February 10, 2010
Order Now Get "The world champ of baseball annuals." The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 features articles by THT's staff as well as Bill James, Tom Tango and Craig Wright and contains much, much more. Please support THT and use this link to purchase the Annual.  Get the fantasy book that everyone's raving about! Edited by THT Fantasy's Rob McQuown and Michael Street, and featuring our own Matt Hagen on prospects. Shipping now from ACTA! 
Pat Andriola
Rich Barbieri John Barten Brian Borawski Craig Brown Evan Brunell Chuck Brownson Kevin Dame Joshua Fisher David Gassko Jeremy Greenhouse Brandon Isleib Chris Jaffe Max Marchi Bruce Markusen Dan Novick Harry Pavlidis Alex Pedicini Jeff Sackmann Nick Steiner Dave Studeman Steve Treder Bryan Tsao Tuck! Geoff Young John Brattain And here's the full roster.
Or you can search by:
Gear up for baseball season with Chicago White Sox tickets and New York Yankees tickets. LA Angels tickets, Houston Astros tickets, and Atlanta Braves tickets are hot sellers! You can get Boston Red Sox tickets, San Diego Padres tickets or Chicago Cubs tickets for your favorite baseball fan. Coast to Coast Tickets has the best MLB tickets like Minnesota Twins tickets, LA Dodgers tickets, Milwaukee Brewers tickets, New York Met tickets and St. Louis Cardinals tickets. Find premium Chicago Cubs tickets and other Chicago tickets at JustGreatTickets.com. Chicago Cubs Tickets Chicago Tickets  All content on this site (including text, graphs, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
Powering upby Josh KalkAugust 07, 2008 The West Virginia Power are the Brewers' A-ball affiliate in the South Atlantic League. Professional baseball in Charleston dates back to 1910, and with the exception of a three-year gap, they have had minor-league baseball since 1971. In 2004, they opened up a beautiful ballpark in downtown Charleston named Appalachian Power Park and changed their name from the Alley Cats to the Power. The stadium is right off the interstate and truly has an urban feel to it. With very reasonably priced tickets and ample parking, the Power have been drawing well, with more than 4,000 people attending the game last Saturday night. Before the game, I had a chance to catch up with a few members of the front office as well as pitching coach John Curtis. I would also like to profile the Brewers' supplemental first-round pick, Evan Frederickson. Andy Milovich Milovich is the executive vice president of Palisades Baseball and is taking over as the general manager for the Power. He talked about how important the new ballpark has been to keeping a team in Charleston and bringing in new fans. The expanded concessions and cleaner restrooms opened up the stadium to families with young kids and to young professionals. Milovich got into baseball as an intern at South Bend and then in the AFL, and he has had the good fortune of helping to open three minor-league stadiums while working for different organizations. He played baseball in college and wanted to remain in baseball, and he really enjoys all of the things that are involved in running an organization. Minor-league general managers are responsible for everything from promotions to concessions to rolling out the tarp in a rain delay. There have been rumors that the Brewers may be leaving to pursue local affiliate Appleton. Local affiliates seem to be all the rage these days, with the Cubs and the Red Sox this year even hosting minor-league games at Wrigley Field and Fenway Park. West Virginia is sort of centrally located between Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Washington and Baltimore, so if the Brewers do leave, look for another regional tie-in with the Power. Those teams could certainly do a lot worse, as Charleston has a lot to offer with their new park and relatively kind climate. In any case, the Power will be looking for a team with a commitment to developing players. John Curtis John Curtis was a first-round pick of the Red Sox in the 1968 draft and pitched 15 years in the big leagues. After taking some time off, he got back into baseball as a pitching coach, and he has been the Power's pitching coach for the last four years and has been with the Brewers organization for the last six years. The Brewers really seem to value change-ups, and while I was in Huntsville talking to people there, it became clear that that pitch was at the heart of what the Brewers try to instill in their pitchers. I asked Curtis about it, and he told me that the organization believes that at least 10 percent of a pitcher's pitches each night should be change-ups. He mentioned that they generally don't have left-handed pitchers throwing change-ups to left-handed batters, but they don't fear right-handed pitchers throwing change-ups to right-handed batters. That is a little unusual in the big leagues right now, as many pitchers won't throw a change-up to a like-handed batter. He mentioned that the key was command of the pitch and the right time to throw it. He explained that the effectiveness of that pitch works off the fastball, so you must establish the fastball first. He mentioned that it didn't really matter what type of change-up a pitcher threw and that he would work with whatever worked for the pitcher. With all the recent talk about change-ups, I found this particularly interesting. Evan Frederickson Fredrickson is a tall left-hander who threw in the mid-90s in college and was drafted out of San Francisco after spending the first two years of his college career at Virgina Tech. Besides his fastball, John Curtis mentioned that Frederickson also had a good slider and is working on his change-up. In his recent series here at THT, Alex Eisenberg was forced to give Frederickson an incomplete grade because Eisenberg didn't have any video of Frederickson throwing in the mid-90s. So I was eager to see Frederickson for myself. When I saw Frederickson on Saturday, he came out of the bullpen, which he had been doing recently, and he did not pitch well. He threw an inning and a third and gave up three runs (two earned) on just one hit but with five walks and only one strikeout. He threw 32 pitches, only 12 for strikes, and he was all over the zone. He walked the first batter on four pitches and walked two other batters on four pitches and two on five pitches, so it wasn't as if he was getting to 3-2 and then losing them. His fastball was in the upper 80s, and that was on the faster radar gun in the park. He threw three sliders, all of which ended up balls above the strike zone. His change-up actually looked pretty good; the couple that he threw, he was able to keep down in the zone. Overall, though, his delivery was all over the place, and his release point was visibly changing. References and Resources I'd like to thank the Power staff and John Curtis for taking time talking with me, especially Andy Barch who set everything up. Also, I have finally been able to finish transcripts of my interviews with Cole Gillespie and manager Don Money and some other Huntsville information. More information on the Charleston trip will be available soon and when that happens I will link to it here. Josh Kalk is a physics and math geek who can also be found blogging at http://www.baseball.bornbybits.com/blog/blog.html. He enjoys good conversations about baseball and can be reached at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Commenting is not available in this weblog entry. Do you have a general question or comment for one of THT's writers? Send it in to our weekly mailbag We also welcome unsolicited op-ed pieces of approximately 500 words for consideration. We reserve the right to edit for length, clarity and consistency of style. Please include your whole name and location to be considered. If you have a comment about this specific article, please email the writer. Next Article: The remains of the season: St. Lous Cardinals>> <<Previous Article: Remembering the 1983 Lynchburg Mets | ||||
