John Klima | February 26, 2010
If Mike Olt was playing college baseball in Southern California instead of Connecticut, he might be on a few more radar screens than he is right now. Olt is little more than a name on a follow list to most of the country, but he has one of the hardest skills to find in baseball. Simply put, power to all fields. And yes, with wood.
John Klima | February 19, 2010
Derek Dietrich turned down the Houston Astros in the third round of the 2007 draft out of St. Ignatius HS in Parma, Ohio. He took his old school chip on his shoulder, one he inherited from his grandfather, who spent decades in the game, to college baseball. Dietrich had a great freshman year in 2008 for Georgia Tech and then followed it up with a solid 2009 season.
Dietrich enters the 2010 season as one of the few offensive oriented college shortstops available. Dietrich will give you two tools right now. One is the ability to spray the gaps. Two is the arm strength to play you shortstop or third base. Dietrich believes his power ability will fill in as he ages, and for that, as well as his old school baseball acumen, he thanks his grandfather.
John Klima | December 11, 2009
Baseball Beginnings is certainly resourceful. While working the Cape Cod League beat last summer, we ran across a few teams having lunch at the Chicago Uno’s in Hyannis, which, if you’ve ever done time on the Rock (I mean, the Cape), you know that’s pretty much as good as it gets. After lunch, we ran down Auburn’s Hunter Morris in the parking lot before the little yellow school bus drove the players to work. Yes, if you think I’m fabricating even one detail of this, you have never worked in amateur baseball. Most of you, I think, know what I mean.
Morris is a power hitter and, along with Arizona Diamondbacks prospect Matt Davidson, is one of the few players we have met that prefer wood over metal as amateur hitters.
Morris was Mr. Everything at Gus Grissom High in Huntsville, Alabama. His career high school Triple Crown numbers of .470-46-198 helped get him drafted in the second round of the 2007 draft, 84th overall, by the Boston Red Sox.
John Klima | November 20, 2009
(photo: Conejo Oaks)
Kevin Gelinas described himself as a guy who “didn’t think I was going to fall off the radar because I wasn’t really on the radar in the first place.”
You’ve got to like the guy’s humility.
A product of Thousand Oaks (Calif.) High School, the left-hander with the French Canadian name pitched 12 innings at Pepperdine as a freshman, and while pitching summer ball, was spotted by a Central Arizona Junior College assistant keeping his eyes open in Santa Maria. A strong season at Central Arizona got Gelinas drafted in the 45th round by the Detroit Tigers in 2009. This summer, he continued his progression for Conejo Oaks. It just goes to show you that not every prospect can be found on the Cape. We here at Baseball Beginnings are very thankful for that.
Baseball Beginnings caught up with Gelinas after he pitched seven innings on a wickedly hot day in late July. He pitched at 88-92 with a slider at 77-80. We’ll have video and a scouting report in the future.
In the meantime, Gelinas explains where he has been and where he hopes he is going.
John Klima | August 24, 2009
(photo: Nebraska)
Mike Nesseth waited to flip the coin. Drafted in the 15th round by the Los Angeles Angels from the University of Nebraska, Nesseth bided his time this summer in the Cape Cod League. While he waited to see what the Angels had for him, he also waited to see which drafted players were going to get to the Huskers. Fitting that it would come down to the wire for Nesseth, a hard-throwing right-hander with a big pitcher’s frame and a closer’s mentality.
Nesseth slipped to the 15th round partly because he performed a swing role for a 25-28-1 Nebraska team that lacked pitching depth and required Nesseth to enter the rotation. Nebraska finished in last place in the Big 12 in 2009, a forgettable season for a proud program, and crossed its fingers over the summer as a total of five current players and recruits were drafted.
Nesseth pitched sparingly out of the bullpen in the Cape Cod League. He worked 23 innings and allowed 26 hits, walked 14 and struck out 17. His ERA was 6.26. He had a few choices: forget about his last college season and his last amateur summer while working things out in Instructional League, or see what talent Nebraska had coming back and if he could return to a full-time closer role.
Nebraska got all five of its drafted returers and recruits and will head into fall ball well stocked. The recruit that got to the Huskers, Phoenix 6-7 right-hander Tom Lemke, turned down the Rangers in the 10th round and will find himself as a weekend starter in all probabability. Lemke’s arrival should allow Nesseth to settle back into the back end of the bullpen and be a top-shelf college closer if he regain the consistency he compiled in 2008.
“It’s a huge moment for the program and I’m excited to be a part of it,” Nesseth told the Grand Island Independent.
Nesseth took one for the team in 2009. He believes that starting took a toll on his velocity and removed him from his strength. A 91 fastball isn’t the same as a 95 fastball. Nesseth has a very clear idea of what kind of big league pitcher he wants to be. He wants to throw gas in the ninth inning. Period.
It’s easy to see why the Angels went for Nesseth and tried to steal him for below his potential 2010 draft market value. Nesseth profiles for the organization’s long-standing preference for taller, durable right-handers who can withstand the rigors of a long major league season. It’s a characteristic that Branch Rickey deeply believed in, dating back to his years with the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1930s. The belief system remained within the Dodgers organization long after Rickey was gone. Mike Scioscia inherited this quality as a young player with the Dodgers and has since firmly established it as an organizational mandate in Anaheim. You won’t see the Angels push for pitchers who they don’t think can absorb innings and maintain stuff.
A former three-sport standout at Windom High School in Minnesota, Nesseth was one of the top prospects from his home state in 2006. After he redshirted in 2007 and pitched in the Northwoods League that summer, Nesseth made a contribution to Nebraska in 2008 when he went 4-1 with four saves and a 3.58 ERA in 27 games.
