2024 Minor League game thread Week 11 – 6/17-23

Edward Manuel Guribe. I can’t wait for Palm Beach to come a calling for the services of this 17 year old phenom.

Chase Davis’s game logs the last few days are interesting. He has had 15 PA with 8! walks and then a sac fly. He has 3 hits in a total of 6 ABs.

That is interesting info Brian. I didn’t know they asked him to take less pitches. That may explain him struggling so much if he was forcing swings at pitches and taking uncomfortable ABs.

FWIW – Graceffo has now thrown 13 scoreless innings in a row. He’s not getting deep into games and his strikeout numbers aren’t back yet, but he’s doing a good job of limiting both hits and walks. He’s tied for 6th in the international league for ERA amongst qualified starters.

Springfield had a 7 inning no hitter with Hjerpe throwing 5 really good innings. 6 Ks and 1 BB

What a difference a month makes. Everybody was talking up Robberse and now its Kloffenstein. What is Robberse’s status, anyone know?

I think we had Mathews mid twenties in our pre-season top 50 prospects list. I imagine national ratings would have had him placed comparably. Amazing what can be learned of a prospects prospects in a dozen or so class A starts.

Mathews with another great start today. Yeah Mathews was mid 20s most places in the org, but this year his velo is up and his stuff is looking better overall. He isn’t the same prospect he was last year and I am getting more confident it isn’t just facing A ball hitters.

I have not seen Matherws pitch in person or on TV, but I feel like I have seen this guy before. Or others like him, and I can tell you a very common scenario, because I have seen it countless times. So have most others here, but we like to forget.

He has a very high K rate, which tends to drive up the pitch count. He is at 90+ to do 6 IP. They don’t hit him much, which is understandable since they are too busy striking out. But these are A level hitters with little experience and who are mostly going nowhere. He is striking out a lot of future insurance salesmen. He will progress to the upper levels and the hitters up there will adopt the strategy of waiting him out. They will not swing at out of zone or unhittable pitches. His walk rate will go up. His pitch count will go up and he will go less deep into games. He will have to come over the plate more, and if he can he will get hit more, if he can’t he will walk more. Between walks and hits his WHIP will go up and so will his ERA.

Does this mean he will fail? No. But this is what is almost certain to happen, and I know that because it usually does happen with this type of pitcher. Over the years we have seen a hoard of pitchers who can throw it past A level hitters come through the Cardinals system. A freaking hoard. Where are they? Not here and mostly not anywhere. So lets all keep our shirts on. The first thing he has to do is not blow out his arm just trying to get there, and he has only been pitching in pro games for three months, so we have no clue how that will go. Lets see if he can get through a season, then we can see what else he can do.