Ask Baseball America By James Bailey
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- May 16, 2000
May 18, 2000I've seen several draft-related questions in the inbox lately, and I can assure you that they all should be answered soon. On this site, but not by me. In the month of May we joke around here that Allan Simpson, editor and founder of BA, holes up in the "draft bunker" to prepare for the big day, talking to seemingly every scout and coach with access to a phone. We will be unveiling the fruits of his labor next week when we launch our serious draft preview on BA Online. I have to think that when we post everything we've got on the draft, every question that has been sent in so far will be answered in one form or another. So tune in for that next week. And in the meantime, here's a bunch of non-draft related questions. I read your article about injuries and why players can't be found. My question is about Sean Burroughs. I see his stats are not what the Padres expected this year in Double-A Mobile. He has not played in over a week. Is he benched or injured? Thanks in advance, Scott Sahr Burroughs missed eight games at Mobile with a wrist injury, but he's back in the lineup now. His numbers aren't near what they were last year, but he's getting his average up (.277). Still not hitting for any power, though, with no homers and five doubles in 112 at-bats. I'm not sure we can say whether those are the numbers the Padres expected, but it's safe to assume there were a lot of others who expected to see more. But it's been said that the jump from Class A to Double-A is the toughest one to make, and Burroughs is making it basically from low A-ball. He moved to the California League for the last week of the season and the playoffs last year, but spent most of the 1999 season at Fort Wayne. One more thing to keep in mind is that Burroughs is 19, playing in Double-A. He's one of the youngest players in the Southern League and it's not such a blemish on him to not be taking it by storm from Day One. The same goes for Cubs center-fielder-of-the-future Corey Patterson, who caused a stir with his often stunning spring training performance. He's a year older than Burroughs but has only one year of prior service, all at low Class A Lansing. He got off to a terrible start at West Tenn and has since showed flashes of what he's capable of doing. His numbers last season were tremendous in every category except walk-to-strikeout ratio (25-to-85). Not surprisingly, his numbers there need to improve this year (8-to-33), but that will likely come with time. Through West Tenn's first 39 games he's hitting .246 with six homers and 25 RBIs. I heard that Braves prospect Scott Sobkowiak has been injured. What is the prognosis? Will he be back this year? Skip Sobkowiak, the No. 4 prospect in the Braves organization, had surgery to remove bone chips from his elbow. He's likely to miss the rest of the season. He was 2-1 with a 4.63 ERA in four starts at Double-A Greenville before he went down. What happened to the Detroit Tigers' highly touted pitcher Matt Drews? Was he traded or has he left baseball completely? T4tampa@dellnet.com Drews was released this spring before the season started, ending a dreadful run with the Tigers. A first-round pick of the Yankees in 1993, Drews looked like a future star early in his career. In '94 he went 7-6 with a 2.10 ERA in the short-season New York-Penn League and in '95 he went 15-7, 2.27 in the Class A Florida State League. Then the Yankees decided to challenge him with a jump to Triple-A Columbus to open the '96 season. Bad idea. Drews completely lost his mechanics and worked his way backwards through the system after starting 0-4 with an 8.41 ERA at Columbus. In July of that year, the Yankees sent him to the Tigers along with Ruben Sierra in exchange for Cecil Fielder. The 6-foot-8 righthander never even came close to returning to form in three-plus seasons with the Tigers, posting a 15-48 record over that time. Last season he went 2-14 with an 8.27 ERA at Triple-A Toledo. This spring he signed with the Devil Rays, but they released him this week and he's once again out of work. Could you give us the lowdown (age, draft choice, skills) on Bobby Darula who's hitting .426 for Beloit in the Midwest League? Thanks, Bruce Norlander Minneapolis, MN
Tony Leopold Correa, who currently ranks third in the Class A Carolina League in ERA, is a Venezuelan who signed with the Cardinals in May 1998. The 6-foot-1 righthander went 3-3 with a 2.94 ERA at short-season New Jersey last year, striking out 59 in 52 innings. He also struggled to an 0-2, 10.35 record in five starts in the Class A Midwest League in '99. This year he's been the best pitcher on a Potomac staff that also includes early-round 1999 picks Chance Caple and Josh Pearce. May 16, 2000I have some fresh information on some of the MIA players we talked about last Thursday, and information on a couple of others as well. John Nicholson was in extended spring training learning how to play the outfield at the beginning of the season, but our Expos correspondent Michael Levesque reports that he actually retired from baseball in mid-April. So the answer to "where is he now?" in Nicholson's case would be "home." And Jermaine Van Buren is in extended spring training, but he's not rehabbing from an injury. I said last week I'd heard he had torn his labrum but I couldn't confirm that. Van Buren's problem is simply a lack of velocity. The Rockies are keeping him in extended spring training to give him time to recover the power on his fastball. In 1998 in the Rookie-level Arizona League, Van Buren was regularly at 92-94 mph with his fastball. That year he won the AZL triple crown, going 7-2 with a 2.22 ERA and 92 strikeouts in 65 innings. He was named the No. 2 prospect in the league that year, behind Athletics righthander Jesus Colome. Last year at Class A Asheville, Van Buren's velocity began to tail off and he went 7-10, 4.91. He still struck out 133 in 143 innings, but he was nowhere near as dominant as the previous season. According to Paul Egins, the Rockies' director of minor league operations, Van Buren is back up to the 88-89 mph range these days and the team is hopeful that he'll be able to go to Asheville or short-season Portland when he's ready to pitch like he can again. The Rockies aren't exactly sure why he lost so much arm strength, but they have worked a lot on his mechanics and they've seen enough improvement to be encouraged. I also had a question from someone last week that I couldn't answer, but by mere serendipity, the answer came to me. Here, at last, is the question: I have been unable to find stats on Arizona prospect Andrew Good (No. 12 on your Top 10 list) this year. Is he hurt? Could you please update me on him and