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Monday, October 15, 2007

It’s been a while…

2007 Minor League Pitcher of the Year

This one is a tie between Joba Chamberlain and Ian Kennedy. Joba’s performance was more impressive on a rate basis, but Kennedy gets extra credit for the larger body of work. To be fair to Joba, he would have had more innings had he not been so awesome that he was called up with a month to go in the minor league season.

2007 Minor League Hitter of the Year

Austin Jackson wins in what was not much of a competition. Despite a poor statistical performance at Charleston, Jackson was hitting the ball hard in games I listened, but just right at people. He then went to the FSL and raked. After a slow start in Hawaii, he is raking again.

2007 Minor League All Star Team

C Francisco Cervelli
1B Juan Miranda
2B Prilys Cuello
3B Brandon Laird
SS Reegie Corona
OF Austin Jackson
OF Jose Tabata
OF Justin Snyder
RHP Chamberlain/Kennedy
LHP Michael Dunn
Breakout: Cervelli
Comeback: Jackson/Horne

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Alan Horne’s Bullpen Candidacy:

As mentioned in a thread earlier today, I’m not sure Horne would be a good candidate for the bullpen. He has the fastball as well as groundball and strikeout tendencies I like to see in a potential reliever, but there are two things that make me think he might not transition well to such a role. First is that his game is based around having one very good pitch, his fastball, and several solid pitches, his curve, change, and slider. Anecdotally, it seems most shut down relievers live off of two really good pitches. In addition, it has been said that something that gets Horne into trouble from time to time is his arm action as it is not ideal. If that problem exists, one would expect it to cause the most issues when he first gets in the game and, tellingly, Horne’s first inning walk rate this year was 5.4 per 9. His walk rate for the rest of the game was about 3 per 9. Take this information with a grain of salt, but it seems to make sense given the available qualitative information.