Official MiLB/Prospects Thread

[G-Snarls]

[Spanky99]

 

Read this a couple weeks ago(magazine), a pretty decent read.

[KingKat]

How did Conner Greene get that nod, he's been ass this year.

 

MiLB all-star games have pretty loose criteria. They don't really mean anything thought they usually try to convince the players otherwise. I'd argue that MiLB guys should all just get the time off.

Edited June 7, 2016 by KingKat

[baseballsss]

Missed it somewhere in here. Where and when does Vlad start?

[King]

Missed it somewhere in here. Where and when does Vlad start?

 

Bluefield or GCL depending how advanced they think he is, that starts within a few weeks

[crazy47larry]

MiLB all-star games have pretty loose criteria. They don't really mean anything thought they usually try to convince the players otherwise. I'd argue that MiLB guys should all just get the time off.

 

yeah and most leagues only have like 6-8 teams too. its a small player pool.

[King]

http://www.milb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20160607&content_id=182662332&vkey=pr_t499&fext=.jsp&sid=t499

 

LANSING, Mich. - Five Lansing Lugnuts - first baseman Juan Kelly, outfielder Andrew Guillotte and pitchers Jon Harris, Dusty Isaacs and Angel Perdomo - have been named to the Eastern Division All-Star Team, the Midwest League announced Tuesday afternoon.

 

The deserving quintet was selected in a vote of the MWL's field managers. They will represent Lansing at the 52nd MWL All-Star Classic on Tuesday, June 21, at the home of the Cedar Rapids Kernels, Perfect Game Field at Veterans Memorial Stadium.

 

Juan Kelly, 21, was named the Eastern Division starter at first base. A native of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, the switch-hitter is tied for second in the Midwest League with 18 doubles in addition to ranking second in the circuit with 25 extra-base hits.

 

Andrew Guillotte, 23, was selected as a reserve outfielder for the East. In his first season in the Midwest League, the native of Lake Charles (LA) leads the Lugnuts in games, at-bats and base hits and is tied for first on the team in runs scored.

 

Jon Harris, 22, was the 29th overall pick in the 2015 draft, the Toronto Blue Jays' top selection. After allowing three runs in his first inning of the season, the Florissant (MO) native allowed just one unearned run in his 34 1/3 innings, including 28 consecutive scoreless innings.

 

Dusty Isaacs, 24, is the Midwest League's top closer, ranking atop the league with 11 saves and 18 games finished. A native of Lebanon (OH), the former Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket has a 1.07 ERA, allowing only three earned runs in 25 1/3 innings.

 

Angel Perdomo, 22, leads all of Minor League Baseball with a .132 opposition batting average, allowing only 22 hits in 49 1/3 innings. In his first year in the Midwest League, the native of San Cristobal (DR) has a 2-1 record with a sparkling 1.28 ERA in 11 games, nine starts.

[King]

John Lott article on Max Pentecost

 

https://sports.vice.com/ca/article/max-pentecost-is-back-and-ready-to-reclaim-top-prospect-status

 

The U.S. Customs officer at the Sarnia border crossing was a curious sort, and in a most friendly way.

 

Why are you going to Lansing?

What are you writing about?

Who's Max Pentecost?

What position does he play?

Why write about him?

He's a catcher who can't throw?

Wow.

OK, travel safe. Have a good day.

 

***

 

Max Pentecost can throw. He can catch, too. He just doesn't do it in games. Not yet.

 

But every day he throws and catches bullpen sessions. His meticulously planned throwing program is going well. He is optimistic. His manager says Pentecost might be ready to catch in games by mid-July.

 

He has traveled a long road to Lansing.

 

In 2014, he was a first-round draft pick. The Blue Jays pegged him as a blue-chip prospect, a catcher projected to hit and play superb defence. But then, for nearly two years, he virtually disappeared.

 

He endured three shoulder surgeries within 13 months, proving once again that medicine is not an exact science. It was never clear whether the first two surgeries were part of the solution or part of the problem.

 

"There were days when I was wondering, 'My shoulder—is it done, or is it just something that has to be fixed?'" says Pentecost, who is currently limited to a DH role for the Class A Lansing Lugnuts.

 

"I just kept pushing through it. There were days I'd have progressions and I'd think, 'We're really onto something here.' Then it would go backwards. Your mind is just spinning. But that's when it's good to have something you can do outside of baseball to get your mind off of it."

 

For Pentecost, that something was fishing, a passion since his early childhood in Georgia.

 

"Fishing was my getaway," he tells me. "That was the time I took to clear my head."

 

Casting for bass didn't bother your shoulder?

