Final Minors Rosters

myrtle beach's infield is brutal unless something finally clicks with candelario

I think Myrtle Beach will easily be the winningest team in the system this summer. That's got a chance to be a really, really good roster in terms of minor-league success.

*Catching could be excellent with Caratini and his bat.

*OF with McKinney, Hanneman, and Zagunis could be very productive, and excellent defensively.

*Rotation could be really deep and really good (minor-league-wise, at least, even if some don't have overpowering TOR big-league stuff.)

*Relief could be really good relative to A-ball.

*The infield is obviously the weakest aspect. But an infield with Rogers, Lockwood, Penalver, and Candelario could by very A-ball solid in terms of winning games, even if not for big-league prospects. Penalver is really weak offensively, but he's very slick defensively. Only a year ago a lot of posters were pumping him as a top-30 guy. Lockwood hit for high average and had an OBP around .350 last year. Assuming he can sustain that, that's fine. Rogers isn't a big-league prospect, but the guy is a good A-level hitter. If Candelario is terrible again, having him and Penalver both bad will hurt the offense. But if Candelario can take a modest step and get up into the mid-.700's OPS, or perhaps better, I think the infield will be pretty good and the offense in general will have an unusually good OBP for an A-ball level. To have only one auto-out in the lineup (Penalver) is pretty rare in A-ball, isn't it?

That should be the team that could run away from it's league.

South Bend, always hard to predict.

*Torres is the only serious position prospect, and being so young, he might be a guy who really isn't all that W-L good. (For example, if he hits .265 with a .300 OBP and .385 slugging, and makes a lot of errors, that might not win them a lot of games. But we might still get the "that's very good for his age, that's a good season, and remember how many errors Jeter made when he was a teenager, that's normal for a teenage SS".) If Torres isn't really all that proactive W-L wise, an they don't get very lucky with some of the other guys, that could be a pretty bad offensive roster.

*Stinnett is the name for rotation, and maybe he'll be really good. But, he's a 2nd-round guy who didn't seem to be K'ing anybody in camp, maybe he won't be really all that good? Almost a lose-lose for South Bend record-wise: if Stinnett isn't very good, not so good for SB record. If Stinnett *is* really good, fair chance that he'll be up to MB after the first half if not sooner.

Can never tell, though. Might well be that guys like Jesse Hodges, Chesny Young, Jason Vossler, maybe they'll all be pretty successful winners relative to low-A. And OF might not be good, but Baez, Burks, Brown, Belaguert, Trey Martin, Rashard Crawford, that might end up being a pretty productive OF relative to low-A, again even if the big-league chances aren't compelling.

Rotations, Stinnett, Norwood, Clifton, Null, Hedges, Leal, McNeil, who knows what you'll get out of that crowd.

Also possible that come mid-May, perhaps Sands or Steele are impressing enough in EXT to come up and augment the rotation.

Low-A is always the hardest to predict, because for a lot of guys the jump from short-season to Full-A is a big one and guys I thought were interesting get filtered out fast. Just not enough known about many of the guys at this stage to know what they can or can't do at that level, or who will or won't have improved significantly since last year. Maybe a month from now we'll perceive Stinnett, Clifton, Norwood, McNeil, and Null as a very high-quality A- rotation, who knows?

south bend's rotation could actually be really good. but if stinnett is as good as advertised he probably won't be there long

Yup, it could end up being, very good.

*Stinnett might look like a gem.

*Clifton's been young, and kind of inconsistent, but he's at an age where guys can get stronger and faster and better fast. If he has, he could emerge and look like a really good prospect.

*Norwood was scouted with a very fast fastball, and he was only 20. He's been quite sharp in camp. If he shows up throwing well into the 90's and getting lots of outs, he might be very good.

*Null is a tall guy who had some good velocity reports, and had excellent K/BB ratios in college, and supposedly has a good sinker. My understanding is he wasn't healthy last summer, and that cost him in the draft. But he's supposed to be 100% this year, and he might emerge as a very interesting sinker/control/anti-HR guy who's got plenty of velocity to make that work.

*Ryan McNeil was supposedly emerging as a pretty good looking prospect before his surgery. Last year he was way wild and terrible. But what if he's actually 100% now, and back in the groove? For all we know he might have plenty of arm and plenty of breaking ball to be a serious guy.

*Leal, OK, I'm struggling to see how he's going to be very good.

*Hedges is a tall guy who's had some excellent control. For A-, maybe he'll actually be a pretty steady winner?

It could be quite interesting and quite good. And Sands and Steele might arrive too, at some point.

Iowa is apparently too lazy to make a concise list or update the roster portion of their site. Article on the final roster can be found here: http://www.milb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20150406&content_id=116552666&fext=.jsp&vkey=news_t451&sid=t451

That article doesn't seem to include Pierce Johnson on their roster?

Arizona Phil has:

Pierce Johnson (INACTIVE - unknown-type injury)

I think Thorpe will be in the rotation/piggy-back pool for SB.

There is certainly promotion-potential within the rotation. Iowa is largely roster fill, and Tennessee extensively so. So if Edwards gets on a good run, he could promote. If Skulina or Tseng or Torrez or whomever gets on a good run at Daytona, any of them could promote. South Bend is primarily a college rotation, and certainly the hope would be that Stinnett and/or Norwood/Null/Thorpe/Hedges would pitch well enough to promote. If Sands sequences a series of strong outings at XST, he can promote too.

Agree that McKinney down to Eloy, same sort of deal.

Hopefully guys are playing well enough to justify promotions, and that promotions are due more to earning than injury.