2024 Minor League game thread Week 8 – 5/27-6/2

Milb has an article about on one of our prospects Giulianelli and his screwball. The other day I was wondering if anyone still throws the pitch still. They have a video clip of it and it is nasty.

https://www.milb.com/news/ettore-giulianelli-throws-filthy-screwball-for-palm-beach-cardinals

That guy gets some crazy pitch movement. But he also walks like 1/3 of his hitters.

Mathews throws a 2 hitter through 6 innings tonight. No walks, no runs, and 6 strikeouts. Of course Peoria still loses because they can’t hit or score runs. But at least Mathews is good.

It’s been a weird minor league season for our affiliates this year. For the most part, all the teams are top half of their respective leagues in ERA with the exception of Springfield. That’s weird because Springfield is where we put a lot of our most exciting prospect pitchers. On the flip side, all of the affiliates except Springfield are close to the bottom of their leagues in OPS. Peoria is dead last by a mile. And Peoria is a place where our offense was projected to be semi-exciting (Levenson, Cho, Baez, Sullivan). We completely focused on pitching and we got some pitching. And now we have another problem . . .

For Peoria:

Quinn Mathews: 3 games / 19 innings/ 2.84 ERA / 0.68 WHIP / .152 BAA / 24 K / 3 BB
Cooper Hjerpe: 9 games / 29.2 innings / 4.25 ERA / 1.31 WHIP / .210 BAA / 45 K / 17 BB
Brycen Mautz: 9 games / 42.2 innings / 5.48 ERA / 1.43 WHIP / .272 BAA / 48 K / 15 BB
Pete Hansen: 8 games / 42 innings / 4.93 ERA / 1.52 WHIP / .304 BAA / 40 K / 12 BB

Our class of ’22 is not looking so hot. A couple of more starts, and Mathews can surpass Hjerpe in terms of innings pitched at Peoria.

Regarding Hence’s innings, he has pitched 6 innings each of the last 3 starts. They are letting him build up and did so over the years by adding 30 or so innings each year. He will likely pitch 120-130 this year, and be up to basically a modern MLB SP innings workload next year. Hence is still just about 22 despite it being his 4th season in the org. His workload is probably right on track with the college drafted guys for his age.

I’m not sure why they are treating Hjerpe with kid gloves. I understand that approach for HS who really need to build up innings and a full season, but Hjerpe threw good innings in college. They need to let him go out there and throw 100 pitches a game. The best way for him to work on his command is to throw more pitches

Regarding Hence’s innings, he has pitched 6 innings each of the last 3 starts. They are letting him build up and did so over the years by adding 30 or so innings each year.

As to the college pitcher Hjerpe, it used to be that A level ball was where the starters and relievers where divided out, as well as the guys whose arm could not take pro ball. A prospective starter would go out every so many days and throw a lot of pitches. But now days, the whiz-bangs have discovered that 100 years of baseball people where stupid and they are smart.

As to the high schooler Hence. I hope you are right and this year they get around to finding out if they have been wasting their time and effort for 3+ years. Most arms cannot handle it, which is why for 100 years it was found out early on before everybody concerned had too much invested. It is a big risk to wait until 3+ years in since the odds are against success.

I get that with what they pay out to top draft picks, and minor leaguers in general, these days, they want to improve the odds. But organizations have always been looking to improve the odds and get an edge, so it is real unlikely they all missed the big fantastic secret of pitcher development all that time. Besides, whatever they are doing now doesn’t seem to be working, certainly not in the Cardinals organization.

I think in the first two weeks of the season, he had 7 XBH. He now has 14.