already in place. Rookie Catcher Radley Roundtree delivered
a .910 OPS in part-time duty, and he should be a viable cog going forward. Rico
Azocar and Deivi Alberto have 30-hr power. There are pieces to build on here.
The Staff:
There are some decent arms in the majors – Hades Silva,
Louis Stein, and Tony Bolling will all do the job for a contending team – but again,
the real prizes are in the minors, especially the low minors. At AAA, P.T.
Ramirez, Fausto Garces, Melky Elias and Keith Gray are all ready to contribute at the
big league level, but to find future stars, you have to look lower.
High A is the home of some real potential, as $34 million
IFA Kaito Jang should be ready to front a rotation by S51-52, and S47 No. 5 overall
pick Brennan Farquhar projects as a really interesting player, one of those
bang-for-the-buck low stam/high dur long man types who can get 150 innings either
via 5-inning starts or through multi-inning appearances out of the pen. Once
they’re ready to join the solid core Buffalo has assembled, this could be a quality group.
The Leather:
Assuming that these Triple-A players are coming up at Game 21 or thereabouts, then the 2B wood is the most compelling, with his 98 range. If they don't make the callups, then there are a few adequate gloves here, nothing special.
That "Interesting if the promotions happen" concept is a fair summation of this entire team: If the Triple-A players come up, then there's some very intriguing potential here, a team that could be competitive near-instantly. If they don't, and Buffalo holds off another year, then this is a forgettable 68-win-team waiting to happen, and let's all just fast forward until the next season of the rebuild.
The Lineup:
There’s a lot of top-end ability here, which is no surprise for
a team that’s won 90+ games the past two seasons.
This team is a matchup nightmare; the three best bats are
switch-hitters, and there are strong lefty and righty bats throughout for strong balance. They’re
led by switch-hitting 3B Alex Reid, a 93-overall three-time All-Star. S47 was
his best year yet, putting up 45 doubles to go with his usual 45 homers and 26
steals. 89-overall OF Donald Ritz is another switch hitter with line drive
ability and good power, a guaranteed .850-plus OPS even in a down year.
Napoleon Rogers has right-handed pop, 23-year-old switch Garabez Fontana should
hit .300 and OBP .360, and second-year 2B Leandro Ramirez will kill lefties. They hit .267 as a team, their .788 OPS last season was fourth in the majors, and they'll probably put out a similar attack this year. A
lot to like in this lineup.
The Staff:
The top-end thunder is evident on the mound as well, where
the Walleye have a true ace in Paul Kinney. Kinney is going to the Hall of Fame
someday; until then, pencil him in for 225 innings and an ERA right around
3.00. There’s a solid No. 2 behind him in lefty Andy Cobb. After that, though?
The staff tails off, and the back end of the rotation is nothing special.
The bullpen, too, is a weak spot. The loss of top reliever Pete
Bonham, who signed with St. Louis in the offseason, is going to hurt. It’s not
a bad group – Peter Yosida was signed to replace Bonham, and he'll help somewhat -- but it’s not on par with the rest of what is otherwise a pennant-contending
club.
The Leather:
Rogers is a LF – a good one – playing 1B, so it’s no
surprise he won a Gold Glove, with 25 ++ plays. Reid is an excellent third
baseman, and Fontana plays a standout left field. Bill Treadway is just OK in
center, but starting catcher Bernie Guzman is more than adequate behind the
plate, and backup Polin Martin is a defensive stud. This is a strong defensive
team, one of the better ones in the league.
All in all, the lineup’s great, the defense is strong, they
have a true ace, and the bullpen won’t kill you. This is a good team, probably the division winner. But it may be just behind the AL's best.
The Lineup:
Boston brings back essentially
the same team as S47’s 87-game winner, and after winning 93 the year before, that’s
not a bad strategy. They had the third-highest batting average in the majors,
and while the power wasn’t there to match it, this is definitely a team that
puts the ball in play and uses its home ballpark to the fullest. First baseman
Mike Darwin paces the offense (.915 OPS last season), and he gets help from the
quality bats of C Tomas Bazardo, and the IF/OF tandem of Ricardo Castro and
Melvin Lloyd. 2B Francisco Telis raked righties, and SS Wilking Guerrero hits
very well for his position. It’s a solid, high-on base offense that isn’t going
to match some of the others in this division when it comes to power and extra-base ability, but certainly holds its own.
