Angels have no power in the minors!

by 101halo on Jul 28, 2008 9:11 PM PDT

Our whole farm is entirely devoid of any kind of decent hitting prospects. Oh no! Whatever will we do!?!

Oh, except these guys today:

AAA SLC:
S-Rod 3-4 today with his 19th HR in 206 AB. That projects to 55 in 600 AB (granted, this is the PCL, but that's still impressive). That all with an avg/obp/slg line of .310/.412/.660. After seeing his defensive skills earlier this year in the majors, is there not at least a shot we see him starting at SS for the Angels in 2009?

AA Arkansas:
So I went to look at Rancho, and noticed that 1B Mark Trumbo didn't play today, so I had this sneaky suspicion he'd been promoted. Sure enough, he had! Just today! In his AA debut? Try 5-5 for 2 HR and a double. That puts his MILB season total at 28 in 412 AB. Oh, and if that wasn't enough, Chris Pettit, who missed most of the beginning of the year hit 2 tonight as well. Both were back to back with Trumbo.

For all the talk of how our system has no good prospects left, I'm not sure I agree. And this is without even discussing our elite prospects Conger, Walden and Adenhart, nor those starting to show solid growth despite being a little to old to be considered star prospects, aka Sandoval, Matt Brown and Jason Bulger, nor the slightly-starting-to-be-kinda-frustrating-but-supposedly-elite-prospect Brandon Wood.

Update: To put this in perspective, I'm including a chart of S-Rod's age 23 season in AAA and D-Mac's age 23 season split between AA and AAA. It should help explain why this is so exciting. Also, if you include D-Mac's age 28 MILB season, you see that while he is hitting more HR, it's not drastically faster rate, and S-Rod has a much better AVG and actually draws walks, too! The only disclaimer here is that D-Mac kept this performance up over a much larger sampling of AB. All stats include S-Rod's performance today. A little crazy, eh?

	Age	Level	AB	HR	HR/600AB	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
D-Mac	23	AA/AAA	521	40	46	.317	.384	.670	1.054
D-Mac	27	AAA	340	38	67	.297	.403	.688	1.091
S-Rod	23	AAA	207	19	55	.319	.417	.676	1.093

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Trumbo Looking REAL GOOD!!!!

Put Kendry Morales at 1B, and move Sean Rodriguez to 3B......NOW LETS GO WIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

by acuda27 on Jul 28, 2008 9:25 PM PDT reply actions

ben johnson c/1b has 23 hr's for arkansas...

and salt lake. by the way dallas mcpherson has 38.

by thejd on Jul 28, 2008 9:42 PM PDT reply actions

Good to see Pettit continuing to justify all of my faith in him.

~Till the Halo burns out...

by Zu Long on Jul 28, 2008 9:49 PM PDT reply actions

Weakened System

From what it appears like, at least from all the major sites (so take it with a grain of salt), it’s not so much that the Halo’s don’t have any good prospects left, but rather it’s not as strong as it used to be because of graduations to the majors and the lack of first-round picks the past couple years. When you put with the fact that some of our better prospects (Conger, Walden, Bourjos) are still below AA ball, its understand that our system would be perceived to be not as strong as it was when it had the 2005 BWood, Kendrick, Aybar, etc….

And perhaps its debatable that he’s still a “prospect,” but Kendry is still only 25 and was tearing it up before his injury.

by HaloFanInDC on Jul 28, 2008 10:04 PM PDT reply actions

That's certainly part of it.

In the last four seasons, we’ve graduated 3 starting pitchers, 2 Catchers, 4 infielders and 1 outfielder, plus a couple other pieces. We traded away Alexi Casilla and Alberto Callaspo as well.

Despite that, we still have Wood, S-Rod, Adenhart, Green, Morales, Sandoval, Brown, Evans(hurt), Wilson(hurt) and Bulger in AAA. We’ve got Pettit, Ortega, Johnson and Statia in AA.

We’ve still got a lot of talent in the system. I think we just got spoiled by the situation in 2004 and 2005, where we had most of a pretty good major league team in the minors, especially in AA Arkansas cir. 2005, where we saw Saunders, Santana, Weaver, Kendrick, Napoli, Aybar, and Willits hanging around for much of the season.

~Till the Halo burns out...

by Zu Long on Jul 28, 2008 10:30 PM PDT up reply actions

Wood's been on fire as well

.444/.487/1.06 in his last ten games, with seven homers in his last ten games. 10 strikeouts in there as well, a little more than one every four plate appearances, which is an improvement for him.

by LA Seitz on Jul 28, 2008 10:26 PM PDT reply actions

Actually a good point I didn't bring up on S-Rod

His 36/26 k/bb rate is outstanding for an Angel prospect (ha!), that equates to a strikeout between 1 in every 5-6 ab. Not bad!

I hope Harden wins 10 more games for the Cubs. Ha!

by 101halo on Jul 28, 2008 10:30 PM PDT up reply actions

Minor Leagues

Take a look at that 7/23 BB/K’s in the bigs. He is still not ready for the big leagues and the type of pitchers that run out there each night in the show.

Willie Mays Aikens is FREeeeeeeee

by Angel Aviator on Jul 28, 2008 11:50 PM PDT reply actions

Right, but the 7 walks is huge...

that was done in 65 AB’s. Shoot, Kendrick has 7 walks in 220 AB’s. One walk every 10 AB’s is a good barometer. S-Rod is doing that at 23 in the show, while clearly overmatched. I think he has the tools to be a starter and I LOVE the idea of him starting at SS next year if our only options are Izzy/Aybar.

Aybar is a bench player and Izzy is injury prone and not hitting like he did two years ago. I love Izzy, but his time may have come and gone already. He should have been starting when Cabrera was here…

Jim Scully

Jim Scully Home
Haloville - Land of the Halos

by jimmuscomp on Jul 28, 2008 11:55 PM PDT up reply actions

4 before 3

4 bals before 3 strikes…..........

I think that was his approach once he knew he was over matched at the plate. Izz y has been solid at SS making just 2 errors all year. As for the offensive side he might have been the hottest hitter during any stretch of time this year. From May 31 through the 19th of July he hit .356/.402/.483. For someone that claims to love Izzy you sure have jumped off the wagon. S-Rod is not close to ready and was only pushed up to the show because of the necessity not because he was close to ready. 2004 116 K’s / 2005 85K’s / 2006 144 K’s (WOW) / 2007 132 K’s. Going into the year he had played 570 games and K 514 times. Thats a boat load.

Willie Mays Aikens is FREeeeeeeee

by Angel Aviator on Jul 29, 2008 12:50 AM PDT up reply actions

He's always had the potential to keep his strike-outs down.

We saw it in 2005, and now he’s starting to show it at a higher level. Plenty of guys struggle during their first call-up. Kendrick, Kotch, Salmon- all of ‘em sucked during their first taste of The Show. So you send them back down and call them up again at need. S-Rod’s as read as he’s going to get. Doesn’t have anything left to prove down there. This year we probably won’t need him, but next year I’d expect him to be competing for the starting SS job.

~Till the Halo burns out...

by Zu Long on Jul 29, 2008 1:51 AM PDT up reply actions

Nice work

S-Rod has me really amped, actually. I have been watching him since Orem and he has progressed nicely, but always been in B-Wood’s shadow. His OBP and plate discipline make me think he might be the guy that has a bigger impact at the major league level.

Jim Scully

Jim Scully Home
Haloville - Land of the Halos

by jimmuscomp on Jul 28, 2008 11:51 PM PDT reply actions