Today's Fantasy Rx

As I mentioned yesterday, please know that I don't intend to directly regurgitate the information presented by the speakers, since we don't want to reduce the value of the conference for the attendees or discourage anyone from attending in the future.

Following Deric McKamey's look at AFL prospects, John Sickels, of ESPN and the author of the now-defunct STATS Minor League Scouting Handbook, presented his yearly look around the minors. Like other minor league analysts, he examines both MLEs and age relative to league when looking at players, and most of the players he identified as top prospects were also listed in my prospect reviews by team over the last month. However, instead of the traditional five tools(hit for average, hit for power, throw, field, run), John's advocated a paradigm shift to his "Seven Skills" for hitters, and while we're not sure that seven is enough, we definitely find this idea more useful than just the standard five tools. John specifies the following skills:

Strike zone judgment
Ability to hit for average
Ability to hit for power
Offensive speed
Fielding range
Fielding reliability
Arm utility

We'd like to see the addition of a few more rankings like "baseball instincts/intelligence", "off-field maturity", and a division between arm strength and accuracy, however moving from five to seven fields of analysis is definitely a good start.

Among the players he discussed during his presentation, he mentioned that while Blalock is a great hitter, Mark Teixeira is better and also ready for the majors. He also raised the following intriguing points:

Significant baseball tools can allow a player to overcome the fact that he doesn't know what he's doing on the baseball field (Alfonso Soriano);

Teams normally develop one major league pitcher out of every six pitching prospects;

Slow guys who accumulate steals in the minors might have good upside because of strong "baseball instincts";

and make sure to move around the park while watching pitchers. When he saw Kerry Wood a few years ago, he could see the stress on his elbow during his motion from behind first base but not from behind the plate, behind third base(the Cubs' dugout), or on TV.

John's presentation concluded the first day of Symposium sessions, and then we headed over to the afternoon game at Maryvale Stadium. Per the long-standing Symposium custom of ridesharing when possible, we wound up chauffeuring Sickels over to Maryvale.

We arrived slightly before the game and scarfed down a little overpriced ballpark food, and I almost choked on my hot dog when the PA played the "Imperial March" when announcing the umpires, an amusing musical interlude that I'd like to see a lot of other ballparks adopt.

Due to the mass of scouts occupying a significant number of seats behind home, we wound up on the right side of the home plate section, about fifteen rows up from the field. The biggest problem with this game was an extremely unimpressive pitching match-up between Peoria's Mario Ramos of Texas and Maryvale's Mike Paradis of Baltimore. Neither soft-tosser showed much in the game, allowing us to focus on the lineups.

Peoria's heart-of-the-order included Teixeira at third, SD's Tagg Bozied at 1B, LA's Koyie Hill at C, and SD's Jake Gautreau at 2B, along with Seattle's Ryan Christianson at DH and LA's Shane Victorino in CF listed towards the end of the lineup.

Maryvale featured a more intriguing assortment of "prospects" without playing anyone close to the upside of Teixeira or Hill. Leadoff man Joe Thurston(2B) is probably the most prepared for the majors, and his lineup included So Taguchi(CF), Terrmel Sledge(RF), Drew Henson(3B), Corey Hart(1B), Dee Haynes(LF), Bill Hall(SS), and John Gall(DH). Only Sledge and Hart show any significant upside, and neither team offered any impressive relievers, pitching mostly a collection of finesse sidearmers.

Drew Henson looked horrible, although the right side of the infield, and first base in particular, turned into a black void of despair on defense. Both Bozied and Hart missed several throws, Gautreau bobbled a ball from the grass by second all the way past the 1B line, Thurston made at least four bad plays, and "Tagg Bozied couldn't tag Taguchi". Henson's weak swing resulted in a few "$50 at-bats" as he fouled off at least five pitches, most of them going straight back near us.

About the only notable items at the game were seeing Teixeira display major league-caliber defense at third, and learning that most pitches lose between 2-3 mph between the mound and home(different radar guns measure the ball at different points). Most "official MPH" readings clock the ball as the pitcher releases it.

We departed Maryvale around 4, and wound up driving around for a while with John while trying to find a restaurant. After failing to find anything overly intriguing on the way back to the hotel, we wound up near the University of Arizona campus in Tempe, stopping at a generic chain for a quick bite.

The evening game allowed us to trek to Mesa for only the second game we've seen at HoHoKam Park. Both Grand Canyon and Mesa featured lineups full of prospects, as well as a solid assortment of pitchers that provided us with the most enjoyable game of the fall.

