February 10, 2012
Now Available for 2012 THT Essentials: Now Available The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2012, an annual "must buy" for all baseball fans, is now shipping. Read this article to learn more about it.
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Thursday, August 27, 2009Koby Clemens’ breakout seasonThe son of seven-time Cy Young winner Roger Clemens, Koby Clemens is looking to make a name for himself this season. The 22-year old Clemens is tearing up the California League to a tune of .349/.424/.638 with 20 home runs. The California League is a notorious hitters paradise, but even when neutralizing the park factors (available on minor league splits) he his still batting an impressive .316/.406/.558. Koby was an 8th round pick by Houston in 2005 while he father was still pitching for the Astros. Despite playing much of his first three seasons at third base he switched to catcher last season and has remained there in 2009. His success this season has been inflated in large part due to his .435 BABIP (nearly 100 points above his career mark). While his numbers are probably not indicative of his true talent level, his raw power is evident. He is leading the league in OPS (1.062) this year, in 2008 he slugged .423, and in 2007 he hit 15 home runs. Clemens career walk rate of 11.3 percent demonstrates his ability to consistently draw walks and reach base. His strikeouts are a bit high (25 percent) but his power should help make up for this. His future will likely be determined by whether or not he can remain behind the plate. If he can stick there, his bat should be a plus. His path may be blocked by the organization's top prospect catcher Jason Castro. Castro is more advanced offensively at this stage, but Clemens has more power potential. Jason Schmidt’s season over, likely careerThursday, the Dodgers transferred Jason Schmidt to the 60-day disabled list. He had originally been placed on the 15-day disabled list with complications stemming from his surgically repaired right shoulder. His season is obviously over, and with it, likely his career. Click for more... Errata: Into the Next Dimension with HITf/xHi Readers, You may have noticed that Jon Hale's article from earlier today, "Into the Next Dimension with HITf/x," has been removed from the site. Jon has found a calculation error which significantly alters the findings. We regret the error, and hope to post a revised version of the article soon. Update: Comments made on the original post are not permanently lost, just hidden from our live site. I will work with Jon to make sure they're included in the revised version. Thanks to Tango for bringing that issue up in the comments. Sincerely, Bryan Tsao editor-in-chief hardballtimes.com Maicer Izturis comes into his ownWhen Maicer Izturis came up to the big leagues, even he couldn't be surprised when people compared him to Cesar Izturis. Besides being half-brothers, both were switch-hitting middle-infielders with similar builds. When MLB.com ran an article about the Izturis brothers, Maicer said, "I try to learn from Cesar, because I like how he plays baseball, I like how he catches the ball." Although they were born in the same year, Cesar came to the big leagues three years earlier than Maicer, but has been extremely medicore since his arrival. He somehow made the All-Star team in 2005 even though he hit just .257/.302/.322 for the year, and for his career has a .278 wOBA. However, his defense has been a saving grace, as he routinely posts solid UZR numbers playing shortstop and second base. Maicer looked to be following the same career path as his brother. His minor league career didn't say much; as a 22 year-old in AAA, he hit .262/.317/.362 after some better offensive years in the lower tiers of the farm. Although Cesar came up as a 21 year-old, Maicer didn't get the call until he was on the cusp of turning 24. Playing for Montreal, Maicer hit an anemic .206/.286/.318 in his rookie campaign, seeing just 107 at-bats. In the off-season, the Expos moved to Washington and became the Nationals, and they were looking for star players. They dealt Maicer, along with Juan Rivera (the big name prospect of the trade) to the Angels for Jose Guillen. The Angels gave the 24-year old Maicer 210 plate appearances in '05, and he once again hit for a weak .289 wOBA. Prospect gurus began to move him way down their lists. John Sickels ranked him the 18th best prospect in the Angels system that off-season (in between Bob Zimmerman and Warner Madrigal), saying that Maicer, "Should have a long career as a defensive substitute and utility infielder." However, things turned around for