The Staff:
The pitching does enough,
but there’s little here that stands out. Yohan Lugo fronts the staff, and he
pitched to a nice 3.76 ERA last season. Harry Martin outdid him with a 3.44,
but the rest of the starting unit wasn’t pretty, with Russell Howell, Jerrod
Gillaspie, David Rosado and Jesus Guapo combining for over 686 innings of 4.85
ERA work.
That said, help is on the
way. The VERY interesting George Griffin could be a 21st-game callup
and would probably be the immediate No. 1, pushing Lugo and Martin into more
appropriate mid-rotation roles, and Boston should be able to cobble a better
4/5 out of the remaining options.
The Leather:
Defensively, Boston is good,
and also bad. They are rangy as hell - 92 ++ plays – but also make a ton of
errors, as their .983 fielding percentage shows, tied for second-worst in the majors.
In theory, you’d rather have the range than the glove, but with 102 errors
on the season, this is a club that makes its pitchers get an extra out for
every hit they take away.
Boston is a solid team in
every phase of the game, with strengths in contact and range to make up for
deficiencies in other areas. Yet there just isn’t quite enough pitching, even
with likely addition of Griffin, to vault them past that roughly 90-win range at
best, and that probably leaves them just behind Toledo in the race for the
division title.
The Lineup:
This lineup mashed 307
homers last year enroute to a 3rd-in-the-majors .801 OPS, so it’s
clear where the strength of the team lies. Led by thumping catcher Yasmil
Cayones, pretty much everyone in the lineup has 30-homer potential, at minimum.
Cayones is part of a C/1B/DH/RF rotation with fellow monster bats Chris Bruske
and Eugenio Martin and Bo Stewart, all of whom can hit 30-40 in a full season.
They’ll get a full season out of last year’s midyear pickup Engel Bastardo at
first, and he should get on base in addition to the expected 35 HR output. 2B
Brandon Francoeur hits 30 a year. The CF, Yorman Martin, could hit 30. LF Joey
Levis should hit 30. You get the idea.
These guys sacrifice defense
for all this power, and there’s no speed here, at all -- Trenton finished last
in the majors in steals - but the premise is to bash their way to victory with
a bunch of beer-league sluggers, and offensively, it definitely works.
The Staff:
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Or in this case, the negative play or the bad
ERA? Hard to tell what really causes what with this group, if the struggles are all
on the arms or if their defense has just let them down. Chances are, it’s a bit
of both. Whatever the cause, with a 4.97 ERA last year, the pitching is an
obvious weak spot. The ace is 27-year-old Vasco Alonso, and he’s a worthy No. 1
who used an excellent changeup to post a 3.86 ERA last year.
Midseason
acquisition Addison Jaime will unquestionably help stabilize the middle innings
over a full season. Free agent signing Jimmy Miller, who posted a 3.34 ERA last
year for San Juan and arrives on a five-year deal for roughly $10 mil annually,
should help. Same is true for Gerald Gilheeney, one of several Long man/tandem
starter types who should give this staff legitimate versatility. If they want,
they could run any number of rotation combinations out there, from openers to
tandems to a 3-man to a series of bullpen games – it’ll all work with this
group, and that’s rare to say. But even with that versatility, pitching is definitely
still not a strength of this team. Not expecting a 4.97 ERA this year, but it’s
tough to bank on too much improvement, because…
The Leather:
…the defense stinks. Trenton’s
.983 fielding percentage was tied for the world’s second-lowest mark. 65 -minus
plays was also the second worst. Their catchers only caught 25 % of
baserunners, which was fifth-worst. Even fifth-worst in passed balls. No way
around it, this is a bad defensive team. The whole squad is something of an
interesting thought experiment – just cram the bats in however they fit, and
see what works.
A lot of RF/1B innings are given to huge sluggers, and to make it
work, you see things like 1b Gerald Gentry – a lefty thrower – getting 22 starts and 192 innings at
2b. Last season they at least had a gold glove-caliber SS, Guillermo Tejada, to
keep it all together, but he’s departed for Honolulu, without an obvious
replacement as yet (Maybe Martin moves over from CF? He’s the closest on the
current roster). Hard to say.
However Trenton
goes, it’ll be fascinating. They obviously hit a ton, and they sacrifice in
other areas to maximize that. They should be better than last season’s 73 wins,
at least a .500 team. If they’re better than that, it may show some interesting
things about how WIS really works.
No comments:
Post a Comment