The Giants were unable to break out their orange and black colored brooms and sweep the struggling Arizona Diamondbacks in yesterday’s 2-1 loss. Sanchez made one of his “longer” starts of the year by going 5.2 innings against Arizona. But, Sanchez’s #1 problem in ’09 came back to bite him — that problem being control or the lack off.
Sanchez’s Location (balls vs. strikes) courtesy of Brooks Baseball.
Click to enlarge
You can see from the location plot that Sanchez missed up in the zone a good bit. He’s still striking hitters out — he recorded 5 strikeouts in this particular game — but he still needs to get a grip on his control. With his BB/9 currently at 6.71, he’s like the anti-Roy Halladay. His 4.63 FIP is respectable but the control desperately needs to improve.
—
The First Year Player Draft has been completed. Let’s check out a few guys that the Giants drafted but we haven’t talked about yet.
- RHP Jason Stoffel, Arizona – The Giants picked Stoffel in the 4th round with the 117th overall pick. In BA’s pre-draft rankings, they had Stoffel ranked as the 62nd best talent entering the draft. Before the college baseball season started, Stoffel was tabbed to be a 1st round pick but an inconsistent season cost him draft position. In previous seasons Stoffel was throwing in the mid-90′s but his fastball lost some velocity in ’09 and he was as low as 90-91mph at times. His slider also lost some bite in ’09 as well. I’m not a fan of drafting relievers, but if Stoffel can regain some pitch quality (velocity on the heater, break on the slider) he might move fast through the minor leagues. In ’08 at Arizona he struck out 79 batters in 48 innings — a K/9 of 14.8. That’s the kind of arm the Giants would like to get. In ’09 he struck out 55 hitters in 54 innings, a sharp drop in his K/9. With Stoffel the Giants have a bit of a project. If they can iron out his kinks, he could find himself in the back-end of the big league bullpen.
- 1B Brandon Belt, Texas – MLB.com has him listed as an OF, but Belt has played first base for Texas. If you watch the video linked above, you can see that his swing mechanics aren’t conducive to hitting for power. He drops his hands and swings out of a semi-crouch. He’s made good contact while in college. He hit .340 this past season with 16 2B’s and 8 HR’s. BA notes that his hitting approach is based on going the opposite way. He was drafted as a pitcher in ’06 but the Giants announced him as a 1B. You can add him to the pile of 1B’s drafted by the Giants this year.
- RHP Jeremy Toole, Brigham Young – Picked up in the 10th round, Toole throws hard — touching mid-90′s — but his control is problematic, walking 53 hitters in 83 innings this year. His delivery has been described as violent which might be leading to some of his control problems. He’s also missed some time in college with arm soreness. He’s your usual ‘live arm’ but he might be able to make it in a starting role because he also throws a slider and a changeup. Good 10th round gamble.
I agree with you on drafting relievers, but I don’t mind the Stoffel selection. It’s only a fourth round pick and he has some interesting upside.
Yup. Drafting a reliever outside of the first few rounds is a little less egregious than picking one up in the first round.
That being said, if the Giants can “fix” him (assuming his arm isn’t going to fall off) he could be a nice find. His K numbers from 2008 are very nice.
Yup, first round relievers are unforgivable. Probably 2nd round too, but it gets sort of gray for me after that.
Toole’s motion didn’t seem that violent to me, but the game i watched, he wasn’t throwing mid-nineties either, so maybe he was hurtin’. He also got clobbered. But it looks to me like we got a couple kids like that: Matthew Graham, for example; huge stuff, screwed up mechanics. Absolutely worth taking a chance on. More than Stoffel, I think I like the Dominguz pick, one that hasn’t really gotten as much attention. Led the Cape Cod league in HR, so we know he can swing the wooden bat.
Y’all see Ray Ratto’s column? http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/13/SP22186VVH.DTL
His main point seems right to me: we are, actually, sort of improbably, in it. But I also think we’re poised to build a genuinely excellent, year-after-year contending team by 2011, and also capable of screwing that up if we make seriously wrong moves right now. And I rather suspect Brian Sabean, and more important, William Neukom knows that. So, no, we don’t trade Jonathan Sanchez for Mark DeRosa. What makes sense to me would some far more modest moves: like maybe seeing if Fred Lewis can recover his stroke in Fresno, if Nate Schierholtz can be an everyday RF, and if John Bowker can fill Schierholtz’ 4th OF role. (Or just put Bowker in left. Or a platoon of Bowker and Horwitz. Or Bowker and Torres.) Or see if Jesus Guzman has figured out how to play 1b yet. Or see just how much coaxing it would take to persuade Rich Aurelia to join our coaching staff.