The KIDS - Winter Edition

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Pine Tar Press Minor League Predictions and Goals for the New Year

The New Year is always a good time to make predictions as well as set goals for the future. As you can see from my effort last year I’ll be wrong about quite a few but I am happy to say that I met my personal goals of attending a lot minor league games and adding quite a bit of Royals minor league video. So here we go again but this time I’m dragging in the whole crew at PTP to show off their skills.

It was fun to see who's picking who and why.

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Royals sign Sandy Garces

Baseball America announced the signing of 17 year old LHP Sandy Garces to Kansas City out of the DPL during their minor league transactions post released yesterday. Garces who worked as a outfielder in the Dominican Prospect League was signed by the Royals when they were impressed by his arm on the mound. Garces according to a DPL source measures in at 6’1 175 lbs while currently throwing a 87-91 mph fastball and showing an ability to spin a curveball. Terms of the agreement were not released. Checkout Dplbaseball.com for the best in Dominican baseball league coverage. We will release more on the upcoming class of international prospects in the coming weeks.

Some video as well.

40 Man Roster Review - Vin Mazzaro

Vin Mazzaro represents progress.

I’ll wait for you to stop laughing.


…

Done? Good. Here’s what I mean.

In year’s past, where the Royals traded a starter (and a good one at that in David DeJesus) for a pitcher with major league experience, it was pretty much automatic that the new pitcher would open the new season with the team and would log a substantial number of innings. (I’m thinking along the lines of Mike Wood, who got 17 starts after arriving from Oakland in the three team Carlos Beltran deal. Back when Billy Beane was a genius.)

Remember, Mazzaro was slated to open the season as the Royals fifth starter. He was sent to Omaha because the Royals had a couple of early open dates, got shelled in his first two starts for the Storm Chasers and was held back in Triple-A. He didn’t get a chance to appear in KC until Bruce Chen hit the DL in early May. He made one start, didn’t really distinguish himself, and then came May 16. A day that will live in Royal infamy.

40 Man Roster Review - Manny Pina

Salvador Perez is going to be the Royals’ regular catcher in 2012 and, barring injury or a complete implosion (he wouldn’t be the first 21 year old to do so at the major league level), Sal will catch somewhere in excess of 120 of the Royals’ games. As such, whether Manny Pina, Brayan Pena or someone not on the roster yet becomes the back-up catcher, their contributions on the field will likely be minimal.

Still, one of the undeniable constants of major league rosters since the dawn of baseball is that every one has to carry a back-up catcher. There is a chance that 24 year old Manny Pina could be that player.

Acquired late in the 2009 season along with outfielder Tim Smith in exchange for pitcher Danny Gutierrez, Pina came with the reputation as a strong armed defender with a suspect bat. At that time, given the state of the organization’s catching corps, Manny was deemed to be at the top of the minor league depth chart.

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Royals announce 2012 Minor League staffs

KANSAS CITY -- Mike Jirschele, after managing the Omaha Storm Chasers to the Pacific Coast League championship, will return for his 10th consecutive season and 13th overall as pilot of the Royals' Triple-A affiliate.

Also returning to Omaha will be pitching coach Doug Henry and hitting coach Tommy Gregg.

Brian Poldberg, who's directed the Northwest Arkansas Naturals into the playoffs in all four years as manager, will return to the Double-A club along with pitching coach Larry Carter and hitting coach Terry Bradshaw.

In other Minor League staff assignments announced by the Royals:

Vance Wilson will advance a level to manage the Class A Advanced Wilmington Blue Rocks. He led the Kane County Cougars into the playoffs last year; that Class A managerial post will be filled by Brian Buchanan, moving up from the Rookie team at Idaho Falls.

Omar Ramirez, who was Idaho Falls' hitting coach last year, will be the Chukars' manager. Tommy Shields, the Atlanta Braves' Minor League fielding coordinator for the last seven years, is joining the Royals as manager of the Rookie team in Burlington, N.C.

Former big league pitcher and coach Bill Fischer will enter his 65th year in pro baseball as the Royals' senior pitching advisor. John Wathan, former Royals catcher and manager, will be in his 40th pro season -- his 36th with the Royals -- as special assistant to player development and scouting.