 

"No," he says with a grin. "Luckily, I cast mostly left-handed."

 

***

 

Maxwell Glen Pentecost owns a ready smile, a staunch work ethic and a knack for looking at the bright side. His shoulder struggles have made him mentally stronger, he says. If he were able to catch now, he says, he might not be able to focus so much on fixing his swing and refining his timing at the plate.

 

But he longs to catch again. At 6'2" and a slender 200 pounds, he does not present as a prototypical catcher, but he comes advertised as a savvy defender and a hitter who uses the whole field.

 

"Once I get back to catching, it'll be more normal, like I'm used to baseball being," he says.

 

Pentecost was the 11th player chosen in the 2014 draft. The Blue Jays gave him just under $2.9 million to sign and sent him immediately to the rookie-level Gulf Coast League, where he played only six games before he was promoted two levels to Vancouver. There he batted .313 with a .731 OPS in 19 games before shoulder pain stopped him cold.

 

His last game for Vancouver was on Aug. 7, 2014. He did not play in another game until May 12 of this year in Lansing.

 

"People don't realize how hard it is, how exhausting it is to come back from what he went through with the three surgeries," says John Schneider, his manager in both Vancouver and Lansing. "You see Devon Travis in the big leagues say it was the 10 toughest months of his life on the DL, and it was that times three for Max."

 

During Pentecost's long absence from the public eye, I occasionally asked Blue Jays officials what was going on with him. The answers were vague. He was always recovering from surgery, rehabbing, trying to get back, but no one seemed to know for sure what the problem was or how long it would take to fix it.

 

Doctors, apparently, were facing a similar challenge. Before his first surgery in October 2014, an MRI indicated a labrum tear. But the way the MRI dye pooled in his shoulder fooled the eye, he says. There was no tear. It took arthroscopic surgery to find that out. But there was inflammation, so surgeons did a cleanup.

 

He underwent a second surgery in February 2015. "I had really bad impingement symptoms," he said. "They decided to take some of the acromion bone off to give my shoulder a little more space to move around." That procedure is more often performed on pitchers.

 

Post-recovery, his throwing program went well. He felt a little pain, but did not consider it worrisome. But it began to get worse, and he could not recover between throwing sessions.

 

He was also reluctant to tell anyone.

 

"Sometimes (the pain) wasn't as bad as it had been, so therefore that was a good day," Pentecost says. "I wanted to play so bad. I was just praying that one day I'd go out there to throw and it would be like it miraculously fixed itself."

 

He missed the entire 2015 season. October brought a third surgery, this time to fix a tear that formed a groove in the rotator cuff and inhibited the normal movement of his triceps tendon. Dr. Craig Morgan, an expert in that type of procedure, performed the surgery. Then, it was back to rehab again.

 

A strong support group kept him going, he says.

 

"Good friends. People in the Blue Jays organization—the coaches, players, everyone. They never gave up on me. Always encouraged me. Kept me sane," he says.

 

"And I did a lot of fishing."

 

***

 

In his first game with Lansing, Pentecost hit a homer and two singles. He went 9-for-20 in his first five games. In 18 games since then, he is hitting .200, with 13 hits—all singles—in 65 at-bats.

 

He has never faced such good pitching. He has a lot of catching up to do. The adjustment has been tough.

 

"It has," he says. "I'm not going to lie. At the beginning, I was just so excited to get back on the field that I wasn't thinking about anything. I was just going out there and playing. And then you start getting beat on a pitch, and you're like, 'How am I going to fix this?' And you start thinking about fixing stuff. I just have to get back into a groove, build an approach at the plate, getting back into that everyday routine. It's just a matter of time."

 

Kenny Graham, a Blue Jays roving hitting instructor, agrees.

 

"He's still learning, and he knows that," Graham tells me. "He's learning to make adjustments that all professionals have to make in their careers.

 

"But he's a very athletic kid. He's got a good sense of the strike zone. He's a very handsy hitter; he can manipulate the barrel and move the ball around all over the field. He's got that hit tool in him."

 

Through Tuesday's action, Pentecost had 205 plate appearances in his pro career, divided almost equally between 2014 and 2016. He is still raw.

 

"Max has a knack for hitting," Schneider says. "But it's tough to explain to him sometimes that he really doesn't have that many at-bats under his belt over the course of his career."

 

Meanwhile, a committee has been at work supporting his throwing program. His rehab therapists in Florida and trainers in Lansing have supervised his daily workouts. Lansing pitching coach Jeff Ware has worked with him on mechanics. Minor-league pitching co-ordinator Sal Fasano helped him find a new arm slot that puts less stress on his shoulder.

