Ozzie Ball

QUOTE (DirtySox @ Apr 4, 2014 -> 12:35 AM) Hoping to see Beck significantly increase his K rate this year. Until then I see him as a back-end of the rotation guy at best. Agreed. 3SO/1BB in 5IP tonight is not the best of starts.

Barnum finished with 3bb's for Dash, nice. Kyle Hansen 1 IP, 0 BB, 2 SO in relief for Dash. Really disappointed he's not starting this year. He was excellent last year. I guess Sox don't see too much in his stuff.

QUOTE (Dunt @ Apr 4, 2014 -> 02:07 AM) Man, if Micah could have another great year and somehow get to Chicago by September, a 1-2-3 of Johnson-Eaton-Abreu looks real tasty. Would prefer Eaton-Semien-Abreu personally, though if both develop as hoped it will be a nice problem to have.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Feb 10, 2014 -> 07:59 PM) It's costing us more but with a lack of public transportation there we were forced to do that if we wanted to do it. Figured we probably werent going back to that area (if we do it'll be a long time) so it was worth the extra money to do it. Our plan is looking like this: Scotland/whiskey tour London Dublin Prague Paris Belgium Filling in a lot of places that we didnt see in our last trip out. Sounds like a good trip. Dublin aside I have visited all these places, and have lived in London, so if you're looking for any recommendations just let me know, especially for places to eat. Where in Belgium are you planning to go? Brussels, Ghent and Bruges are all very beautiful, though Bruges was crawling with tourists (almost to the point that it wasn't enjoyable).

Bloodlines from Matt Garrioch (draft guy on Sickels' site): http://www.minorleagueball.com/2014/2/7/53...-prospects-2014

QUOTE (SoxFan1 @ Jan 13, 2014 -> 10:07 PM) I'm bringing this back. I've decided that in 2014, I'm going to travel as much as possible. I'm 24, now is the time. I've already got trips to Denver, CO and Savannah, GA planned, and I'm in the process of planning another to Arizona for Spring Training and will also be going on a cruise this summer. In regards to airfare, Sweet Baby Jesus is Kayak an amazing website. It's a great idea to travel if you can. I just finished studying in September and have been travelling a lot since then. Once I start working it will be a lot more difficult, so I just want to see the world a bit while I can. So far I've just stuck to Europe with Croatia (Dubrovnik/Plitvice National Park/Split), Paris, Iceland (Reykjavik/Southern Iceland), Czech Republic (Prague/Cesky Krumlov), Austria (Hallstatt/Salzburg/Vienna), Amsterdam, Belgium (Brussels/Bruges/Ghent/Antwerp) Barcelona, Scottish Highlands and Isle of Skye, Swedish Lapland (Kiruna/Abisko + Stockholm) and Norway (Tromsø). Next I will be off to Thailand on Thurday. Just got my visa today that will allow me to stay for 60 days and I think I can extend for 30 days on top of that once I'm out there. It will be my 3rd time to Thailand and I have lots of friends there in Bangkok who I will stay with, but I hope to travel out to Myanmar or Laos/Cambodia as I have not had the chance to do that yet. Sweden and Norway were both northern lights hunting trips, which were amazing. We got incredibly lucky and managed to see the lights numerous times. It's quite a moving experience and something that I would highly recommend. Here's one of my photos of the lights in Tromsø: http://imageshack.com/a/img138/2496/jxhj.jpg

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Jan 6, 2014 -> 05:15 PM) Baseball America released their list of Top 30 White Sox prospects today. I don't have the entire transcript and I'm old school and still purchase the Prospect Handbook anyway, but this is tweet is interesting from Daryl Van Schouwen. Daryl Van Schouwen ‏@CST_soxvan 3m #WhiteSox top prospects, per Baseball America: 1 Abreu 2 EJohnson 3 Anderson 4 Davidson 5 Semien 6 MJohnson 7 Hawkins 8Thompson 9Beck 10 May Having Hawkins at #7 is very interesting. Interesting why? Anywhere in the 5-10 range seems very reasonable to me. Actually #7 is exactly where I have him on my list at the moment. Also I like Jacob May getting into the top 10. Currently I have him at #11 and am very interested to see how he does this season.

QUOTE (oldsox @ Nov 13, 2013 -> 01:58 PM) Because of his age for starters. He was awfully young to go to Charlotte last season, plus he improved a lot in the last 6 weeks or so of the season. I don't have those splits in front of me, but that is my recollection. I just see a major improvement in him for 2014. I hope we see a lot of Sanchez and Micah Johnson at short and 2B next year at AAA. April .207/.309/.244 May .255/.294/.304 June .253/.308/.333 July .255/.291/.316 August .209/.227/.256 September .250/.250/.250 Fairly consistent splits during May/June/July and certainly no significant improvement over the last 6 weeks of the season. Sanchez was essentially the same player in '13 as he was in '12. The only difference was in the BABIP. In 2012 his BABIP was .385 giving a triple slash of .323/.378/.403, in 2013 his BABIP was .290 giving a triple slash of .241/.293/.296. I don't see where any "major improvement" would come from.

