6/24 ML Gameday Thread: PawSox return to McCoy

Now come on. Someone needs to change their name.

SB: Basabe, Luis Alex (8, 2nd base off Baez/Baez).
CS: Basabe, Luis Alej (1, 2nd base by Baez/Baez).

Sure, let's look at his stats for the whole season. 8.73 K/9, 4.26 BB/9, 0.81 HR/9, 54.2% GB, 4.06 ERA, 4.44 FIP. The walk rate is a little high, but not alarmingly so (Kukuk, Myles Smith, and Ranaudo have higher walk rates this year (by BB%); RDLR, Owens, and Callahan have walk rates that are just a little lower). He has to improve his command, but so do most starting pitchers in High-A (Owens, for instance, had a higher BB/9 when he was at the level). He's 22 and in Salem, which is not super age-advanced but not behind the curve, either, so it's not a question of needing to fast-track his development. He has a lot of upside as a reliever, but he also has the most upside as a starter of any pitcher in Salem (you could make an argument for Kukuk, but he's also clearly been way more erratic than Mercedes has).

I think they're going to keep Mercedes as a starter in the minors at least until he either starts lagging behind the age advancement scale or has reached Pawtucket but still doesn't show the command to start games for Boston. Even if they envision him as a reliever at the MLB level, they keep guys as a starter in the minors as long as possible (a) in case they figure it out and end up sticking as starters (see: Brandon Workman), and (b) just to give them as many innings as possible to speed up their development. (Note: this last paragraph was not disagreeing with you, just elaborating on why they do things the way they do.)

We're basically not far off from each other, I was more or less thinking that if he didn't improve command enough to warrant a PawSox slot. In the context of the original post, I was just intending to point out that Mercedes is the higher upside reliever and that in this case, I'm not ready to give Light a Wilson ceiling just yet. I'd prefer for those decisions to be made after they've earned a promotion to Portland and given a reasonable test to fail.

Statistically, I was pointing out the inconsistent pattern of his outings, not the overall numbers. If you eyeball the outings he seems to go from one extreme to another from game to game. For any given game, there's a wide variety of likely outcomes. mlbfarm.com/player.php?player_id=602925&position=P

I also thought about Kukuk but there always seems to be a reluctance to use lefties in high leverage roles as a percent of high leverage relievers. Nothing I've checked statistically, just something I usually think whenever I'm thinking leverage reliever. There are some (Miller) but they seem to be disproportionately fewer.

Clearly the two highest upside pitchers we have at Salem are Mercedes and Kukuk. We also have several with a degree of promise of their own.

ADD: I've commented several times in the game threads that the Salem staff seems to be more erratic than I remember it being in the past. Now that Johnson and Diaz are up, the only one with fairly even outings seems to be Littrell.