Just a clarification, the MLB.com article is by Mark Feinsand, not Mark Goodwin. Thanks for putting all those links into one thread Mike.

http://economics.about.com
Oops. I wanted to give you credit so badly I put your last name in twice. :)

Cheers,

Mike

Another look at the Jays farm system is up at Creativesports

http://www.creativesports.com/newsmanager/templates/csplus.asp?articleid=1255&zoneid=8

Regarding the closers aging poorly, I don't think it's surprising with the silly way many closers are used today. Most closers work back-to-back games with high regularity and some can pitch three or even four games in a row on multiple occasions within a season; for instance look at Billy Koch's usage pattern before he was traded to Chicago and exploded.

It doesn't matter that it's only one inning at a time. There's still a full warmup and then full speed pitching, sometimes up to 30 pitches in an inning depending on how much of a fight the other team puts up. As someone on BP said, throwing pitches doesn't hurt a pitcher, throwing pitches while tired does. Without at least a full day of rest between appearances there isn't enough opportunity for arm or shoulder muscles to recover and rebuild any micro tears or stress. Without rest the stress will compound rather than repair. This is especially true with guys 25 and under whose shoulders aren't completely developed yet.

Some guys are called rubber armed and some guys really are; and nearly all of these guys are in their late 20's or 30's. But most guys are human and need time to recover. Using a guy for one inning for several days in a row is probably the worst way you can use them long term. It's much more preferable to have a pen that has two or three good relievers who can pitch 2 or 3 innings at a time and rest in between while someone else handles the duties the next day.

I think the Jays for instance have a deeper pen now but I really hope guys don't settle into one inning roles where it will be necessary for them to work several days in a row to maintain winning streaks.

Very well said, R. Billie. This bullpen is ideally suited to this kind of usage because of the evenness of the talent- there are no Mariano Riveras nor Doug Creeks. Adams, Ligtenberg, Lopez, Speier and Kershner are roughly of the same quality, and all are able to pitch 1-2 innings every 2-3 days. There is no reason for this bullpen to have pitchers going on back-to-back days except very occasionally (after extra-inning games perhaps). The LOOGY, de los Santos, is probably the exception.

I cannot say that I am optimistic that this is how the bullpen will in fact be used. The prevailing notions of closer, set-up man, LOOGY etc., lead to repetitive stints of one inning maximum.

Not that the Chris Black article deserves much comment, but it really exposes his baseball and math ignorance when he points out that Hinske's average, OBP, and slugging % all dropped by 10% or more this year. Well, duh. Batting average is most of OBP and even for a power hitter it's usually at least half of slugging. What a moron.

And that's assuming that 10% is a particularly big or meaningful drop. If a hits 30 homeruns and next season hits 27, that's a 10% drop. A .400 obp would become .360 and a .500 slg would become .450. Noticeable but hardly a red flag for a second year player. Convert a few of Hinske's doubles into homeruns with his hand healed this year and he should be right back in the area he started from.

His math is apparently defficient when working with ratios too as he brought up Hinske's almost 2 to 1 ratio of K's to BB's when it was in fact a slightly better ratio than the 1.8 he put the year before from which his skills supposedly degraded so far from.

As far as Black's "scouting skills"...Fullmer and Hinske have slow bats? Brad Fullmer has a low rate of strikeouts and pounds righthanders. If his bat was so slow why can't righties get him out with inside heat? And Hinske's bat is so slow he turned around a high-90's Rich Harden fastball almost at his shoulders and hit it out of Oakland's large ballpark. Twice.

That article MikeJ linked to listed McGowan as #1, with Lexi at 2. I always thought Rios was the best prospect we have, and that seemed to be public opinion for the most part. Is McGowan this good?

I remember always watching Brad Fullmer, big forearms and all jerk pitch after pitch foul down the firstbase line. I thought he had some of the quickest hands and bat around.

http://www.battersbox.ca/archives/00001378.shtml
Rob,

The interview with John Sickels from last week also puts McGowan at the head of our prospect class, with a rating of A- to Rios' rating of B+ (among others such as Gross). There was ample discussion of the "why is Rios only B+" in the thread, so I'll leave it to you to read up on the opinions expressed there (COMN for the link). Lets just say it's a nice problem to have when worrying which of our two top prospects is more likely to be an all-star...

Mike M:
On Jan 27th Clay Davenport (BP) delivered 1st part of his work about Winter ball equivalencies. Similar approach with very limited data and related to Rios performance was done by John N on the post " De minimus non curat Lexi ". May you link both sites?. I want to ask John N if he wants to comment.
Regards

In regards to Fullmer's "fast bat": Yanking a pitch down the right-field line doesn't necessarily mean you have quick hands. Especially when he's hooking them down there, it usually means a batter is cheating and looking for an inside pitch.

To anyone that suggests Hinske didn't regress last year: Wake up! He put on weight, reverted to his terrible fielding and lost power. I like the Jays just as much as anyone else that reads this webpage but let's be honest with ourselves here.