Willie Aikens, a hitting star for the Royals in the 1980 World Series, will be a coach for the Rookie team at Surprise, Ariz., in his second year back with Kansas City. Mark Davis, the 1980 Cy Young Award winner with San Diego, returns as a pitching coach for Surprise after a season as the Minor League pitching coordinator.

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Royals prospects took important steps in 2011

At the start of the 2011 season, MLB.com unveiled Top 10 prospect lists for all 30 Major League organizations on Prospect Watch. Over the course of the season, those lists changed due to graduations to the big leagues, trades and performances. With the season completed, MLB.com will review how the prospects on those lists fared in 2011.

Mike Montgomery had only known success before last season, but he's banking on learning even more from adversity. Montgomery, a 22-year-old southpaw, found his first growing pains at Triple-A Omaha, where he struggled to a 5-11 record and a 5.32 ERA in 28 appearances.

The left-hander had gathered some heavy momentum in 2010, when he roared through three levels and posted a 5-4 record and a 3.36 ERA in 13 starts for Double-A Northwest Arkansas. Now, Montgomery is trying to figure out how to reconcile those two seasons back-to-back.

"Going into last year, I didn't really know what to expect," he said this winter. "It was really kind of a mental struggle, and it was good for me in the sense that I realized, 'Hey, you're not going to be able to rely on your stuff forever. You're going to have to straight-up learn to pitch and locate all your pitches.' It was a real good experience, because I had kind of been getting away in the lower levels of the Minor Leagues with stuff. For me to get there and to experience struggle after struggle, it kind of opened my eyes and made me think about what it's going to take to get to the next level."

Minor League Roster Predictions - January Edition

Now that college football is over what better time to make predictions for the minor league rosters. Going through the names on last years teams and drafted players it is easy to see the Royals are building a supply of arms and athletic middle infield/outfield talent at the lower levels. This is a good strategy considering the failure rate of prospects even with the many that miss the ones that hit could hit big. Follow me @ClintScoles or checkout our new Facebook page. Take time to put together your list to see what you may change.

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Prospect Melville takes pride in helping others

KANSAS CITY -- It was typical of Royals pitching prospect Tim Melville.

Last October, Scott Sharp, the director of Minor League operations, phoned Melville to inform him that he'd won the Mike Sweeney Award that recognizes a player that demonstrates a special giving spirit off the field.

"He had just gotten back from a search for a missing child in Richmond," Sharp said.
Melville, spending the offseason in Richmond, Va., heard that a 9-year-old autistic boy had wandered off from his family in a wooded area and was lost, so he volunteered for the search party. There was a happy ending to what became a national story: The boy was found six days later.

"Luckily he was found safe and alive," Melville said. "The next day the temperature dropped 20 degrees, so it was a blessing. It was an amazing story."
Melville, who was honored at Wednesday's Royals Awards Luncheon, just seems to gravitate toward helping others -- and quietly.

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Prospect Watch: Top 10 left-handed pitchers

Mike Montgomery, Royals: Little seemed to go right for Montgomery in 2011. He headed into the year at the front of an impressive group of pitching prospects in the Royals system, with many thinking he'd be the first to reach Kansas City. The Triple-A Pacific Coast League handed Montgomery a healthy serving of humble pie, as he struggled with his command for much of the season. His pure stuff is still as good as it ever was, with the potential to have three plus pitches, and he did stay healthy all season. Montgomery seemed to learn from his tough season and it could serve him well this year, when the 22-year-old should break through to the big leagues.

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Royals aren't Dodgering Latin America

I read an interesting post awhile back by Mike Scioscia’s Tragic Illness about the Dodgers and their current lack of international talent. Spending by the team that discovered Pedro Martinez, Fernando Valenzuela and Hideo Nomo was at an alltime low. Owner Frank McCourt while using the club as his own personal piggybank cut not only one of its biggest assets (international scouting) but also what defined their organizational identity during the last 30 years. But as you already know when you clicked on this link this isn’t about what the Dodgers are doing wrong but it’s about what the Royals are doing right.

