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1/28/12

Baseball: Drew Smyly, Francisco Lindor, Jorge Posada, Christian Yelich


Drew Smyly, Tigers: At the start of the 2011 season, lefty prospects in the Tigers system like Andy Oliver and Casey Crosby got more of the attention, but it was Smyly who outperformed both of them. In his first full season, Smyly made it to Double-A and led the system in ERA while finishing third in strikeouts, more than enough to earn him MLB.com's nod for the organization's Pitcher of the Year. Smyly fits the mold of a command-and-control college lefty with four pitches -- fastball, cutter, curve and changeup -- that are all usable offerings. If the breaking ball and offspeed stuff continue to improve, it shouldn't be long before he's ready to help out in Detroit. http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120113&content_id=26339048&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb&tcid=tw_article_26339048

Francisco Lindor, SS, Lake Country - When the Indians drafted Lindor eighth overall this June, Baseball America threw out these phrases: “tremendous work ethic,” “plays the game with ease and passion,” “scouts haven’t scoffed at Omar Vizquel comparisons” on defense, and that he was a “legitimate candidate for the No. 1 overall pick.” If that’s not exciting, I don’t know what is. Lindor is only 18 and has plenty of growth ahead of him. He’s already been dubbed best hitter for average, best defensive infielder, and top prospect by Baseball America and now will have to go to work proving that on the field. If he’s as good as he’s advertised to be, he could force his way up the minor league ladder very quickly http://www.indiansprospectinsider.com/2012/01/five-exciting-prospects-to-watch-in.html?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

Jorge Posada, 40, played 17 seasons, all with the Yankees. He finished with a .273 average, 275 home runs and 1,065 RBIs in 1,829 games. Most of them were under manager Joe Torre, whom Posada called a "father" figure for him. Posada is one of only five catchers all-time with 1,500 hits, 350 doubles, 275 homers and 1,000 RBIs; Johnny Bench, Gary Carter, Carlton Fisk and Ivan Rodriguez are the other four. Posada ends his career as the first catcher since Bench to play 17 consecutive seasons with the same team, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. http://espn.go.com/new-york/mlb/story/_/id/7497146/new-york-yankees-jorge-posada-retires-17-seasons

Christian Yelich put up an excellent offensive season, hitting for average and power while stealing over 30 bases and posting a very good on-base percentage. But his batted ball tendencies were downright bizarre. When you scroll down Yelich’s Minor League Splits page, the first thing that jumps out is his HR/OFB%, the percentage of home runs he hit among his flyballs to the outfield. His HR/OFB% came in at 19.2%, well above the league average of 9.1%. That isn’t so crazy, but Yelich hit just 15 home runs! Scrolling a little further down on the page, we get to his batted ball ratios. And those are pretty outlandish. His LD% (line drive percentage among his batted balls) was an impressive 22.2%, well above the league average of 16.4%, but he hit way too many balls on the ground, 53.7% of his batted balls compared to the league average of 42.8%. The only reason that Yelich was able to get away with that is because he’s so fast and was able to beat out decent percentage of those groundballs in addition to the groundballs that went for hits by pure luck. Yelich didn’t hit very many flyballs at all, just 21.9% of his batted balls compared to the league average of 26.4%. But among his batted balls, Yelich was extremely efficient. A minuscule 1.3% of his flyballs were pop-ups on the infield, exponentially better than the league average of 19.8%. When Yelich hit the ball in the air, he hit for tons power, with 30.2% of his line drives and flyballs ending up as extra-base hits. But well over half his batted balls were groundballs, preventing Yelich from posting elite power numbers. Yelich was basically two different hitters meshed into one: a Juan Pierre-esque hitter that hit tons of groundballs but beat a lot of them out and a healthy Josh Hamilton-esque hitter that hit everything hard for extra-base hit after extra-base hit. Yelich’s BAbip was .373, right around where it should have been, but it’s insane how he got there. The results were spectacular: Yelich’s .312 batting average led all Sally League qualifiers (minimum 3.1 PA’s per game which in this case is 434 plate appearances). But Yelich has to right his batting ball tendencies to maximize his potential. If he can trade a bunch of groundballs for flyballs to the outfield, he’ll hit for more power and his batting average won’t suffer very much because he’ll still have the speed to beat out groundballs - http://seedlingstostars.com/2012/01/24/2011-sal-all-stars-of-christian-yelich/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

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