Mark Trumbo Mashing: Angels Upper Minors Report

AAA Salt Lake Bees: 57 wins, 54 losses

Mark Trumbo, 1B - (26 AB's) .379/.438/.828 with 2 dbls, 1 trpl, 3 HR's, 9 RBI's, 9 K/3 BB

By the numbers, 24 year old Trumbo is putting together his finest minor league season yet, but how much of that is a PCL mirage? There's a slight increase in both his strikeout and walk rates, likely reflecting Trumbo's efforts to work deeper counts, but those changes are marginal, so the answer lies in batted ball data. Improvements to just his BABIP and ISO would suggest that the thin mountain air is responsible, but a closer look at the distribution of his batted balls suggests that Trumbo is in fact learning to square up the ball more frequently. Trumbo's game is hitting for power, and to do that, he's got to hit the ball into the air. Last year he did that 33.6% of the time on contact, and this year he's lifting the ball 39% of the time on contact (maintaining almost the exact same line drive rate), so he is in fact hitting significantly more flyballs. But there's more: last year he popped out in the infield 20% of the time, and this year he's popping out only 12% of the time. So his percentage of potentially useful flyballs - those that make it to the outfield - has jumped 13% overall.  Not only is he hitting more flies, but fewer of them are landing harmlessly in the first baseman's glove. He played his first ever game in left last night, and while he clearly got crossed up once or twice, he made all of the plays. I'm looking forward to seeing what he does in his September call-up. 

Matt Palmer, rhrp - (4 appearances) 2 Sv, 7 IP, 2 hits, 0 ER, 3 K/1 BB

The Bees named Palmer their starter last night at the very last second. Just two days after his last relief appearance, he went 4 hitless innings, showing outstanding command down in the zone (8 groundouts to 2 flyouts. Kevin Frandsen especially helped with those GO's), and his curveball looked especially sharp. Given the state of the Halos' pitching staff, we'll see more of him at the big league level before the season is out.  With the dearth of reliable AAA-level pitching depth in the organization, we'll likely see him next year too.

Peter Bourjos, Cf - (26 AB's) .346/.393/.692 with 3 dbls, 2 HR's, 5 K/2 BB

Here's the man of the hour. Due to demand for his skill set, I'm going to assume he'll remain at the MLB level through the remainder of the season, so let's close the book on his 2010 PCL campaign. His July tear brought his season line to .314/.364/.498, or an OPS+ of 116 for the PCL. Interestingly, he fell a little short of the park-adjusted 118 OPS+ he posted in the Texas League last year.  His bat and stolen bases were worth about 12 runs more than the average PCL player, up about 5 runs from last year due to better success stealing and a touch more pop. Chances are his base running will add another few runs in Fangraphs' calculations. Sean Smith reports that Bourjos is currently at +12 runs with the glove in centerfield according to his groundbreaking TotalZone metric, which makes Bourjos' 102 game season with the Bees' worth a little more than 4 wins above replacement. Multiply that out to a full AAA season, and you get a very impressive 5.6 wins, just below where organizational leader Alexia Amarista was last year. Altogether, it was an excellent first stab at AAA.