The Royals for a extremely long stretch of time were not cultivating much of any international talent of their own, spending little despite having big time evidence in their face (Carlos Beltran) that spending in Latin America works. The Royals with their less is more approach placed just three home grown international signings on the BA Top 10 list from 2001 to 2011. The Royals knowing that fact made international scouting a big priority re-establishing a relationship in the Dominican Republic while opening a new academy and hiring Rene Francisco to run international operations. That decision is starting to pay big dividends.

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40 Man Roster Review - David Lough

David Lough turns 26 tomorrow and is no closer to the major leagues than he was two years ago. In fact, he may be farther away. He has not gotten the call for the chartered flights, nice hotels and first class service of the major leagues despite hitting .299/.356/.460 in two combined years in AAA. Even a 2011 line of .318/.367/.482 was not enough to get a courtesy cup of coffee with the big club at the end of a long lost season.

Prior to the 2010 season, David Lough was named the 10th best prospect in the Royals’ system by Baseball America. They described him as an average defensive centerfielder and above average at the corners. A player with above average speed and major league average tools in other categories. In 2011, Lough cut his strikeout rate while keeping the same walk rate AND upping his average, on-base percentage and slugging. Still, he toiled in Omaha as Hosmer, Moustakas, Giavotella and Perez breezed in and out of town. He played next to Lorenzo Cain, who hit a better but not dissimilar .312/.380/.497, and was anointed the club’s new centerfielder for 2012.

Lough watched the speedy Jarrod Dyson get major league time and heard Dyson’s name mentioned as a very real possibility to make the Royals in 2012. He watched Mitch Maier, a player with virtually identical career minor league stats, spend his THIRD full major league season basically watching the other guys play. Question: would you rather get 113 at-bats in the majors or play everyday in AAA?

Heck, when it comes to prospects who people want to give a chance, Lough’s name falls well behind that of Clint Robinson and, at times, even Irving Falu.

Prospect Profile Terrance Gore

When I reviewed the Royals draft last year I had an idea that Terrance Gore was fast. Why else would they take a 5’7 160 lbs Center-fielder from the same JUCO school that they had already used their 14th round pick on? KC scouts more than likely went down to scout D’Andre Toney and the diminutive Gore probably turned their heads with his ridiculous speed. Coach Mike Kandor Gore’s JUCO coach let me know just how fast when I gave him a call during my draft review:

Mike Kander Gulf Coast Head Men’s Baseball Coach – “The fastest player in the country. A good comp for Gore could be Joey Gathright and he’s the type of player that would’ve been a good fit on the 1978 Royals teams. He brings a whole new level of speed to the game putting up times to 1st base in the 3.49 range from the right side on a bunt and consistently in the 3.7-3.8 range on a swing. One coach in the conference who was an assistant for Florida State during the Deion Sanders years said that he never thought he would see a player with Deion’s speed on the baseball field, then he saw Gore and said he’s faster. Terrance like Toney brings a physicality from their football days to baseball with a aggressive approach. Also like Toney he is still pretty raw with the bat and has a below average arm but uses his speed very effectively on defense.”

That’s great stuff but not quite that shocking, lots of players are blazing fast but still struggle to convert its full usefulness on the field. We’ve been told for years about Derrick Robinson’s impressive speed and while you can see it on display when you look at his 291 stolen bases with a 75.8% success rate and watch some of his less than stellar defensive routes in CF it doesn’t quite show off as well as we or likely Royals coaches had hoped. Jarrod Dyson on the other hand is a player who is also fast but seems to use it quite a bit better on the bases with an 83.2% success rate in the minors, 90% so far in the majors (20 for 22) and defensively as Dyson is an excellent defender. Dyson may never be a starting CF in the majors but his speed and his proficiency to use it should be able to give him a job as a 4/5 OF/PR which for a late round draftpick is pretty nice for any club.

