Ask Baseball America By James Bailey
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May 30, 2000You've got to enjoy the Memorial Day baseball fest ESPN presents every year. I got to see more major league action yesterday than I have all month, I think. And I got to watch one of my new favorites work in the Detroit-Texas game. I really enjoy watching Tigers righthander Jeff Weaver work. His pitches have so much movement on them and he doesn't shoot anything up there straight. I think within a year or two he's going to be one of the best pitchers in the American League. Kind of makes you wonder how he'd look in a White Sox uniform. Weaver, of course, was drafted in the second round by the Sox in 1997, but Chicago let him get away. They signed five supplemental first-rounders and every pick they had in the first 15 rounds except for Weaver. That haul included righthanders Aaron Myette and Rocky Biddle and lefthander Jim Parque. Throw Weaver into that mix and it would have been quite the haul. I kind of like playing the coulda-been game with old drafts. It's intriguing to go back through the old draft lists and look at who didn't get signed. Of course, in most cases they were high school kids who were either set on going to college or they had such a long ways to go that the team didn't make a serious effort to sign them. The Tigers' 1995 draft is an interesting one for the guys who got away. How would their organization look with outfielders Eric Valent (26th round) and Jeremy Giambi (44th)? How about first baseman--er, lefthander--Mark Mulder (55th)? You often see teams draft a bunch of players, especially back before they cut the draft to 50 rounds in 1998, and make little effort to sign most of them. But the Tigers signed their last four picks that year, rounds 56-59, making Mulder their latest unsigned pick. No. 57, incidentally, was outfielder Gabe Kapler. It's not unusual in this era of free agency for a team to wind up with numerous first-round picks. But it is a little unusual for a team to let three future first-rounders get away. It's looking like that's what happened in 1997 for the Yankees. Outfielder Tyrell Godwin was New York's first-round pick that year, and he chose to attend North Carolina on a Morehead (academic) Scholarship. It appears that he'll repeat as a first-rounder next week. There are two others projected to go in the first-round on Monday who chose college over the Yankees three years ago. How would that farm system look with righthanders Beau Hale (22nd round, Texas) and Aaron Heilman (55th round, Notre Dame)? Of course hindsight is 20-20, but if the Yankees could redo things, perhaps they'd choose to sign those three players and forget about all of the other guys they inked. It's just another week now until we get to size up another draft class. It's always the busiest time of the year for us here, but somehow we don't seem to mind the extra work so much because the draft is so much fun, frantic as it may be. And you can thank the fear of a really crazy week for having this column up so early this time around. Had to clear the decks. Enjoy. What is wrong with the Cubs? Are they not the worst organization in sports? They promote Carlos Zambrano, an 18-year-old kid, to Triple-A, which is rushing him, to begin with. To top it all off, they stick him in the bullpen. This kid throws 95-plus and maintains his stuff late into games. So, in an effort by Ed Lynch to save his job, he rushed Zambrano to the Triple-A bullpen, so he can bring him up to "rescue" the bullpen. Now, two of the three best arms in the system in Kyle Farnsworth and Zambrano (Ben Christensen being the other) are stuck in the Iowa bullpen. Why do I follow this organization? God help me. Pat Sievert Edmond, OK It does seem a little curious to me for the Cubs to take a starter as capable as Zambrano and move him to relief. Generally, any time a pitcher is succeeding as a starter a team will leave him in that role. For the most part, pitchers who get moved to the bullpen are moved because there is something missing from their game that is keeping them from being a successful starter, like they don't have an effective third pitch, etc. The exceptions you see to this rule often occur when a major league team already has five good starters and they want to mix a young pitcher in. So they send him to the bullpen for a season or two to get his feet wet and wait for an opening. That happened with Scott Elarton in Houston last year, for example. Is the Zambrano move a panic move by the Cubs? Well, the big league bullpen owns a 7.15 ERA and is 12-for-23 in save opportunities. More astonishingly, Cubs relievers have walked more batters than they've struck out (111 to 107, though 17 of those free passes were intentional). To me this smells like a desperation move. But even worse, it's a shortsighted one. It's not like the Cubs rotation is shutting everyone down. Chicago starters have a 5.60 ERA as a group. If Zambrano, who turns 19 on Thursday, is not going to get to Wrigley in time to save the Cubs season anyway (as if one rookie could singlehandedly do that again), why not groom him to step into the rotation next April? The bottom line is that a starter is more valuable than a reliever. Two-hundred innings is more valuable than 65 innings. It's a simple fact, borne out by the relative pay scales of major league pitching. The top dogs are starting pitchers, and there's a reason for that. If Zambrano were my top pitching