 

Some days he works on throwing for distance, others for velocity, others just throwing lightly to let his body recover. He estimates he is throwing at about 85-percent effort.

 

"The short-term goal is around the all-star break to have him built up, totally ready to catch and hopefully rebounding well from the day-to-day throwing process," Schneider says.

 

Meanwhile, Pentecost says he is finally learning to stop thinking about his shoulder when he throws.

 

"I'm still weaning off of it, but we've had a bunch of good days throwing, no pain," he says. "The more of those you get, the easier it becomes to get it out of your head."

[King]

Robson was demoted to Lansing and got rocked.

 

2IP 8H 7ER 1BB 2K 2HR. 1 wild pitch

[THANOS]

Robson was demoted to Lansing and got rocked.

 

2IP 8H 7ER 1BB 2K 2HR. 1 wild pitch

 

Bust soon?

[Pendleton]

Robson was demoted to Lansing and got rocked.

 

2IP 8H 7ER 1BB 2K 2HR. 1 wild pitch

 

Ouch

[mikebel111]

Just when you think Alford is back to last season's form, he is struggling again

[bronson44]

Bill Christie

‏@billsportsnews

Anthony Alford leaving in ambulance after collision in CF with Urena @DunedinBlueJays #BlueJays

[Spanky99]

Bill Christie

‏@billsportsnews

Anthony Alford leaving in ambulance after collision in CF with Urena @DunedinBlueJays #BlueJays

 

Yikes!

[Krylian]

Urena have a Pillar chin?

[GD]

not his year

[Maahfaace]

Bill Christie

‏@billsportsnews

Anthony Alford leaving in ambulance after collision in CF with Urena @DunedinBlueJays #BlueJays

 

Any updates on his injury?

[King]

Shi DavidiVerified account

‏@ShiDavidi

#BlueJays say prospect Anthony Alford released from hospital with concussion after collision last night

[G-Snarls]

Phew. That could have been much worse.

[Atothe]

Phew. That could have been much worse.

 

A concussion might be worse

[Jimcanuck]

I'm sure this is not Alford's first concussion, with his football background

 

What a disaster of a season for him

[Krylian]

Rub some dirt on it and walk it off.

[mikebel111]

Hope Alford has a speedy recovery:) He has really had a real tough season.

[King]

Some of the Vancouver roster is starting to trickle out. Justin Maese is on it.

 

Others

Andres Sotillo

Javier Hernandez

Matt Smoral

Bryan Lizardo

Deiferson Barreto

Rodrigo Orozco

Mike Estevez

Christian Williams

Daniel Rodriguez

Jackson Mclelland

Jackson Lowery

Edited June 13, 2016 by King

[WONDERBAT]

Can Danny Barnes in AA be a legit option for the Bullpen? His numbers look really good and a pretty decent track record.

 

1.09 ERA 33IP 16H 4BB 37K .143 AVG 0.61 WHIP

[Jimcanuck]

Can Danny Barnes in AA be a legit option for the Bullpen? His numbers look really good and a pretty decent track record.

 

1.09 ERA 33IP 16H 4BB 37K .143 AVG 0.61 WHIP

 

Possibly, although he has been in the Jays farm system for years. Normally guys like that get a couple of short stints with the big club when injuries occur, nothing more.

[King]

http://www.milb.com/roster/index.jsp?sid=t435

 

Vancouver Canadians roster is out on the website.

 

Featuring some players demoted from Lansing (Lietz, Jacob Anderson). IFA high profile signees like Yeltsin Gudino and Bryan Lizardo. Justin Maese, Matt Smoral. Doesn't have anyone from the recent draft there yet but I would expect Zeuch, Woodman, Zach Jackson among others to join it after the mini camp in Dunedin is over. Gabe Noyalis I posted the article about in the offseason (http://jaysprospects.com/2016/01/12/gabe-noyalis-blue-jays/ ) he can touch 98 as a reliever, signed basically out of no where.

 

http://i.imgur.com/Lvm4mSU.png

http://i.imgur.com/5EcfPCq.png

http://i.imgur.com/Z7KQlob.png

[Jonn]

I didn't know Jacob Anderson was still in the organization. Unless that's a different one.

[Krylian]

I didn't know Jacob Anderson was still in the organization. Unless that's a different one.

 

I thought he started the season in Lansing this year......and was a mess.

[King]

I didn't know Jacob Anderson was still in the organization. Unless that's a different one.

 

I thought he started the season in Lansing this year......and was a mess.

 

He started the year with Lansing as a DH/OF but he was beyond terrible hitting .130/.196/.240 and now he was sent to Vancouver. Essentially a non prospect now.