If you play baseball in the desert and no one can watch it, does the bat still make a sound?
The difference between the full-season leagues and the complex leagues cannot be overstated, but it can be illustrated. It is professional baseball. The players are among the most talented and skilled 17-22 year olds playing the game. The rules are the same as at all the other levels of the minor leagues. But there’s also free admission. There’s no radio or television coverage, and almost no coverage of any kind. Many, if not most games, cannot be watched at all. Saturday’s game was borderline available. If you can call this availability.
That’s Wilkin Parades preparing to throw a pitch. This is a static centerfield camera that teams would use to keep an eye on their pitchers. It was the only camera available. The MiLB website and app supposedly offer live coverage; however, they were still identifying Nate Savino as the pitcher in the second inning (although they have corrected this.) High schools and NAIA schools have better exposure. The Dominican Summer League has even less exposure. One nice feature of this broadcast was limited pitch data; unfortunately, it was only turned on for the last two pitches of Savino’s outing, and both were breaking pitches, so I’m not sure as to what his fastball velocity was.
Apart from games involving Giants’ affiliates, I haven’t found streams for games in the Arizona Complex League. This seems like a missed opportunity. The complex leagues are full of stories waiting to be told. They are baseball games with all of the wonder and the glory that such games contain. Yet they are, even in this highly connected age, almost entirely unavailable.
Baseball America and MLB Pipeline do not rate any of the players at the complex highly; Fangraphs does, but a data-driven prospect list without much available data seems a fool’s errand, and Fangraphs ratings should be taken with a grain of salt. They put two players (Alberto Barriga and Abdiel De La Cruz) in their 40+ future value tier, a tier which also includes Deyvison De Los Santos, Justin Martinez, and Druw Jones. Barriga is a diminutive catcher and De La Cruz a promising looking center fielder. But we can’t easily watch them. Yassel Soler, the position player at the complex that I’ve been highest on, is a third baseman. One key question in evaluating prospects at this level is whether or not they can stick at a premium defensive position. That is impossible. On Saturday, there was what looked (from the narrow view) like a relatively routine fly ball to center. It fell for a hit. Was it not routine at all? Did De La Cruz misplay it? There’s no way to know.
Worse still, this is less availability than the short-season rookie leagues had back when they were affiliates. Pre-2020, we would have been able to watch these players in Missoula. This seems like a case where the clubs are missing an opportunity. The infrastructure is in place to at least provide a single camera stream that covers more of the field. Furthermore, highlights of plays from the complex league could be used to generate interest in up-and-coming talent.
To be fair, a lot of top prospects skip the complex leagues. But people would have watched Druw Jones a couple of years ago. People might watch De La Cruz or Soler or Barriga or Arizona native Demetrio Crisantes. People would tune in when there is a rehab assignment, like Paul Sewald yesterday. The teams need to get on board with this. Given that students from schools with journalism programs could provide the work, I can’t think that the cost would be prohibitive. It really comes down to the desire of the major league clubs to actually treat these leagues as professional baseball leagues, rather than as development spots that just happen to play games with actual rules. Although, to be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if the rules were suspended in the coming years and the complex leagues become nothing more than extended spring training.
Stars of the Week
It’s just too hard, sometimes, to select a single batter and pitcher. Take this week, for example. Deyvison De Los Santos hit three more home runs. Tim Tawa hit two, and continued his assault on the Amarillo record book. Brett Johnson had four hits, and all of them went for extra bases. Druw Jones got on track. From the pitching side it is easier, but next week there might be an obvious pick for the batter and multiple pitchers.
Instead, I’m going to go with the hockey “three stars” system.
***Yilber Diaz, RHP, Amarillo
Diaz turned in the best pitching performance of the year so far, at any level. Seven shutout innings, eleven strikeouts, no walks, only two hits. That resulted in a game score of 84. Diaz is small and throws hard, which makes me consider him a substantial injury risk going forward, and the lack of command he’s shown in other outings would limit him to the bullpen. But a couple more starts like Thursday’s, and he’ll rocket up the prospect lists. The stuff is real.
**Druw Jones, OF, Visalia
Jones has now hit in seven straight games. Over the past week he went 7-for-18 with two doubles and struck out just four times while walking twice. Yes, his BABIP was .500. Yes, that’ll regress. In the meantime, though, it’s nice to be able to enjoy an incredible athlete getting on base, and hope that he can build on it.
*Tim Tawa, 2B, Amarillo
Tawa was the biggest offensive force in Amarillo for the week, although that’s not saying a lot, given that the Soddies went twenty consecutive innings without scoring a run. But he went 8-for-25 and four of the hits went for extra bases. With AJ Vukovich and Ivan Melendez both slumping, Tawa has been the key bat other than Deyvison De Los Santos, who also deserves some mention.
(-1,000 stars) Ivan Melendez, 3B, Amarillo
The Sod Poodles had a rough week, and the week Melendez had is the perfect example. He failed to reach base all week long, going 0-for-15 with nine strikeouts. What makes this worse is that it follows directly on one of the best weeks of his professional career. He’ll go at least two weeks between home runs and he hasn’t walked since April 20th (and has not collected multiple walks in a game since opening day.)
With the draft fast approaching, Melendez is a cautionary tale when it comes to drafting college bats who don’t have a position. All he did was hit, and he walked more than he struck out in his final season in Austin. Yet, like fellow popular slugger Sonny DiChiara, his professional career just hasn’t worked out. Both have struck out and not walked enough. DiChiara was aggressively placed in AA to start his career and spent two seasons there, before starting this season in AAA and being sent all the way down to Low-A after struggling. Melendez likely won’t get demoted; he’s shown that he can produce at AA. But unless he cuts the strikeouts, he’s not going to get promoted, either.
Old Friend Alert
Looking at the Statcast info from yesterday’s AAA games, I saw that one of the furthest hit balls belonged to none other than David Peralta. Hopefully that’s a good sign. He’ll be 37 before long, and he hasn’t been slugging this year, although he has been drawing his walks.