prospect, I'd be leaving him in the rotation. It seems like the Pirates make extra risky choices with their drafts by picking people in rounds far different than many expect (Ryan Duimont last year for example, Clint Johnston as a first-rounder two years ago). But then they are willing to take chances and spend big money in later rounds. I'm wondering what has happened to player they drafted late last year and give a big bonus to, I don't remember his name but he was scheduled to pitch at Notre Dame but Bucs signed him instead. Also, what about J.R. House and Jeremey Cotten. Can House develop into a big league catcher? Is Cotten back to being a good a prospect? Hickory looks like it has a ton of prospects. Thanks, Ron Leighton The pitcher the Pirates signed away from Notre Dame was righthander Patrick O'Brien, whom they signed in late July for $500,000. O'Brien didn't pitch last summer and has yet to make his pro debut. He will likely do so next month when the short-season leagues begin playing. As expected, House has a long way to go at catcher, if the Pirates are serious about keeping him behind the plate. He recognizes that and is willing to work at it, but it's a long-term project. It presents kind of an interesting dilemma for the Pirates. House is going to be ready offensively to climb the ladder, while defensively he won't be. That means he either stays down and tears things up at the plate or he shifts to first base full-time and moves on up. I think most teams would rather take the patient approach and see what happens defensively with a player in House's situation. If he can become even an adequate defensive catcher, he brings so much to your team offensively. Maybe he'd be an average to above-average hitter for a first baseman in the big leagues, but the same offense at catcher would make him one of the best in the game. That's got to be appealing. Of course, the Pirates already have one of the best catchers in the game in Jason Kendall. But House is a few years away and a lot can happen in 2-3 years. In addition, Kendall has been rumored to be a candidate for a position shift since he was in A-ball. If the Pirates decided to move Kendall to second base, etc., a couple of years down the road and they had House ready to step in behind the plate, it would all come together nicely. Cotten has rebounded quite nicely and looks once again like a second-round talent, which is where he was taken in the 1998 draft. Hickory is indeed quite deep in talent. If you're interested in learning more about that team, we ran a story on the Crawdads a few weeks ago. I'm a big Phillies fan, and have read about the recent success of Piedmont. I also have read about the individuals on Piedmont who have showed much promise. Unfortunately, all that I have been able to read are statistics. I was hoping that you could give me a little more info on Marlon Byrd, Nate Espy, Brett Myers and Adam Walker. I would also like to know who you feel has the best shot to have a major league impact down the road. Thanks, Scott
Espy, 22, played at Piedmont last year, but without the success he's having this season, hitting .254 with 11 homers and 38 RBIs. An 18th-round pick out of Lurleen B Wallace (Ala.) JC in 1998, he hit .361 with 13 homers and 56 RBIs at Rookie-level Martinsville his first season and he's hitting .317 and tied for the Sally League lead with 12 homers this year. He's also consistently drawn walks in his three pro seasons, even last year when the rest of his numbers were down. Defensively, he's not bad at first base except for the fact that he can't throw. Going back through my notes from doing the Appalachian League Top 10 in '98 it seems the two most common things managers said were that he couldn't throw a lick and that he had a great work ethic. That combination works better at first base than anywhere else. Myers, you probably know as the Phillies' first-round pick from last year. He made his debut in the Rookie-level GCL and pitched pretty well, striking out 30 in 27 innings and posting a 2.33 ERA. The No. 3 prospect in the Phillies organization, Myers is a power pitcher who throws in the mid-90s on a regular basis. Walker just moved up to high Class A Clearwater, or should I say moved back there. A 27th-round pick out of Mississippi in 1997, he spent the entire 1999 season at Clearwater, going 9-7 with a 3.93 ERA. This spring he went back a level, though, going to Piedmont, where he went 9-0 with a 2.08 ERA in 1998. The Phillies said they based their decision on demoting the 6-foot-7 Walker on the fact that he just never looked last year like the dominant guy they saw the year before. They wanted him to go back to Piedmont to re-find himself and he did, going 6-1, 2.05 before earning a ticket out of Piedmont. Hate to take the obvious choice, but if I were picking one out of the four for the biggest impact down the road, I'd choose Myers. After that I might go with Walker. It sounds funny, but I don't think the Phillies would bother demoting the guy if they didn't think he had it in him to do better. And he showed a lot by accepting the move without moaning about it and just going out and showing them what they wanted to see. I heard that Tony Phillips is playing for a Pacific Coast team in Triple-A ball. Is this true and if so can you give me some up to date information about Tony; his recovery from a broken leg; if he has thoughts of being signed again. Thanks, Joe
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