Nice La's reference Braden.

I watched the New Hampshire game last night on MILBTV. A few observations:

Deck MacGuire: MacGuire is not as burly as Jenkins, but is a bit taller and like Jenkins has big-time innings written all over him. MacGuire works very quickly, almost too quickly. He gets the ball and throws. At several points it did seem like he had to consciously slow down, and he was somewhat erratic with his command and one might surmise that if he took a breath between pitches he might be able to focus more on the pitch. I don't think this is a big deal or something that really needs to be corrected, but it's one of those things where if he were to be in a groove it's great, but if he's getting hit it's one hit after another. MacGuire probably has the more developed repertoire than Jenkins. He has four pitches--fastball, slider, curveball, and changeup. He seems to have a feel for sequence and setting hitters up. I would say his stuff grades out as ML average. There were no radar guns, but I imagine he worked 89-92 with the fastball, the announcers mentioned he was usually 90-92. The fastball is fairly straight and when located in the bottom half of the zone works at a nice downward plane. The slider is probably his second best pitch, and shows good bite and shape. He'll get some strikeouts here and there with it, but it's not plus. The curve is more of a get me over type than strike out, and the change didn't seem to be anything too special on the night. MacGuire's command wasn't great on the night, yet he was also around the zone. He tends to miss his spots in bad areas a fair amount of the time, which led to a lot of loud outs/hits. I think the safest thing you can say about MacGuire, if he makes the big leagues he's going to give up his fair share of homers. But he's the type not to be phased by runs or hits and will go right after hitters and not shy away from the strike zone. The stuff plays up as a result, and maybe for these reasons he is perhaps ahead of Jenkins on the prospect chart. For him, I don't think he needs to work on any particular pitch, but he needs to improve the overall command and work to miss low in the zone. He's going to pitch in a ML rotation at some point in his career.

Still impressed with McDade and his understanding of what pitchers are trying to do to him and his overall "eye"/approach. His homerun was deep to right and he routinely worked deep counts. Just a note on his power. He has power, but definitely not plus power and I don't think he possesses the violence in his swing that premier first basemen have. He's a good hitter and I think those walk numbers are only going to go up this year.

McGuire & Jenkins sound a lot like Jesse Litsch to me. The more of those guys you have the merrier, because one of them will stick.

Is McDade's defense as good as advertised?

I think Litsch was better than both Jenkins and McGuire. Better command/control and better groundball rates too. I think both these guys are relievers in the Majors. Command/control for both of them is mediocre even at the AA level. I doubt either one holds a rotation spot anywhere longer than Litsch held onto one. 

I don't think he's fielded a ground ball in either of the two games. He seems to have good actions over there, but I can't really comment on his defense.

I did not see Jesse Litsch in the minors so I'm not too sure about comparisons. One thing about Jesse Litsch which was incredibly frustrating and probably worked against him most in terms of long-term future in a major league rotation is he refused to pitch off his fastball and very rarely challenged hitters. He never struck me as the type to go after hitters and that's needed to start.

Both Jenkins and MacGuire trust their fastballs and pitch off them. MacGuire goes right after you and Jenkins does as well. In terms of career trajectories I don't know, but the two at AA have the gusto to pitch at the ML level that Jesse Litsch does not have.

Jesse Litsch was pitching in MLB, and pitching well, at age 22. He had near 300ip of sub-4.00era in MLB by age 23.

McGuire and Jenkins are struggling badly in AA at ages 23 and 24. Don't think they're anywhere close to Litsch, really.

It seems obvious to me that Litsch is vastly different from before his injuries to what he is now. I actually expect him to bounce back quite well. My reasoning is
1)TJ can be recovered from with a high success rate.
2) The other injuries & setbacks are not serious but seem to be numerous. He just cannot build any momentum.

I concede that the weight gain may be a problem.