| 01 April 2010
French, 24, has options left, which probably prompted this. He didn’t strike out many, just one every two innings, but he did get a lot more groundballs than he usually does and ended up with a 23/10 ground/fly to date. He was an extreme flyball pitcher in the majors last year, but keep in mind that his minor league numbers indicate some groundball preference, though not to this extreme. It will be interesting to watch if he keeps this up in triple-A.
Cordero, 28, claims to have regained his velocity that made him a 47 save closer back in the day. That velocity was something like 91 mph though. And he allowed 12 hits in 9.1 innings this spring, while running 2/5 K/BB. I really don’t know what to think of Chad Cordero, and this is not helping things.
Patterson, 30, was with the Brewers last season. He was one of the best defensive CF in baseball some time ago, and some team would probably like to pick him up, but Byrnes and Langerhans meant that he was out of luck in the M’s camp this year.
Olson, 26, is burning up the last of his option years. Spring training for him yielded a 21.60 ERA in 3.1 innings and a 2/8 K/BB, even worse than Cordero. It’s possible he’s been trying too hard to impress at this point, but given the track record, it’s still kind of hard for me to get on board with him going forward. I want to be positive, because it is unpleasant when people do not succeed, but see few if any reasons to be hopeful.
Garko, 29, is on to his fourth team in a year. I remember a time when he was rather well regarded for his bat skills, but he’s been in a spiral since ’08 now and showed little this spring in hitting .220/.289/.341. Some people are up in arms about losing him to a division rival, particularly given how close this season might end up being. I don’t care a whole lot. Garko hasn’t been great recently, we have Everidge in Tacoma, though it’s not exactly the same thing, and Sweeney in the majors for whatever he’ll yield there. On to the actual minor league stuff…
Buckborough will be 21 in five days and this is an awful birthday present. I can’t even make a joke about drinking because he’s from Canada and the age is lower there. In more seriousness, he was lauded in ’07 as being an interesting specimen physically that lacked experience and was not throwing as hard as they thought he probably should be, high-80s at best. I likened this situation to that of Douglas Salinas earlier in the organization. I ended up being a bit too close on that one: neither hit their potential, Buckborough moreso because he has no command, and both washed out of the org at the age of twenty. Eerie.
Downs, 30, was the beer leaguer who got a start in baseball again after signing up at community college and getting drafted. A wonderful story, his was. As he got to the high minors, however, he proved that his fastball, while of a good speed, was hittable. He also didn’t command it all that well, giving up lots of walks, when he wasn’t giving up hits. The Mariners tried with him, and for his sake I hope he ends up elsewhere and the Mariners as an organization end up as the villains in a future Disney movie, but I’m not thinking that will be the case here.
Esquibel, 23, pitched at five levels last season, less than 10 innings at three of those stops, and sported a mustache at at least one of them. His longest stop was in Everett, where he allowed a lot of hits and wasn’t striking out a whole lot, roughly six per nine, not good for a reliever. It’s a decent value to be getting out of 38th round pick, but I feel like this is one of the reasons I emphasize each year that you probably shouldn’t get too attached to a lot of these fellows.
Haas, 22, is another Canadian who couldn’t bust out of short-season ball. Except, Haas was a reliever, and happened to be drafted twice by the M’s, which is an intriguing difference. His walk rate was a little high, and he only pitched 21.1 innings last year. If healthy, someone might consider picking him up. If not, well, not.
Otteman, 23, struck out 28 and walked just five in 24.0 innings in Peoria last season. The numbers for a 22-year-old in the Arizona League mean almost nothing. I’m cutting this one short because if I go on any longer I’m going to make a pun about Ottomans (as in the footrest, not the Turkish empire).
Reid, 22, is from Renton. When he was drafted in ’08, I thought of him as possibly being a guy who could switch between starting and relieving, but he never did. He posted a good ERA in Everett last year, but has a career minor league hit rate of exactly thirteen per nine innings. That’s bad.
Renfree, 25, pitched for every stop but Pulaski and High Desert for the M’s over the past three years. He was actually pretty good at most of them, but never so good to really stick at any one of them or pitch more than 50 innings. I don’t get it, but having seen him pitch, I can’t say he was worth holding on to either.
Witten, 21, was drafted in the 41st round last year with the thought in mind that if he regained his command, the stuff that made him a starter at Cal State Fullerton might help him turn into an actual prospect. He didn’t.
Familia, 23, was much liked by some for his hitting ability in practices, though it never translated to anything higher than a .662 OPS in games, and that was in the Dominican Summer League. His story was further complicated by the fact that he was signed originally at the age of twenty. The minor leagues are strangely full of these guys.
Fonseca, 26, is from Cuba, leaving the island to pursue baseball in the states, but not good enough to command a great bonus, or stick around very much in the minors. The M‘s had him play in seventeen games last year where he was good but not great. He might turn up in the indy leagues somewhere. I don’t know. I kind of feel sorry for him too. It’s that time of the year for cuts like this.
Johnson, 24, hit well in Pulaski. He has not hit well elsewhere, small sample size caveats thrown in there. I thought he might be some kind of steal in the 27th round and thought the catching crop that year to be particularly strong, though lacking someone like Moore. I was wrong as it turned out.
Nunez, 24, is the third Latin American catcher on this list that was dropped. He’s from Mexico. We still have Jose Rios though, so we’re not lacking representation there. He hasn’t hit well at most levels and wasn’t much behind the plate either, as his CS rates were pretty low. I’m running out of ways to describe things here.
Rodriguez, 22, was drafted in the 49th round by the Mariners in 2008 and played three games with Peoria, getting two plate appearances and striking out in both of them. He didn’t play last year. His minor league career is almost as sad as Ron Wright’s major league career.
As for Trejo, I guess I wrote about him already? It seems strange that the M’s would go to all the trouble of trading for him only to release him a few days later. If it was some kind of revenge scheme, it was a most brutal one.
Minor league baseball, starting a week from today.
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