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Somebody tell me about Gordon and Tink.
How close are they to making it to St. Louis?
What can we expect from them?
Are they hard throwers? Or more of control pitchers?
Can they help out our starting pitching in 2024?
r/Esteemed Rat
Gordon just came back from an injury. He started off rough at AAA this year but looked a little better before he got hurt. He’s pitched a couple times since he came back and done pretty well. He throws pretty hard. He can hit 99. But regularly throws 94/95. His stuff is good but doesn’t quite look like MLB stuff yet. He’s also got pretty good control in general as he typically limits walks. But that doesn’t quite mean he has pinpoint control where he puts the ball right where he wants. He still needs some more experience. I’m not sure what I think his role would be next year. He’s not ready to be a MLB starter, but if we trade Flaherty or Montgomery, we’re going to need starters. To me, ideally he gets in the rest of this season in AAA and a few more months of next season. But he may be pressed up more quickly.
Hence is such a wild card. He has MLB pitches now. But I’m almost positive he’s never thrown more than 5 innings. And he’s typically out after 3. He’s also only in High A. He could probably be good in the MLB bullpen now although he still needs a little refinement on his control to be dominant. Who knows though as a starter? That’s what we want him to be. But he still seems like a long ways off when he hasn’t carried anywhere near a starters load. He can throw hard and has average control but great pitch movement.
If I were a Big League baseball scout the first task I’d want to see a prospective player perform would be to drive the entire length of three 30 inch D-pin nail stakes into the firm hard ground with a 3 lb. sledge hammer to test both his natural strength and his hand/eye coordination. Then, if his back held up and he didn’t smack a digit with the sledge and hurt himself, I’d allow him a 5 minute breather and a cool drink of water after which I’d carefully time him with a ticker as he sprinted full throttle from 1B to HP to confirm the quality of his wheels. Then, I’d require him to man up at the SS position and cleanly field a dozen hard hit ground balls ripped from a fungo bat…Without a mitt. If he could satisfactorily perform these three simple tasks, I’d have myself a genuine top 100 prospect…
Somebody tell me about Gordon and Tink.
Graceffo looked good in a handful of innings in A ball and then continued looking good over 18 starts in AA in 2022. Last winter he went to The Annex Sports Performance Center in New Jersey for some customized training. This year in AAA he was having mixed results and then went on the IL amd was out about 6 weeks with shoulder trouble. Whether he was having shoulder trouble right from the start, explaining the mixed results, I don’t know. He’s back on the mound now and has made a couple brief starts, 2-3 innings. As is always the case will shoulders, we will just have to see what happens, but pitchers are rarely the same once their shoulder starts acting up.
Tink (real first name Markevian) looked good in A level ball last year, and was inundated with hype as a result. This year in A ball I think he has had some injury problems. I don’t pay a lot of attention to A ball pitchers, so don’t know much else. AA is when the competition gets serious and a starter’s workload ramps up, so we will be able to tell something useful once he gets there.
At this point it wouldn’t make any sense to count on either one to help on the MLB staff, but time will tell.
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