Maicer in a big way in 2006. Given the chance to play in 104 games, he hit .293/.365/.412. With the ability to play almost any position, Maicer was placed at third base that year, certainly hurting his value. He was basically average defensively, but because he was at third he was worth only 1.8 WAR, which was still good for a kid making just $400,000. The next year, Maicer split time between third and second base, racking up another 1.7 WAR. He struggled a bit in 2008 at the plate (.314 wOBA), but he came into his own defensively, tallying UZR/150 totals of 16.7 at shortstop (fifty-two games) and .7 at second base (twenty-three games). Maicer seemed to be producing at a respectable level, but nothing all that spectacular. However, this year he's broken out in a pretty big way. He's hitting .298/.360/.430 for a .346 wOBA, and has a UZR/150 of 9.8 at second base, along with 3.2 at shortstop. That solid performance has led him to 2.3 WAR in just 89 games, as he's missed time thanks to injuries and positions being filled by other players. However, his prorated WAR over 162 games would be 4.2, and while that may be a best-case circumstance, it certainly is impressive. He's turning 29 years-old next week, and has definitely come along way since his dismal 2004-2005 campaigns. Maicer may look like Cesar, but his game is on a whole other level. A few clandestine notes on collegiate summer baseballThe bad thing about being on a honeymoon in small town New England is that a) it's rather hard to find a dependable internet connection, let alone sit down and watch an entire game with a starting time of 7 pm PDT and b) in the event that you do find yourself, miraculously, in the warm arms of said game, your new wife threatens to, and this is verbatim, "Hurt you... physically." The good thing about the whole honeymoon/New England sitch, is that it allows the Baseballing Enthusiast to consider other baseball-related matters which he might've never considered otherwise. In this case, the matter in question is that phenomenon known as collegiate summer baseball. Having been on the Cape for the final game of that league's playoffs, and having found Jim Collins's book The Last Best League in a bookstore in my hometown of Concord, NH, and having then, finally, come across a schedule for the North Adams Steeplecats of the New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL) here, in the office of my moderately priced motel, I asked the following, Seinfeld-like question: "What's the deal with collegiate summer baseball?" Of course, I haven't asked it too hard, lest my new wife launch a surprise attack. Even so, I've spent some of my very precious internet time learning about the world of summer ball and thought these THT Live might be an appropriate place to share them. The first answer to the question is one that surprised me a little bit—namely, that there appear to be a ton of collegiate summer leagues out there, close to 40 active ones. Of those, eight (including the Cape Cod league) are part of what's known as the National Alliance of College Summer Baseball (NACSB). Another 15 are part of the National Baseball Congress (NBC). Beyond that, there are a number of unaffiliated leagues. These umbrella organizations appear to be dedicated primarily to creating norms among the leagues and fostering cooperation, both between teams/leagues and with the NCAA. PG Crosschecker, a division of Perfect Game, provides rankings of summer teams across a number of different leagues. The top five were (with league): 1. Forest City (N.C.) Owls, Coastal Plain 2. Bourne Braves, Cape Cod 3. Newport (R.I.) Gulls, New England 4. Rochester (MN) Honkers, Northwoods 5. El Dorado (KS) Broncos, Jayhawk You can find the rest of the rankings here. I wasn't able to find a list of top prospects either within each respective league, or—perhaps ideally—across all summer leagues. In an email to Yours Truly, Baseball America's college expert Aaron Fitt, said that they'll be posting league-specific prospect lists of 18 different summer leagues starting today (Thursday) and continuing through the beginning of next week. Such information, I'm guessing, will be found here (although a subscription is probably necessary). PG Crosschecker is currently doing a similar thing, although their lists also require a subscription of some kind. Certain league-dedicated websites/blogs, such as Greg Schimmel's Cape Cod League Blog, do provide prospect lists. College Summer Ball provides updates across all leagues. I'll post next week, after BA has finished their lists, to share any interesting findings from them. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||