When the Huskers struggled in 2009, Nesseth shuffled between the rotation and the bullpen, making eight starts and pitching 64 2/3 innings, in which he struck out 73, walked 35 and allowed 62 hits. His ERA increased to 5.01 and he finished 5-4.
Baseball Beginnings caught up to him on the Cape as he looked back and looked ahead. (more…)
John Klima | August 18, 2009
Tyler Lyons confirmed first to Baseball Beginnings Monday night that he has not signed with the New York Yankees and will return to Oklahoma State for his senior year.
When Baseball Beginnings first saw the left-hander, he was gutting it out on a frigid night in Palm Springs in March, essentially surviving on curveballs and change-ups. Lyons was a wasp without a stinger for the first few months of his junior season at Oklahoma State. He was only throwing between 84-87 that night and he managed to survive with command of his change-up and control of his curveball. Despite lacking his best velocity, Lyons still showed a lot of reasons to like him in that game, but it wasn’t until the second half of the college season and his summer pitching for Chatham that he put to rest any concerns about his arm speed, health or effectiveness.
This summer, Lyons performed like he believes he is capable of. Drafted in the 10th round by the Yankees, Lyons decided to pitch the summer on the Cape to re-establish his velocity and value. Pitching with his stinger again, Lyons worked 89-91 when I saw him in July, with the same plus curveball and change-up. The ball was coming out of his hand much better and his arm speed was where it needed to be. On the photo on the right, Lyons is on top of the ball and he’s creating power. Lyons progressed past the dead arm period that hindered him for most of the 2009 college season, in which he battled for each of his seven wins and finished 7-6, 4.07. He gave up 114 hits in 97 1/3 innings, walked 25 and struck out only 77.
I have come to believe that scouts derived the term “pitch ability” from the beer commercial advertising, “drink ability.” I often wonder how much some younger scouts drink on the Cape and how much they work. In the case of Lyons, he was pretty hard to miss. You don’t exactly see left-handers with three pitches, closed mechanics, routine 89-90s and savvy. And let’s face it. Contrary to popular belief, 89-91 from right-handers is becoming the industry norm. It’s a dark and dirty secret I hate to share with the world and it comes to me from deep inside baseball’s crusty walls. When you get a left-hander with that velocity plus a second and third pitch, you might want to consider that the radar gun is a crutch and a left-hander with a curveball and a change-up can get right-handers out. Somewhere in the process, changing speeds has become marginalized.
In either case, Lyons pitched well at Chatham. He should have been a Cape Cod League All-Star. Lyons went 2-4 with a 1.77 ERA. In 45 2/3 innings, he struck out 44, walked eight and allowed 35 hits. He allowed only one home run and hit six batters, which is an indication that he’s fighting for the inner half.
Baseball Beginnings caught up with Lyons before a recent start to talk about what went wrong, what has gone right, the odds of signing with the Yankees, and why pitch ability is all about smooth and refreshing outs.
John Klima | August 12, 2009
Rob Rasmussen’s uncle, Neil, was the 12th overall pick in the nation in 1971. The next pick was high school left-hander Frank Tanana. At no. 15, the Red Sox drafted Jim Rice. Mike Schmidt and George Brett were drafted in the second round. You get the point.
(photo: UCLA)
Neil Rasmussen’s final pro season was at Double-A Holyoke in 1978, in the fine state of Massachusetts where his nephew, the UCLA left-hander, has spent his two college summers pitching for venerable Orleans in the Cape Cod League. One of the lessons from Neil’s career imparted on Rob was that going to college should come before going pro.
Rob Rasmussen’s stuff has always opened eyes, but if you were to paper scout the numbers in 2008 and 2009, you might miss him. No career is without its bumps in the road, but just about every career is better in the long run if those bumps come before the paychecks. Plus, there’s that degree to fall back on.
When Rasmussen finally does arrive in the major leagues, he’ll be one of the more educated players in multiple respects. His curveball, deviously hard when working, suggests that he pitches bigger than his small high school pedigree or average physical presence.
Rasmussen is listed at 5-11 and 170 pounds, but when he’s on, he gets so much downhill plane that he may well be pitching from the top step of a ladder. Yet in his two years at UCLA, Rasmussen has taken a few tumbles. In his debut as a freshman, he took a line drive off his foot and missed a month. As a sophomore, he pitched well in the fall, got hit early in the spring, and was banished to the bullpen.
This summer, Rasmussen returned to Orleans to prove that he is a starting pitcher and a definite major league prospect. One respected scout compares Rasmussen to All-Star left-hander Ted Lilly for body type, competitiveness and stuff.
Rasmussen was a Cape All-Star in 2009, getting the ball for the start at Fenway Park. Through five starts at the end of July, Rasmussen was 3-0, 1.91. He said he needed to throw more strikes this summer. Eight walks and 37 strikeouts in 28 innings suggest he’s accomplished that. He’ll enter the fall at UCLA with a running start toward the big college season he’s been looking for, one that shows why he once struck out 20 guys in a high school game and why the Dodgers took a 27th round flyer in 2007 on a pitcher they knew was virtually impossible to dissuade from college.
Baseball Beginnings caught up to Rasmussen recently.
John Klima | June 22, 2009
Talk about getting a head start. Three days before the 2009 MLB Draft, Baseball Beginnings rose early to go watch shortstop Angelo Gumbs of Torrance High School play in a championship game at Angel Stadium.
Few things beat this for scouting: a morning game, a big league park, a junior prospect and video taken on the top step of the dugout.
Gumbs is a high school shortstop and a center fielder at heart, the position he’d like to play as a pro. He added about three inches from his sophomore year to his junior year and started to fill out, though there is a long way to go in that body. He’s rangy and whippy with above-average athletic actions. He’s going to be a player, and we’re happy to introduce him.