Prospect Profile Allen Caldwell

When Dayton Moore was hired he told us fans that the Royals would rebuild the team and the system through the minors, to do that meant Moore would have to load the system with the draft as his biggest tool. The Process as it would become known was never more evident than with what the Royals did during the 2008 draft when they transformed the system and the organization by taking big name prospects Eric Hosmer, Johnny Giavotella, Mike Montgomery and John Lamb. Those names on the upper end combined with Tim Melville, Greg Billo and Blaine Hardy to bracket what has become the best draft in a top rated system. In 2011 while a few of those names were having big seasons there was another who was just starting to rebuild his ’08 draft stock.

Allen Caldwell the Royals 12th round pick in ’08 struggled mightily with the bat his first three seasons in the minors combining to put up just a .626 OPS clip in 152 games with just 30 extra base hits in that time. With a career on the verge of extinction Caldwell and the Royals minor league staff decided to put the lefty on the hill to see if they could harness his JUCO pitching days and salvage something before it was all over.

At first the move went as one would expect for a converted positional player with Caldwell getting knocked around pretty heavily in the Pioneer league in his brief time there giving up 3 home runs and 24 total hits in just 10.2 innings.

The Royals to their credit must have seen something they liked during that brief stint deciding to hold him in extended spring for a bit before sending him to Kane County where he dominated, striking out 39 in just 26.1 innings while surrendering just a 1.1 WHIP and earning a promotion to Wilmington after just 11 appearances. Caldwell carried on the success at the High A level putting up a paltry 0.79 WHIP while striking out 23 in 24 innings and giving up just 4 earned runs in that time.

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Prospect Watch: Top 10 outfielders

MLB.com's Top 50 Prospects list has been expanded to 100. The 2012 version will be unveiled Wednesday on MLB.com as well as on a one-hour show on MLB Network, airing at 10 p.m. ET. Leading up to that, MLB.com takes a look at baseball's top 10 prospects at each position.

This year's Top 10 outfielder prospect list has every kind of outfielder imaginable. There's the speedy future leadoff hitter. There's the middle-of-the-order guy with the big bat. And no outfield list would be complete without a healthy dose of multitooled athletes. Several of these exciting prospects should see time in the big leagues in 2012.

Bubba Starling, Royals: As top athletes go, there are few in baseball better than Starling. Kansas City signed him away from a scholarship to play quarterback at the University of Nebraska, and Starling has all five tools in his toolbox. He has plus speed that should allow him to both steal bases and play an outstanding center field. Starling's strong throwing arm is a plus defensively as well. He has excellent raw power and has shown enough pure hitting skills to indicate he'll tap into that power consistently and hit for average as well. It might take Starling a little time to put it all together, but the payoff could be huge.

Wil Myers, Royals: Struggles in Double-A in 2011, compounded by a knee injury, dampened Myers' star a bit. His play in the Arizona Fall League, though, helped bring him back to the top of the young hitters' list, as the now 21-year-old regained his confidence at the plate. Myers' plus bat speed should allow him to hit for average and power, and he's an on-base machine. Last year was his first in the outfield after a move from behind the plate, and he should fit the mold of a right fielder when all is said and done. Even if Myers goes back to Double-A to start the season, he could be ready for Kansas City in a year's time.

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Live Chat With Royals First Round Pick Bubba Starling Thursday, January 26 at 7:00 CST

This link should take you there if you want to participate or read it afterwards.

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Four Royals named to Top 100 list

KANSAS CITY -- The Royals have four players among MLB.com's Top 100 Prospects -- outfielders Bubba Starling and Wil Myers and pitchers Mike Montgomery and Jake Odorizzi -- but that doesn't make the organization unique.

After all, three clubs (Oakland, San Diego and Tampa Bay) each have six prospects among the 100, and two (Atlanta and the New York Yankees) have five each. And there are seven other clubs that, like the Royals, have four on the list.
However, the Royals have two in the top 20, and all four reside in the top 50.

9 innings with Royals minor league utility man Anthony Seratelli

40 Man Roster Review - Luis Mendoza

Luis Mendoza embodies the pitching cliche.

Cliche #1:

The pitcher who reinvents himself.
Mendoza arrived in Kansas City just prior to the 2010 season when he was a late cut by the Texas Rangers. He opened the season in the majors and promptly did his best impersonation of an arsonist.