his progress? Thanks. Dave Cleveland Good's father happened to see the list we did on the pitchers who have recently had Tommy John surgery, and wrote to say that we could add Good to that list. Good suffered a serious elbow injury in a spring training game in mid-March. He was under the knife less than two weeks later. He's now rehabbing down in Arizona and has his sights set on a spring training return next year. His father reports that he is making steady progress and getting stronger every day. While we're on the subject of injuries, I learned this week that one of my favorites in the Mariners organization is going to be down for the next couple of months. Peanut Williams had surgery yesterday to have bone chips removed from his elbow. Williams missed almost half the season last year after breaking his hand when he was hit by a pitch. He still managed to crank out 28 home runs in 304 at-bats, mostly at Class A Lancaster. This year, he was hitting .218 with four homers and 20 RBIs in 110 at-bats at Lancaster. Okay, let's get on to some new questions . . . Hey, I was wondering if you can tell me what a draft and follow signing is. I've been reading the term everywhere in the draft section on your website but I don't have a clue as to what it means. Thanks and keep up the great job. Phillip Khaylo The term "draft-and-follow" refers to players who have been drafted in one year's draft and signed just before the follow year's. This is limited to junior college players, as players at four-year schools are no longer eligible to sign once they start classes in the fall. Players who attend jucos are eligible to sign with the team that drafted them the previous June up until a week before that year's draft. A true draft-and-follow is a high school or juco player that a team picks relatively late in the draft with the intention of waiting and seeing how they develop over the next year. Some of these players blossom into potential high-round picks with an additional year of seasoning and they sign for several hundred thousand dollars. Other players, like Orioles prospect Matt Riley, sign the year after they're drafted, but they weren't picked with the draft-and-follow process in mind. The Orioles took Riley in the third round of the '97 draft after he had had a disappointing spring and saw his draft stock slip. Riley wanted first-round money, so he didn't sign and instead went to Sacramento City College for a year and saw his stock rise back up. He signed with the Orioles in May 1998 for $750,000, which is about what players who were drafted in the supplemental first round got that year. If you're interested in learning more about the process, check out a story we ran on it this time last year. While we're on the topic of baseball lingo, I've seen a couple of questions about the "Mendoza Line." I thought everyone knew this one, because it's actually used way too frequently, especially by folks like Chris Berman, who uses all three of the tricks in his bag way too frequently. But I guess not everyone is familiar with it after all. The "Mendoza Line" is a .200 batting average. It's named after former big league shortstop Mario Mendoza, who was actually a .215 career hitter in nine big league seasons. It's been reported from time to time that he's not real thrilled to have the stigma of a low batting average associated with him, but he's probably stuck with it for the rest of his life and then some. According to the Dickson Baseball Dictionary, Mendoza has former Mariners teammates Bruce Bochte and Tom Paciorek to thank for this legacy. Apparently while Mendoza was playing with the Mariners in 1979-80 he was bouncing back and forth above and below the .200 mark. Bochte and Paciorek picked up on this and coined the term. Hall of Famer George Brett has also been credited with the term, but the DBD seems to indicate that Brett is likely to have picked up on the term after the Mariner duo came up with it. By the way, if you're looking for a way to spend $20, you could do a lot worse than buying the Dickson Baseball Dictionary. Every fan, no matter how closely they've been following the game, can surely learn a lot from thumbing through there. I have an original uniform from Lancaster in the Ohio State League from the early 1900s. The uniform was worn by John S. Girton, pitcher. I believe this team was an early form of the Reds. Do you have any information on this? Thanks. DiTom3548@aol.com According to the Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, the Lancaster team played in the Ohio State League from 1908-11. In 1908 they were known as the Red Roses and they won the league with a 92-57 record. The next three seasons they were called the Lanks and they didn't see much success. In 1909, the Lanks disbanded part way through the season and in 1910 and '11 they finished next-to-last both times. The Reds are the oldest professional team going, dating back to 1869, when they became the first club to pay all of their players. So the Lancaster club of the early 1900s was not a predecessor of the Reds. Whether there was any kind of informal relationship between the teams, I don't know, but the early 1900s was well before teams began formal farm systems, so there was probably no official tie between the two. May 12, 2000 There's some updated news on one of the players I mentioned yesterday, so I wanted to include it here. I said Diamondbacks' top prospect John Patterson was going to visit Dr. Lewis Yocum, but that there were no indications he'd need Yocum's specialty: Tommy John surgery. Well, now there are. Patterson will get a second opinion from Yocum, but he and the Diamondbacks are fearing that he'll need to have the ligament transplant operation. According to the Arizona Republic, Patterson said an MRI revealed there was "not much of a ligament at all" left in his elbow. That's not a good sign. Patterson has apparently already taken a number with Dr. James Andrews, who did Kerry Wood's elbow, among others. The Republic also mentioned that Nick Bierbrodt's back injury could keep him out for another two months. Directory: mlb mlb -> By Ken Gurnick mlb -> Los angeles dodgers clips mlb -> 2010 – What’s the name of the umpire whose errant call cost the Tigers’ Armando Galarraga a perfect game in 2010? (Jim Joyce) gabp mlb -> Wednesday, September 23, 2015 headlines: Verrett stumbles in the fifth as Mets lose to Braves 6-2 mlb -> All-Star History In what city was the first All-Game played? (Chicago, 1933) Baseball & Pop Culture mlb -> Los angeles dodgers clips mlb -> Los angeles dodgers clips mlb -> Los angeles dodgers clips mlb -> The Impact of Television Revenue on Major League Baseball mlb -> Los angeles dodgers clips Download 1 Mb. Share with your friends:
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