Atlanta Braves Minor League Recap: 7/21

im not sure if that makes him a good hitter or not…on the one side he is battign 200, but his power is unquestionabel

no, but the computer I am using this week has a shadow effect on every letter that is typed so it is hard for me to pick up the typos sometimes. Combine that with it being 2 am when I did this and you have a recipe for a poorly written recap.

What about Yoel?

Yeah, I think anyone who understands anything about the way the Minors works realizes that the lower you go, the worse the fielding. A lot of pitchers get victimized at the lower levels by weaker fielding (and often poor field conditions), and it’s not really something that ever puts much of a dent on the pitchers’ careers.

As far as Salcedo being another Escobar, well, that’s just not the case. Their attitudes couldn’t be farther apart. It’s the kid’s first season of pro ball in a brand new country. He’s younger than almost everyone in the league, some guys he’s playing against are 4 years older. It’s an adjustment and a learning process, just like it is for everyone, Brett included.

I disagree because I know Ed a bit and I know he hustles. I wasn’t there but if you say he made a bad play, he made a bad play. If you say he didn’t hustle, he probably didn’t. The thing is, when a fielder does something poorly, it’s a lot easier to noticed than when a pitcher does. A starting pitcher is going to get somewhere around a hundred pitches in a game (give or take depending on the situation). Not every one of those pitches is going to be a good pitch. Some are going to be downright terrible, and that’s the pitcher’s fault. I don’t care who you are, this happens to everyone. But not every bad pitch is obvious, because some are thrown in the dirt, some just aren’t hit, and some you get away with. Some are hammered and are easy to see, but most aren’t. So while in a given game a pitcher might make a number of mistakes that aren’t seen (and you could argue that a pitcher throwing a poor pitch is the same thing as not hustling, because he didn’t give it his all) if a fielder makes one it’s blatantly obvious, because even in his busiest game he’s only gettng a handful of chances.

As far as the last sentence, on any given team there are plenty of players who don’t have much career left, but it seems callous to blatantly point that out. Anyone can surprise you. There have been plenty of Major Leaugers that nobody would have thought would have made it.

Mr. DeVall your son is definitely talented. The Braves have high hopes for him, I’m sure. They aren’t too worried about the results at this point. There’s no reason to throw the other players under the bus just because your son got some results that you don’t like. Here’s a suggestion: check out minorleaguesplits.com. You can get his FIP (fielding independent pitching) stats. He has a nice 3.35 FIP, thanks to his very low HR rate and a K/BB rate of nearly 3.

(ps – “PANHANDLEDAD” and Brett being from the Fla panhandle city of Niceville totally gave this one away.)