Some fangraphs stats/analysis on the AFL/Thomas La Stella. Mitchell amongst the top hitters by their SCOUT+ metric: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/almost-not-...na-fall-league/

QUOTE (Ozzie Ball @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 09:20 PM) I had also read that he has a good hard slider, so it's good to get confirmation, as well as a heavy sinking fastball (sits high 80's, touching low 90's) and a change-up with good sinking action. That was from around the time he was drafted. Not sure of how, or if, he has progressed in the last year. Adding to this Nathan Stoltz Tweeted about Bucciferro's stuff a few days ago. https://mobile.twitter.com/stoltz_baseball/...z_baseball&

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 4, 2013 -> 01:36 AM) Zapata blurb from sox homepage, on his way to Arizona instructional league in the fall.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 03:45 PM) Not sure of his velocity for full repertoire of pitches, but the scout at the game I was at in Kanny said his slider was looking very good. I had also read that he has a good hard slider, so it's good to get confirmation, as well as a heavy sinking fastball (sits high 80's, touching low 90's) and a change-up with good sinking action. That was from around the time he was drafted. Not sure of how, or if, he has progressed in the last year.

QUOTE (bbilek1 @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 04:36 AM) I'm with you. Every time the kid throws I want to point out his K/BB but his last name makes it much harder than it should be haha Yeah the K/BB (92SO, 6BB for those that haven't looked recently) is outstanding. He gets a lot of ground balls too. Obviously his age for this level is a big drawback, but he's certainly an interesting prospect to watch.

From a few days ago Keith Law more optimistic about a Sox prospect than the general consensus on here. That must be a first.

QUOTE (flavum @ Aug 24, 2013 -> 11:14 PM) Buddy Bell just said Micah Johnson will be sent to Birmingham for their playoffs. I wonder where they will start Micah next year. I guess this move will just be to give him some more AB's with the Dash out of the playoff picture, not because he's deserving/in line for a promotion. Excellent contact rate aside, his performance in A+ has been very disappointing.

I didn't realise how impressive Danish's numbers were: 18 IP, 12 H, 4 BB, 17 SO, 4.29 GO/AO He's supposed to have a heavy, sinking fastball, right? That would back-up the big groundout rate.

BP's Jason Parks on Braulio Ortiz (free content): http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article....articleid=21277

http://www.milb.com/scoreboard/index.jsp?c...mp;ymd=20130719

Keon Barnum last 10 games: .308/.325/.718, 4 2B, 4 HR, 1BB/12SO Excellent turnaround after a terrible first 14 games or so. Even 12 SO in 10 games is a big improvement from 20 SO in his first 11 games. Obviously very small sample sizes still, but encouraging signs nonetheless.

Brad Goldberg 2.2IP, 0ER, 0BB, 4K 8K/2BB in 9IP with Kannapolis 7k/0BB in 4IP with Great Falls 0ER (1R) over both. He's 23 already, so how quick do you push him to A+?

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jul 12, 2013 -> 12:57 AM) I would guess he'd be down to 50-60 successful steals in a full season at W-S. And a success rate of about 60-70%. That's a safe estimate for stolen base totals, but that would be a very low SB success rate. Currently his success rate is around 75%. 60 steals at a 60% success rate would give an estimated run value of -6. Research into this topic has shown that a 67% success rate is required just to break even in terms of run value. Based on what you have seen, would you say Johnson has a good or bad base stealing technique? And how much room for improvement do you see, if any? QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 11, 2013 -> 10:03 PM) These speed measures are subjective anyway. Yes, home-first and other base-base times can be documented, but in small sample sizes, and when dealing in hundredths or even tenths of seconds, dudes with stopwatches are only so accurate. Most of these prospect bloggers/amateur scouts take this sort of data from video recordings rather stopwatch-in-hand at the stadium. In this case the timings should be very accurate, even to hundredths of a second. Given the amount of video clips included in his posts, I'd guess this is the method the author used. That said I agree that debating whether a guy has 60 or 70 speed is a fairly pointless exercise. I was just a little surprised by some of the comments on here as they didn't match what I was reading elsewhere.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jul 10, 2013 -> 11:24 PM) I will say my favorite player on this list is Marcus Semien. He's not a guy who's ever going to hit for a particularly high average, but he seems to be a jack of all trades player. I also really like guys who walk more than they strike out, especially given how rare they are now a days. Love, love, love Semien's statistical profile this year. His walk rate is phenomenal, and given the fact that he's not some hulking power hitter, I'd guess he's not getting many cheap walks (only 2 IBB for example). Contact rate is very good and if he can keep the contact rate up then he should hit for considerably more average than his current .267 mark. He's very age appropriate for his level. Solid power. Yet for some reason I feel very sceptical about him. I need to see more. There isn't enough of a track record to get too hyped up about him... yet. I haven't read any recent scouting reports so I don't know much from that perspective, but the numbers make him very intriguing. If I was ranking he would fit somewhere in the top 10 for me.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Jul 11, 2013 -> 08:57 PM) The FanGraphs article about Johnson was just about the opposite of what you said you read though In what way? http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/micah-joh...-and-what-else/ Note that 3.95-4.05 seconds to first base on non-bunt attempts from the left side equates to 70 speed. Callis (July 1): http://www.baseballamerica.com/majors/ask-...k-at-shortstop/ The BP stuff is behind a paywall so I'll only provide one line (June 24): http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article....articleid=21018 He's not Hamilton, but all of this suggests to me that he has plus-plus speed.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Jul 11, 2013 -> 08:26 PM) Caulfield is right. It's been written about quite a bit throughout the course of the season. That's just what I heave read recently (over the last 3 weeks or so) from Jim Callis, Baseball Prospectus, and some Fangraphs guy.

Personally I would have ranked Zapata and would have had him top 5, but I can certainly understand the argument for leaving him out.