In the season’s third game, Brian Bannister squared off against Dontrelle Willis in a pitcher’s duel at the K. (WHAT?!?) With the Royals holding a 2-1 lead against the Tigers, Dusty Hughes started the eighth by walking Johnny Damon. That’s when Trey Hillman summoned Mendoza from the bullpen to face Magglio Ordonez, who rapped an infield single. That brought up Miguel Cabrera. After jumping ahead 0-2, Mendoza centered one and Cabrera deposited the pitch in the right field bleachers. Ballgame. (Hillman left Mendoza in for the rest of the inning and five batters in the ninth before executing a mercy pitching change. In the span of an inning, the Royals went from a one run lead to a three run deficit. While Hillman pulled a Todd Haley. I miss SABR Trey.)

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9 innings with Royals 15th round pick in 2011 and former UCLA player Dean Espy

Dean Espy

R/R

10/30/89 in Mesa, AZ

Played at South Mountain CC (Phoenix) and UCLA

Drafted in 41st round by Rockies out of HS, and by Royals in 15th round in 2011

Played for Idaho Falls in 2011 batting .318/.391/.489/.880 with 7 HR and 39 RBI

Father Duane was the Brewers 7th round selection in 1970 and played through 1978 spending his last 2 seasons in AAA but never reaching the majors. His father has been a minor leaguer coach or manager since 1979 and was the Padres big league hitting coach (2000-02) and the Rockies (03-06)

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Royals Positional Depth Charts - Catchers

Heading into last season it would have been a pretty simple proposition to line up an organizational depth chart at each position considering the Royals had the #1 farm system based primarily on the strength at the top. A year later with the graduation of 9 different prospects the organization looks much different but despite that large number of graduations the farm system was still rated the #3 overall talent organization in all of baseball according to Baseball America. This ranking was built largely on the overall depth something I’ll show you over the next few days.

Catcher

In the course of one season the Royals went from possibly holding this position open to free agents that come available to possibly having a cornerstone player in the spot. Salvador Perez flashed brilliance offensively and defensively from the start of the July in AA through the end of the major league season practically locking down the position for the next six years thanks to his talent and the lack of talent behind him.

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With much to offer, Seratelli awaits chance

KANSAS CITY -- Anthony Seratelli is a realist. He got a late start in pro ball, he hasn't set the world on fire, he's changed positions as often as his socks. So, yeah, he's got Major League dreams, but he's practical about it.

"I don't ever see myself in a position of [the Royals saying], 'Let's call him up to be the everyday shortstop or the everyday ...' I don't see that ever happening," Seratelli said. "My career is going to be a utility guy at this point, and my break will be when they need a guy to fill in at a couple of spots -- or if someone gets traded.

"I don't think I'll ever be that top prospect to come in and play every day. I know that, and I know what my role will be in the big leagues, and I think I can do that."

Seratelli, 28, is a switch-hitting infielder and outfielder who can do a bit of everything. He can run -- he stole 35 bases in 40 tries last season for Double-A Northwest Arkansas and won the Willie Wilson Award as the best baserunner in the Royals' farm system. He's got some pop -- evidenced by five home runs in the Naturals' 2010 postseason run to the Texas League championship after hitting just three in the regular season.

I'd like to see him get a shot as a UT guy. He'd be cheap and effective I think.

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Minor Matters

A couple of notes to sate your Royals appetite before we return to wrap up our 40 man roster review:

– MLB.com released their list of the Top 100 Prospects. The Royals placed four in the top 100. Actually, that’s not technically correct… They placed four in the top 47.

17 – Bubba Starling
19 – Wil Myers
31 – Mike Montgomery
47 – Jake Odorizzi

I understand we all have a fascination of Top Prospect lists and whatnot, but I have a difficult time seeing Starling as the Royals top prospect. Especially if the system is as deep as we believe it to be. Starling may be a supreme talent, but the young man has yet to swing the bat professionally. I’m not down on him and I understand how the system works, but I’d like to see some professional success before we anoint him the best prospect in the system.