A look at some other prospects I saw this week

Besides Tim Beckham there were quite a few other players that could one day have an impact in the big leagues. Here is a first impression of some of them.

Royals players

Hilton Richardson 7th round pick, 2007
Richardson is a tall, speedy, center fielder who is let handed. Richardson appears to crowd the plate and had some issues with a lefty on the mound though that hasn't been a problem for him so far early in the season. Richardson was pretty disciplined at the plate seeing a lot of pitches in his first three at bats before swinging early in his last two. He smoked a liner the other way in the first inning on a fastball outside. Richardson did appear to have some issues making contact though especially on some off speed pitches.

In the field Richardson had an eventful day. To start the third inning he misread a ball over his head that went for a triple. While Hunnicutt stadium isn't Coors field it is up over 3,000 feet above sea level so there is a mini Coors effect. This certainly could have been an issue on this play as the ball just kept carrying and he was just jogging back until the very end. In the fifth with two outs and nobody on a ball was crushed to the right field gap. Richardson got a great jump on the ball and turned on the jets and almost caught up to a ball that was hit much closer to the right fielder than him. Unfortunately for him, the ball hit off the top of the wall and bounced behind him allowing the batter to reach third. With two outs you don't mind seeing a guy go for a ball but it was pretty clear that he wasn't going to catch it and he should have slowed down and played the ball off the wall. He also got turned around on a routine ball but managed to make the catch.

Allen Caldwell 12th round pick, 2008
Caldwell is another left hander who was playing right field for the Royals. He too showed good patience at the plate getting ahead in the count 2-0 twice but when he got two juicy fastballs he wasn't able to do much with either grounding to third and flying out to center. In the eighth he came up with the lead run at second and one out. The Rays went to the pen and summoned a lefty reliever but Caldwell calmly took the first pitch, a fastball middle in, and shoot it to center field for a base hit scoring the lead run. The bad news is he then promptly got picked off first but an error by the first baseman throwing to second took him off the hook. Caldwell didn't have a single opportunity on a fly ball but did have trouble digging a ball out of the bullpen on a catcher overthrow on a strikeout. In fact he had so much trouble the batter almost scored on the play but was thrown out at the plate. Sadly for the Royals, the winning run scored ahead of the batter on the play and if Caldwell had quickly retrieved the ball he probably could have held the runner at third.

Mike Lehmann 20th round pick, 2007
Lehmann is a right handed pitcher with an over the top delivery. He features a four seam fastball in the upper 80's that touched 90 MPH on the gun twice but is pretty straight. He also have a curve in the mid 70's and a change up in the low 80's. Lehmann was around the strike zone all game except for a spate of wildness in the first after Tim Beckham's infield hit. He hit the next batter and then walked the following batter to load the bases on four pitches. The Royals pitching coach came out and talked to him and he didn't walk another batter all game. The bad news was he also didn't strike out anyone in his four innings of work. In fact, he only got three swings and misses during his outing. That is going to have to change if he is going to have any future. Lehmann did field his position well picking up two rollers with his bare hand and fired strikes.

John Flanagan 13th round pick, 2008
During the three games that I watched this past week Flanagan was the most impressive pitcher I saw by far. He is a tall lefty JuCo product who has a three quarters delivery. He throws a sinker in the upper 80's which he consistently kept down in the zone and a slider in the low 80's that has very good bite down and away from left handed batters. He mixed in a couple of change ups to right handed batters but it didn't look like he had a good feel for the pitch and left several of them up in the zone. He struck out five in four innings (despite MiLB saying 4 1/3) with the last one on a slider in the dirt that the catcher mis threw and cost the Royals the game. It was scored a wild pitch but the catcher was asking for it in the dirt and blocked the pitch well he just failed on the throw. A very tough luck loss for Flanagan. Being a JuCo player, he is more advanced than most in rookie ball and I would like to see him in the rotation. He shouldn't neccessarily be pigeon holed into a LOOGY role as his sinker/slider should be effective against right handed batters as well. If he can develop a decent change up that is. If he does wind up as a LOOGY his delivery should make it tough on lefties and he should get plenty of ground balls with his sinker. Here is another example of his polish; he has two distinct moves to first base. The first is a classic step towards first and throw and a second step off and quickly fire to first. I could definitely see him being a C/C+ sleeper type going forward. You can read about Tim Beckham's at bat against him in my THT article. Here are a couple other reviews of him.

Rays Players

Jeremy Beckham 17th round pick, 2008
Tim isn't the only Beckham playing at Princeton as his older brother Jeremy is the second baseman on the team. Jeremy only got in to the game as a defensive substitute in the ninth inning on Wednesday but I got a pretty good look at him earlier in the week. At the plate Beckham is somewhat struggling right now and I think it was probably a good move by Rays manager Joe Szekely to give him a day off. I have noticed that in the low minors the umpires have a pretty liberal strike zone and it appears to me that Beckham might be having some problems with it. The first night I saw him the umpire was consistently giving the pitchers the outside corner but Beckham wasn't adjusting and taking that pitch even with two strikes on him. He also seemed willing to go out of the zone low going after several balls in the dirt. On Tuesday though he had a better game collecting three hits including a solid double in the gap. He was a pretty patient hitter in college so I would expect him to make adjustments relatively quickly though he has no walks so far on the season and I haven't even seen him in a three ball count yet.

In the field things are a much better story. At rookie ball, you see a lot of miscues on routine balls and a fair amount of throwing to the wrong base and things like that. Jeremy Beckham has looked very solid at second to me making several nice plays and turning the double play well. It appears that not only does he have a quick turn but he has a pretty accurate arm even with someone barreling in on him.

Dustin Biell 5th round pick, 2007
Biell has looked absolutely over matched at the plate to start the year. He struck out two more times in four at bats on Wednesday pushing his total to 15 in 34 ABs this year. He swung and came up empty a lot especially on off speed pitches. He did work the count well in a couple of at bats but never hit the ball hard. He was the strike out victim in the 9th that scored the go ahead run so give him credit for not giving up on the play. The ball was blocked by the catcher and it was just a few feet in front of him but Biell hustled down the line and made the catcher make a throw which he didn't do. In the field Biell made a nice play on a blooper a couple of nights ago. He also air mailed a throw from center to the plate which caused two runners to move up though.

Mike Jarman 26th round pick, 2008
Jarman is doing what you would expect a 23 year old college pitcher to do in the rookie leagues, dominate. Jarman went 1 2/3 innings getting all of the outs by strikeout to get the victory Wednesday night. He did give up the lead when brought into the game in the 8th on the hit by Caldwell I described above but he promptly picked him off though the first baseman failed to finish the play. Jarman's off speed pitches, his change up and curve, are too much for rookie league batters though only time will tell if that translates to success further up the ladder. If he continues pitching like this there will be nothing left to prove for him in rookie ball and should be sent to A ball to see if he can stick there.