The Arizona Fall League is chock-full of young prospects looking to make their mark. Desert Diaries is your twice-weekly look at which of these up-and-comers could make a fantasy baseball splash in 2010. In case you missed it while you were at that pesky place called work on Thursday, Washington Nationals prospect and first overall selection in the 2009 Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft, Stephen Strasburg, made his second appearance in the Arizona Fall League. He didn't do well.
Strasburg pitched 2.2 innings on Thursday, striking out four, walking one and giving up a whopping three home runs which lead to seven earned runs against him. According to Chico Harlan of The Washington Post, the seven earned runs he gave up in his outing yesterday were almost half of the number he gave up in his entire junior season at San Diego State.
In 15 starts and 109 innings earlier this year with San Diego State, Strasburg allowed just 16 total earned runs. He surrendered four homers during his entire junior season.
For Strasburg, the Washington Nationals' No. 1 overall pick, this appearance reinforced some basic truths. A high fastball, no matter how hard it's thrown, doesn't fool anybody. Strasburg's fastball ranged in the high-90s -- he threw at least once that hit 99 mph -- but that pitch, as well as his breaking stuff, stayed up in the zoneI spoke with Frankie Piliere who has been a professional scout since 2004 and recently joined the staff here at FanHouse. I asked him to talk about what happened to Strasburg on Thursday.
"I think it was an enormous learning experience for him.", said Piliere. "It was good to see that the stuff was there, touching the upper 90s, but he's going to need to utilize the third pitch and locate the breaking ball."
Strasburg's start yesterday doesn't mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. There will be many more opportunities in Arizona. It was just one appearance -- an outing that he can easily recover from and improve upon. One of the areas of improvement, according to Piliere, is his curveball.
"The big curveball gets a lot of these pitching prospects in trouble early in their careers and he got burned on it in this one. That's what sticks out to me. He learned he can be beat on his fastball and realized his curveball isn't automatic at the pro level like it was in college."
As you can see, Strasburg may not be an automatic addition into the top of the Nationals' rotation. He has work to do this fall and later on in Spring Training. When asked about the readiness of Strasburg and whether he was ready to pitch at the major league level, Piliere said, "At this moment I say he's not".
Other Fantasy News From the Arizona Fall League
• Adam Rubin of the New York Daily News thinks the New York Mets will sign a righty-hitting first baseman to split time with Daniel Murphy on a short-term basis until Ike Davis is ready to be promoted. If the way Davis hit to end his minor league season and his hitting in the AFL are indicative (.414/.438/.724 with six doubles in 29 at-bats), Davis will force that promotion sooner, rather then later.
• Jason Heyward, the Atlanta Braves top hitting prospect, is only 20-years-old and only has one week of experience above the Double-A level -- which is one of the reasons, according to Dave O'Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, why the Braves may look elsewhere for their needed big bat. Another reason might be the minor hamstring injury Heyward suffered which has kept him from AFL action all week.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-23-2009 @ 11:49PM
AJP said...
not a big deal, 2nd start in AFL, if he would have thrown shutout innings ppl would be clamouring for him to be promoted to the major leagues. w/e happens is irrelevant because he's not ready yet.
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