Minor League Thoughts For A Saturday

 OK, there have now been enough games that we can see some trends and things to watch for in certain players.  Given the graduation of our prospects to the majors (with hope of some more soon: Amed Rosario out the door and bringing up Brayan Rocchio) and the poor performance or injury to many of our top prospects including what is turning out to be a disastrous 2022 draft, we need to closely look at some of our farmhands as the perceived strength of our farm system will be based, in good part, on how these guys finish the season.

• Parker Messick - We have one data point.  ONE.  You can't make a determination on one data point or a small sample size.  However...........Parker Messick was way too old and too experienced a college pitcher to begin his professional career at low A.  His results at low A were encouraging on the surface.  Good HR rate (only 1 HR allowed in 50+ innings), good K/BB rate, good K rate.  His ERA was so-so (3.62) it wasn't really from hard contact as the SLG against him was .367.   But when you look at league averages you find that the league average SLG was .346, meaning teams were LIKELY hitting him harder than league average.  The most HRs a team had after 71 games in the Carolina League was 59 HR and there were 6 teams in the league with under 40 HR, led by the Salem Red Sox who had 20.  In the Midwest League there are 5 teams with more than 60 HR and only 2 teams under 40 HR. The league average SLG is .363.    In Messick's first start for Lake County his fastball was sitting 88-90 with s few at 91 and at least once touching 93 and his breaking stuff did not keep the other team off-balance.  He gave up 3 HRs and 8 hits and 7 runs over 3.3 innings.  Was this to be expected after what I saw of him pitching at low A this year?  Probably not to this level but the fact is that when he moved up to an age appropriate level he got torched.  Again, the relevant comparison is to Will Dion last year.  Same age, same experience, starting at low A and dominating for Dion.  Not so much for Messick. 
• Summary: Messick's stuff and performance does not look like that of a polished college pitcher who was a second round draft pick, at least so far.  Something needs to drastically change or he may wash out after a year or two which, for a team reliant on draft choices making it, will not be a good thing for the Cleveland Guardians.
• Doug Nikhazy -  His control has been a problem since he was signed.  While Bibee and Williams are in the majors and Hunter Stanley, Davis Sharpe and Will Dion are in AA holding their own, Nikhazy is struggling with control.  And this is a repeat of 2022 where he had control problems at Lake County with K/IP, BB/IP, K/BB almost identical, although his WHIP is higher this year.  
• Summary: Nikhazy can be an effective LHP for the Guardians but, as a second round pick, he really has to clean up his delivery and reduce the walks while not increasing the number of of hard hit balls against  him.  
• Jackson Humphries - Not a lot positive going on with the 2022 draft pick but, on the surface, Humphries hit the ground running.  His early-season stats in the ACL look promising for a young pitcher.  He has 23 Ks and only 6 walks in 15 innings over 4 games.  His scouting report from pre-draft 2022 would give you the impression that his control and command need work but these numbers look pretty good to me that he wasn't burning through his allowance of pitches early in his starts. Plus, he has given up 13 hits and only 1 HR.  But he has an ERA of 4.8 a runs per game of 6.5.  What the heck?  For a WHIP of 1.27 that seems steep.  So I looked a little deeper.  Among those 13 hits are 7 doubles and that lone HR.  Thus in 15 innings you could postulate he has given up at least 8 occurences of loud contact.  Yes, some of those could be bloopers but the XBH numbers give some insight into his ERA and RP9 numbers.  
• Summary:  It looks like they have harnessed Humphries control but the numbers look like he is still probably centering a lot of pitchers and/or suffering from lack of pitch movement.  I haven't heard how fast he is throwing in games but spring training reports had him throwing in the high 90s which could explain the large K numbers even if he isn't commanding the edges of the zone yet.  Still, this type of result is encouraging from an 8th round pick, despite what bonus he was paid.
• Chase DeLauter - He got his first hit tonight, a grounder up the middle at 108 mph.  To me it looked the same as his other ABs for Lake County: a kind of loopy swing producing ground balls which, in this limited look, looks something like Josh Bell's swing.   He is so rusty that it is hard to tell what is going on with him and we just need to give him time to incubate at high A, which is where he belongs in order to get a read on him right now.  If he powers through Lake County and ends up with a decently-effective cup of coffee at Akron, all is well. If he does a Joe Lampe/Justin Boyd at Lake County for the rest of what we hope is a healthy end to his first season, this draft goes further down the crapper than it appears right now, which is in the swirl on the way to the sewer.
• Juan Brito - Projecting out his early production at Akron and looking at Williams and maybe even Rocchio disappearing from our top 30 list due to them exhausting their rookie status, Brito could project to be a top 5 prospect in the system, maybe top 3 depending on how the draft goes.  Again, I hated the trade due to logistics of trading a ML ready bat who was our #7 prospect for a guy Colorado might not even have protected against the Rule 5.  Plus, being in low A, the Guardians were taking a big gamble that they could get him to the majors, for good, in 3 seasons.  Not exactly what I would call  an even trade and one that looks like Colorado had some revealing pictures of our baseball executives that they leveraged to make the deal.  Plus, having seen Brito a bunch now, I don't see him as an efficient 2B, SS or 3B option, although he appears passable in any of those positions, just not a good defender at any of them.  But, if he ends up tearing up AA for the rest of the year my evaluation of this one-sided trade looks more even, although it is going to have to go some to ever be even, given Jones' .924 OPS so far IN THE MAJORS.
• Justin Boyd and Steve Hajjar - Even if you discount the potential that Will Benson could be where he is today (starting for first place Cincinnati with an .867 OPS and 6 steals in 37 games (2 2B, 3 3B and 3 HR), one would have thought that Justin Boyd and Steve Hajjar were a great return for Benson.  ON PAPER THAT IS.  Well Boyd (the 153rd best prospect in the 2022 draft who the Reds draft 73rd) has looked more like a poor organizational player at this point, not even as good as Juan Escobedo was at the same age/level.  The only thing that keeps me from rating this trade a total failure less than 6 months after it was made is that both Boyd and Hajjar have been hurt much of the year.  But, when they have played they have absolutely looked overmatched and/or underprepared for the low A level, which neither should be based on their history and pedigree.
• Summary, if this is all we get from Boyd and Hajjar this trade is going to end up a disaster of the level of somewhere between the loss of Tyler Naquin and the loss of Brandon Phillips, probably leaning much more towards the Naquin end of that continuum.  For a trade to look THIS bad, THIS soon, is really egg on the face of the GM who made it.  Throw in the loss of Owen Miller for, apparently, nothing and the loss of the replaceable Carlos Vargas for the pathetic return we are getting from Ross Carver, the egg on his face is starting to make it look more like a Mike Chernoff omlette.  Small market teams can't make this many screwups in a row.  Add the Junior Caminero for Tobias Myers fiasco to this, and the loss of talent for ZERO return is almost epic and something that puts a real dent in our farm system, as we are starting to see right now.