Grand Canyon led off with Mike Rouse(DH) of Toronto, followed by Rocco Baldelli(CF), Chase Utley(3B), Lance Niekro(1B), Gabe Gross(RF), Todd Linden(LF), Kevin Cash(C), TB's Jace Brewer(SS), and Atlanta's Nick Green(2B). While Mesa didn't start the same level of prospects, we were pleased with a lineup of Chip Ambres(FLO CF), Tommy Whiteman(HOU SS), Mike Hill(HOU LF), Hee Seop Choi, John Buck, Jack Hannahan(DET 3B), Cody Ross(DET RF), J.D. Closser(COL C), and Clint Barnes(COL C). Starting pitchers Horacio Ramirez and Jon Leicester(CHC) provided an interesting contrast in styles.

The game began with a disappointing and worrisome HBP, as Rocco Baldelli, batting second in the top of the first, fouled a ball off his face. He left the game, and we found our later that he needed nine stitches even though he didn't break anything. Unfortunately we only saw Baldelli for those couple of pitches.

Both Cash and Buck showed off their impressive arms throughout the game, consistently firing the ball to second with very smooth motions. Some of the fielding problems at first base during the afternoon persisted as Niekro and Choi struggled with some throws. Chase Utley continued to struggle in the field, and along with the reports we heard from others, we no longer expect him to begin 2003 in the majors with any team.

In the bottom of the fourth, Mesa manager Bobby Dickerson of the Cubs threw up the stop sign on a Tommy Whiteman single, but while Closser stopped at third, Ambres didn't look up when rounding second and didn't see Closser until he arrived at third. Closser, displaying solid baseball instincts, took off for the plate when he realized that Ambres wouldn't return to second, and only a great job of plate blocking by Cash allowed him to tag Closser. When the next pitch scooted twenty feet past Cash, he quickly recovered the ball and threw to reliever Evan Rust to nab Ambres at home.

Hee Seop Choi smacked a deep triple in the bottom of the fifth, and he displayed good speed in rounding the bases. He also impressed us by sliding feet-first into third base, and then again slid feet-first into home when he scored on the next batter's sacrifice fly.

A few innings later at around 9:47 PM(not that I checked or anything), J.D. Closser crushed a ball of Tampa's John Benedetti that went straight up over the plate before drifting foul. After taking a high bounce off the concrete, it headed down towards us on the far-left side of the second row behind the backstop. I reached out with my left hand to grab my first foul ball, earning a nice round of applause and a comment from the PA announcer of something like "Give that guy a contract". Unfortunately Closser popped to Utley on the next pitch, but he was nice enough to autograph it for us after the game, earning himself "Rotohelp Favorite" status in a nearly identical manner to Montreal's Val Pascucci in 2001.

We saw our first extra-inning AFL game as the score wound up at 6-6 at the end of nine. he PA played "A Hard Day's Night" as the game headed into the 10th inning before announcing that the game would not continue past the 11th inning due to the dearth of pitching in the AFL. However Grand Canyon managed to push across a run in the 11th to win the game.

Aside from Rust and Benedetti, we saw an intriguing collection of relievers that included Detroit's Tim Kalita, Ferenc Jongejan of the Cubs, Houston's Mike Gallo, Toronto's Scott Wiggins, Atlanta's 5'9" AA fireballer Buddy Hernandez, and Colorado's Ryan Cameron. The last two relievers probably have the most upside, although we wouldn't be surprised to see all these pitchers in the majors within the next few years.

While sitting down front with Sickels in the first inning, he pointed out an intriguing method for those of us without perfect eyesight to evaluate pitchers' motion, mechanics, and consistency. John looks through the backstop mesh at the pitcher, lining up one of the horizontal strings with the bottom of the pitcher's feet. Then you can use the squares to check various aspects of the pitcher. You can use this method anywhere behind the backstop, and we found it incredibly useful when scouting pitchers over the next few days.

Horacio Ramirez used the same release point for his pitches, but we found that Chicago's Jon Leicester telegraphed his slider very consistently. He managed to release his fastball and curveball in about the same place, but he let go of the slider from a slightly higher point. I'll use Leicester to illustrate this new method for you, which we've decided to call the Sickelsgrid for obvious reasons.

In the first Sickelsgrid, I've shown the stick figure version of Leicester as he sets to pitch.

The next Sickelsgrid shows where he releases his fastball and curveball.

Finally, this last Sickelsgrid shows where he releases his slider.

Although I'm sure that most scouts probably use other methods for checking consistency, we found this incredibly useful to quickly evaluate each pitcher. Even when sitting much further back at some later games, we could still use the backstop to break down the different parts of the pitching motion, and we highly recommend our readers tell their friends about this if they find the technique as useful as we do.

I'll continue tomorrow with a recap of the third day of the Symposium.

Today's Fantasy Rx: When you next attend a game, try to spend at least sometime behind home plate, using the Sickelsgrid technique to break down the pitcher's motion and mechanics.