Saturday, January 3, 2004

Left-Handed Goodness…Maybe

Before I get to the point of my newest article, there is something I need to get off my chest. I have recently realized that when I mention a name on this blog, this blog can them become eligible for being a search result for that word. With that being said I would like to thank the New York Yankees for being a wonderful baseball team, George Steinbrenner for spending money, Joe Torre for being a horrible manager and allowing us to be closer to the pack, Derek Jeter for being so “clutch” and being the “Lord of the Rings”, thereby making him a better shortstop than Alex Rodriguez and Nomar Garciaparra put together. I would also like to thank Rob Neyer, the folks at Baseball Prospectus, Larry Mahnken, Alex Belth, Aaron Gleeman, NYYFans.com, and everyone else involved in making me a more intelligent observer of America’s past time. I would also like to thank Barry Bonds for his greatness, Babe Ruth for making baseball popular back in the day, and Baseball America for making prospects exciting to me. That is all. I shall now continue with the regularly scheduled entry.

Now, back in the summer of 2001 when I first started following prospects closely, one in particular who interested me was Sean Henn. There were three main reasons for this. One was that he played for the Staten Island Yankees who are actually a pretty big thing in New York in the summer and as a result of my proximity to them I had access to their television and radio broadcasts. The other reason was that I knew Sean Henn was a left-hander who at the time consistently threw 91 to 95 mph fastballs and topped out at 99. You’ll have to excuse me, but wow! That is absolutely spectacular velocity for a lefty. On top of that Henn stood 6’5’’ and 205 pounds meaning there was some room for projectability and he had a dominant mound presence. Just knowing this I was sold.

Then as a 20 year old playing the NY-Penn League, which usually features recent college draftees, Henn began putting together a very nice season as his pitching line can attest to:

H/9IP:5.6
BB/9IP:3.2
K/9IP:10.5
HR/9IP:.6
K/BB:3.3

Once again, pardon me, but wow! So let’s summarize what we have here, he was a physical wow as a pitching prospect in addition to being a statistical wow. So, what went wrong, why isn’t Henn knocking on the Yankee Stadium door waiting to blow away hitters? Three words, Tommy John surgery.

At the beginning of this season when I learned Henn would in fact be finally making his way back to the mound, my initial thought was that he took ridiculously long to recover from the procedure. In reality the prognosis for recovery is supposedly 12 to 18 months so Henn was not out for as long as I thought (I probably just felt this way, because I couldn’t wait for him to get back, and Brandon Claussen came back ridiculously fast so I was spoiled). Anyway, what happened when Henn came back? This is what he did this past year in 8 innings in the GCL and 72.1 innings in the A+ Florida State League:

H/9IP:8.3
BB/9IP:4.5
K/9IP:7.0
HR/9IP:.45
K/BB:1.6

There are a couple of ways you could go on these sets of numbers. One is that you could look at it from the perspective that Henn was somewhat old for his leagues as he was 22 and the ideal prospect age for the FSL at least, would be 19/20 I think. In addition to being somewhat old league, Henn’s K rate fell, he walked more batters, allowed home runs at a higher rate, and allowed more hits. Looking at it from this angle it was a disappointing season. However, the other perspective is that this was Henn’s first season back from Tommy John and he worked with less than his best stuff. That being said, reports out of Tampa are that his fastball velocity was improving as the season went on, and he was able to throw it in the low 90’s consistently.

All things considered, I would call this past season a wash for Henn, he did nothing to really enhance his prospect, but nothing to really hurt it either in my opinion. I still feel he has a huge ceiling and this year could go a long way to deciding his future. He can either go out and dominate the AA Eastern League and be ready for the majors by the end of the year now that he is fully healthy, or not. If he doesn’t dominate, and that is what I am expecting, I think his prospect shine is gone, this might be a bit dramatic, but his surgery has really set him back and he needs to get back on track as soon as possible.

******

Once again, questions, comments, concerns to mcnallyf@taftschool.org

Also, I am now heading back to school and my goal is to update this site once every weekday, whether I meet that goal depends on how much time I will have and the length of my posts might also be affected.

Comments

Hey, check it out -- nobody's commented yet! You could be the first to comment on this AWESOME post! Hurry up and think of something to say! And not "First!", or anything like that, because that would be lame, and you'd be lame for doing it. Especially if someone beats you to it.

Well, since you spent so much time reading this, you've probably missed your shot to be first, but go ahead and post anyway. Someone might read it. Not ME, but someone.

0 of 963 registered readers are currently logged in.
There are currently 64 visitors who are not logged in.
There was a record 241 simultaneous visitors on May 2, 2011 at 11:54:25 pm.