6/30 ML Gameday Thread: Ranaudo & Diaz close out the month

Strong pitching as per always.

Ranaudo last 4 starts 4BB total
Diaz first 2 AA starts 14IP 136 pitches total.

Take this for what it's worth. It's from a combination of things that I've read and heard/seen during games. Diaz was my pre-season sleeper pick so I've been following closely.

He's different than the profile but that was written after Ian saw him in the spring. My speculation only. Since I'm pretty sure Ian knows what he's looking at, I'm guessing Diaz is one of the tons of pitchers that have a dead arm period in spring training.

First this is an incredibly efficient pitcher. The reason I know the pitch counts is that I knew that from Salem. He features a heavy fastball that he uses to get strike one. He breaks a lot of bats with it. Sits 92-93 throughout and tops out at 94. His second best pitch is his change. I'm guessing it is plus now and maybe plus-plus or at least has that potential. I haven't gotten a handle yet on how he uses his curve and slider but he has both. I also know that the slider can feature a sharp break, I don't know about the curve. It's going to take me a while to see how he uses them, announcers don't call all the pitches and I'm not that great at eyeballing a distant camera shot. I do know that in the games I listened to in Salem, he mostly used sliders as his third pitch but the game I saw for Portland, it was curves. Black box at this point to me but we'll likely have eyes on him now that he's in Prospectdom.

On the flyballs, he gets a lot of pop-ups and lazy flies. Last time out, late in the game, against two specific batters, he got 2 Ks throwing all changeups.

I can understand the skepticism because of the logistics. I'm sure the Sox know either way but from an outsider perspective, unless somebody gets to Greenville with a 'pedigree' there really aren't any eyes to see what's actually happening. For us outsiders, it becomes a matter of scouting the boxes. It's not at all uncommon for a hitter or pitcher to be advanced enough to dominate lower levels but not have the goods to be successful when he competes against other advanced players that do have the goods.

jmei, FB guys with actual HR/FB and BABIP skills (and hence ERA < advanced metrics) tend to either be guys with extraordinary command, or with some deception or other funk in their delivery (e.g., Jered Weaver). Does Diaz fit the latter, to your knowledge?

Ya mean like Hank?!

Was hoping we might see Chavis today,

I, for one, am offended by the dissing of one of the systems unheralded prospects - Keith Couch. I mean, he's not even pitching today.

In all seriousness, while it won't be in Boston, he will pitch in the big leagues somewhere.

I'm not sure this deserves its own thread; so I'll post it here. I was reading Speier's minor league round-up this morning, which focuses on Sean Coyle. At one point, Speier suggests that beyond Swihart and Devers, few players in the Sox system can match Coyle's ceiling. He goes on to list some others that you could make an argument for, and one of the names he mentions is GCL SS Javier Guerra. I have to admit, he's not a guy I've paid much attention to, and I don't recall hearing (reading) much conversation on here about him. Did I just miss the boat on this one?

As I mentioned, he has good command, which means he has a good K/BB, but that stat is less predictive than a stat like K%-BB%, which Diaz would rank more poorly in. His ERA wasn't too far off from his K/BB/HR peripherals in Salem; my point there was just that a lot of his success was driven by a low HR rate that is probably not sustainable. He's had only two starts in Portland, so his AA stats are in extreme small sample sizes and thus probably not worth analyzing.

I think he's more Keith Couch than Brandon Workman or Brian Johnson, and am a little confused why a fair number of folks have him being protected in the Rule 5 draft this offseason. But that's a matter for another thread.

 

Speier apparently got really positive reports on Guerra over the course of 2013 and has been talking him up since. Here's what I think is his initial mention of Guerra, and here's his preseason scouting report on young Javier. 

ADD: Speier also ranked Guerra 27th in his preseason BA top 30, ahead of guys like Tzu-Wei Lin, Nick Longhi, Alex Hassan, and Sean Coyle. So yeah, he's been on Guerra for a while, despite the middling stats and lack of hype from other sources.

The players at the bottom of the initial report are interesting. Johnson: " a lot of team officials like him as a future No. 3 or No. 4 starter." Thank you Alex, glad I'm not alone on that boat.