The Cape Cod League is one of the best summer baseball leagues for college players. According to the Cape Cod League website there were 197 Cape Cod veterans playing in the majors in 2004 and over 1000 that were playing professional baseball of some sort in 2004.
In 2004 the Blue Jays had 43 players in their organization with Cape Cod experience. This ranked the Jays 3rd in all of baseball, which isn't surprising given their college heavy drafts in the Ricciardi era.
Additionally, as Jon Lalonde noted in the draft review interview, "seeing players swing the wood bat is one of the most important revealing things we can see as evaluators. Seeing them swing aluminum in the spring - as much as you can look at it and say I think this is a good wood bat swing - there’s no substitute for actually seeing them compete against their best counterparts in college in that Cape Cod league to see how they fare with that wood bat. That tells us a lot about how advanced they are as hitters."
"The best ones migrate to that league. It’s a pro style environment. They play every day and it’s much more relaxed. The Cape is more like professional baseball than college baseball and it’s another reason we scout it so extensively."
In the 2005 draft the Jays selected the following Cape players:
Player Round Ryan Patterson 4 Josh Bell 6 Bobby Ray 7 Jacob Butler 8 Josh Sowers 10 Dennis Bigley 22 Matt Cooksey 32 Chris Looze 37
Now that the season has wrapped up, who were the top players this summer?
The Cape League has long been known as a pitcher's league. This year was no different, but here are the standouts among the hitters this summer. Players are sorted by GPA - ((OBP*1.8)+Slg)/4:
Batters AB AVE OBP SLG GPA BB K Bates, Aaron 105 0.333 0.446 0.457 0.315 18 26 Errecart, Chris 99 0.303 0.375 0.556 0.308 10 19 Coghlan, Chris 130 0.346 0.430 0.431 0.301 17 15 Hamilton, Mark 114 0.272 0.408 0.465 0.300 21 19 Still, Jon 158 0.316 0.412 0.443 0.296 25 36 Presley, Alex 129 0.341 0.442 0.388 0.296 20 29 Curtis, Colin 99 0.323 0.437 0.384 0.293 16 15 Kindel, Jeff 134 0.306 0.400 0.448 0.292 13 31 Frost, Baron 140 0.343 0.401 0.443 0.291 13 30 Huffman, Chad 122 0.262 0.416 0.402 0.288 20 30 Emanuele, Chris 103 0.320 0.377 0.456 0.284 8 21 Robbins, Whit 131 0.260 0.382 0.443 0.283 19 25 Dempsey, Jacob 114 0.272 0.403 0.404 0.282 23 45 Pruitt, Braedyn 122 0.287 0.393 0.393 0.275 17 14 Frazier, Todd 148 0.270 0.343 0.480 0.274 16 46 Longoria, Evan 164 0.299 0.331 0.500 0.274 7 30 Lincoln, Brad 107 0.243 0.341 0.477 0.273 16 30 Pettit, Chris 144 0.264 0.367 0.424 0.271 16 38 Camp, Matt 145 0.276 0.385 0.386 0.270 24 35And here are some of the top starting pitchers, listed by K/BB:
Pitcher Innings ERA K/9 BB/9 HR/9 K/BB Huff, David 37.0 1.46 11.9 1.0 0.2 12.3 Sinkbeil, Brett 53.0 2.38 10.0 1.2 0.5 8.4 Hobson, Gib 49.1 2.55 9.5 1.3 0.4 7.4 Lincoln, Brad 54.2 1.32 9.3 1.7 0.0 5.6 Buck, Dallas 32.2 3.86 10.6 2.0 0.6 5.4 Norton, Tim 61.0 1.77 11.4 2.2 0.7 5.1 Hughes, Jared 50.0 1.62 9.7 2.0 0.4 4.9 Bard, Daniel 65.0 1.25 11.4 2.8 0.3 4.1 Teaford, E 53.2 1.84 8.0 2.0 0.3 3.9 Ottavino, Adam 51.0 1.76 9.5 2.5 0.0 3.9 Walters, PJ 57.0 2.05 10.1 3.0 0.3 3.4 Kontos, George 57.0 3.00 10.9 3.8 0.2 2.9 Miller, Andrew 49.0 1.65 12.1 4.2 0.2 2.9 LeBlanc, Wade 41.1 3.05 9.2 3.3 0.7 2.8 Mozingo, Harold 43.1 2.91 11.3 4.4 0.4 2.6 Mulvey, Kevin 52.2 2.73 9.1 4.3 0.3 2.1Standouts coming out of the pen, again listed by K/BB:
Pitcher Innings ERA K/9 BB/9 HR/9 K/BB Jones, Hunter 11.0 0.00 13.1 0.8 0.0 16.0 Lutz, Derrik 25.0 0.00 14.0 1.1 0.0 13.0 Brown, Brooks 26.2 1.01 11.0 1.0 0.3 10.7 Toneguzzi, C 26.1 2.05 10.7 1.4 0.0 7.8 Latham, Daniel 17.2 2.55 10.5 1.6 0.0 6.7 Lincecum, Tim 39.1 0.69 15.7 2.5 0.0 6.2 Wagner, Mike 31.1 6.61 11.9 2.6 0.6 4.6
(Note: All players listed will be at least college juniors in 2005/2006, and thus draft eligible next season. Also, stats listed do not include playoff games)
The home run and RBI leader this summer was Evan Longoria, not to be confused with Eva Longoria. And yes, I only mentioned this so I could link to pictures of Eva Longoria.Of those players listed above the top three prospects are likely all pitchers - Dallas Buck, Andrew Miller, and Daniel Bard - who could very well go 1-2-3 to start off the 2006 draft. Of course there's a long time between now and then and a lot of things can and probably will change.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20050810172128288