5/14 ML Gameday Thread: Owens and Ball pitching today

I'm not contradicting it. I thought of qualifying it. Lavarnway probably doesn't catch for as long either. Just saying he can maybe be a back up major league catcher for a significant time, maybe even 8-9 years.

I just don't see why we give up on people so fast. They are God's answer to baseball one year ( Middlebrooks ), and get hurt and have some bad AB and then they are percieved as near worthless 200 AB later. This sort of thing does happen and Lavarnway was sick for a while there. I think he might be a decent hitting backup mlb catcher over time.

Henry Ramos on the rise.

I would imagine you would find that pitchers who perform badly their first year tend not to have big major league careers.

I think that both sides on this debate need to have some perspective. Ball was a risky pick for a top ten guy and even for a high school pitcher. The Red Sox chose to take this risk likely in part because they have a system full of major league pitching prospects, but none who have much of a chance of ever being as good as John Lester is today. Ball for all his warts has that chance. Ball's fans need to understand that he will need to buck a trend to eventually be successful. His detractors need to understand that the Sox believe he has the makeup and athleticism to do just that.

For the record I wanted the Sox to draft Shipley to give them the best chance of getting a good player out of the highest pick they will have for a very long time. But for some reason they ignored my advice

Yeah Texas can send us Odor and we'll turn him into the next Zobrist, right?

I will make a better post of my results when I have laptop access. But of the 22 high school pitchers taken in the top 10 from 1995-2008, 11 had seasons I would deem unimpressive (for this I I selected a WHIP above 1.30 and anEra above 4.2. I know these measures aren't perfect, but people seem particularly concerned he's giving up lots of baserunners)
. The 11 who outperformed this were John Patterson, Josh Beckett, Bobby Bradley, Gavin Floyd, Zach Greinke, Clint Everts, Clayton Kershaw, Jarrod Parker. Madison Bumgarner, Homer Bailey, and Chris Gruler. Not very many of these guys had a pedigree similar to Ball's. Beckett was the #2 pick and considered a transcendent talent. Patterson Bradley Floyd were all considered advanced. Clayton Kershaw doesn't compare to any human. For the most part, these guys succeeded like their pre draft profiles predicted they would, they were more polished, which in some cases meant a lower ceiling.
Now obviously, less in the next group found a ton of success. But some did. Jon Garland had a nice career. I still love Mark Rogers stuff even if he has never been able to harness it. John Danks pitched well before injuries. But the best comparison might be Adam Loewen, an Orioles draftee who was a talented two way player who struggled mightily with both walks and hits in his debut year, but got progressively better until he was a pretty impressive prospect, though his command remained concerning. Though he earned shots in the majors, his command never was enough, and he is now an outfielder. That's not to say it will happen like that with Ball...Loewen was known more for his power than his potential to command his pitches, which seems to be constantly noted with Ball. At any rate, there's not many good comparisons to Ball, players with poor debut seasons on average tend to be worse, but several of those draft picks who busted were questioned when they were made. Ball wasn't considered poor value at 7, though some had him more in the 10-15 area. Ball wasn't my choice at pick 7, I wanted Meadows, but I think it's premature to seriously question him after a few starts, especially since he's now on the DL and may have been pitching injured.

Good post but he wasn't pitching injured he has strep.