Mike Stanton might have prodigious power, but first baseman Logan Morrison should be the next big bat to make a difference in the Marlins’ lineup.

Morrison, 22, is closer than Stanton to being ready to hit major league pitching. Morrison has above-average raw power, but what scouts consistently point to as his most impressive attribute is his approach to hitting. He has a flat swing, works the middle of the field, stays balanced and does an outstanding job with his pitch recognition, which is why he walked (63) more than he stuck out (46) in Double-A Jacksonville.

“He probably stood out more while I was there than Stanton,” said an American League scout. “But once you look at Stanton’s age (19) and look long term, you go with Stanton. Morrison just hits, and everything he hits he centers consistently.”

After missing the first two months of the season with a fracture in his right wrist, Morrison didn’t come back swinging for the fences. He stayed with his gap-to-gap approach and hit .277/.411/.442 in 79 games with eight home runs for Jacksonville. 

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Nothing is certain yet, but the Pirates have spoken with incumbent third baseman Andy LaRoche about working out at second base, with the hope that Pedro Alvarez can take over at third base in Pittsburgh by the middle of next season.

While LaRoche will have to adjust to learning a new position, the other question is whether Alvarez is capable of handling third base.

Not every scout is completely sold on Alvarez sticking at third base, but the answers from those who have seen the 22-year-old Alvarez this year are mostly that he can, at least for the next few years.

Internally, the Pirates call Alvarez’s defense a work in progress. There are some things in the field that he does well, some things he needs to work on and some things that will always limit him.

With Alvarez’s size (he’s listed at 6-foot-3, 235 pounds), most talent evaluators’ knee-jerk reactions upon looking at Alvarez’s body is to assume he’s better suited at first base. Alvarez’s conditioning has already been chronicled at length—first he supposedly showed up to instructional league after signing out of shape, then he reportedly showed up to spring training in much better condition—as if he were the Oprah Winfrey of prospects.

But after watching him play, several managers around the high Class A Carolina League saw enough evidence to believe Alvarez could remain at third base in the short term:

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There are a lot of power hitters in the minor leagues, but there aren’t many prospects like Marlins outfielder Mike Stanton.

Stanton can pull any fastball out of the park, but with his strength and ability to keep the barrel in the hitting zone for a long time, he can get caught out front or catch balls deep in the zone and drive them over the opposite-field wall, something he did eight times this year.

Several managers who faced Stanton this year recalled seemingly routine line drives he hit that appeared to have an extra gear on them as they traveled off the wall or even over the fence. Along with Stanton’s obvious physical gifts, Stanton receives praise from talent evaluators throughout the industry for his dedication to working on all facets of his game and ability to make adjustments.

“He has gotten better in all areas,” Double-A Jacksonville manager Brandon Hyde said. “His pitch selection improved, his baserunning improved, his defense has improved. Pitchers are real careful with him—he doesn’t get much on the white part of the plate.”

Stanton hit .294/.390/.578 in 50 games with high Class A Jupiter, then went on to bat .231/.311/.455 in 79 games with Jacksonville, combining for 28 homers along the way. And the praise from scouts around the Florida State League and the Southern League has been glowing.

“He’s going to be a franchise player,” said an American League scout. “I think he has a chance to be a five-tool guy who hits 40 home runs in the big leagues.”

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As a switch-hitter, Orioles third baseman Josh Bell should have the platoon advantage whenever he steps into the batter’s box.

There’s just one problem: Bell has an alarming platoon split.

Consider the enormous gap in Bell’s left/right splits this season between Double-A Chattanooga and Bowie:

vs. RHPs: .339/.417/.626 in 362 PAs

vs. LHPs: .193/.282/.259 in 156 PAs

It could just be small sample size, but Bell has shown a pronounced platoon split his entire career. Since Bell made his full-season debut in 2007, he has hit 41 of his 43 home runs against righthanded pitchers. He has plus raw power, but it only shows up when he bats lefthanded.

It’s no statistical fluke. Scouts who have watched Bell repeatedly say that Bell’s swing is much better as a lefthanded hitter. He struggles to lift the ball as a righthanded batter, to the point where he might be better served giving up switch-hitting.

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The last minor league game of the season takes place Tuesday in Oklahoma City, as the champions of the International and Pacific Coast leagues meet in the Triple-A National Championship.

Durham (83-61 regular season), champion of the IL, sends righthander Jeremy Hellickson to the mound against Memphis (77-67), the PCL champion. While one source has lefthander Jaime Garcia slated to start for the Redbirds, the Bulls’ game notes and the Memphis Commercial-Appeal have righthander P.J. Walters scheduled. Durham advanced by winning a five-game first-round series with Louisville before sweeping Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to win the Governor’s Cup, while Memphis swept Albuquerque and then Sacramento to claim the PCL title.

While Garcia and Walters are solid options, Hellickson gives the Bulls a distinct advantage, as the 22-year-old Iowan has been one of Triple-A’s best pitchers in the second half of the season. He has 18 strikeouts in 12 1/3 playoff innings, after going 6-1, 2.51 in nine starts for the Bulls. That stretch included 70 strikeouts and just 15 walks in 57 1/3 innings pitched. [...] Continue Reading »

Get a good pitch to hit is a ubiquitous tenet of hitting in player development systems across baseball. A walk represents success because it moves the chain along without costing an out, but the walk is an outcome of waiting for a good pitch to hit. A hitter with a tiny walk rate (particularly coupled with a high strikeout rate) in the minor leagues can be a sign of a hitter with pitch recognition issues.

Hitters can get by in the lower levels of the minor leagues with great tools and a terrible approach, but more advanced pitchers in Triple-A and the majors will pick them apart with superior stuff and superior ability to locate their pitches. (Conversely, polished hitters who rely on a selective approach in the lower minors but lack major league-caliber tools can also see their production dissipate as they progress, but for today we’ll just focus on the impatient.)

Can an impatient approach work for some players? Sure, but it’s rare to see and usually is reserved for the freakishly talented who have the ability to barrel up balls at an elite rate and have above-average power. So which hitters saw their prospect status take a hit because of their free-swinging ways? These four fit the bill (note that UIBB stands for unintentional walks, while I have removed intentional walks from each player’s plate appearances count):

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We recognized a handful of the great pro debuts by older players in the Rookie-level Appalachian League earlier this month. Since I’m ranking prospects for both that league and its Upper Rockies equivalent, the Pioneer League, it seems only fair to give them both equal play.

The tricky part about evaluating Pioneer League batters’ performance is the league’s high-offensive environment. It’s just a different brand of baseball than that featured in the majority of minor leagues.

Consider that the average Pioneer club scores 5.37 runs per game, compared with an average of 4.78 in the Appy. The average Pioneer batter hits for more (isolated) power than his Appy counterpart—.135 versus .127—but interestingly, the leagues’ home run rates are virtually identical at 0.7 per nine innings. Most of the extra offense appears to come virtue of singles, which is evident in the Pioneer League’s .273 league batting average—16 points higher than the Appy. [...] Continue Reading »

As most of you already know, Madison Bumgarner made his big league debut Tuesday night, pitching into the sixth inning with no decision in the Giants’ 4-3 loss to the Padres. That’s big news, for several reasons.

First, let’s appreciate that Bumgarner has been the best pitcher in the minor leagues the last two seasons—and it’s really not close. The lefthander is 27-5, 1.65 over 273 innings in 2008-2009, with 107 innings coming this year at Double-A Connecticut. Bumgarner has a sterling 256-to-55 strikeout-to-walk ratio overall and gave up just nine home runs in the minors, though he allowed a pair in his debut last night.

While Bumgarner maintained a sterling strikeout rate in the high Class A California League earlier this season, his rate dipped to just 5.8 per nine innings in the Eastern League. The main culprit for that decrease has been the decreased fastball velocity that was on display last night in the big leagues. He threw 76 pitches, according to MLB’s Pitch F/X data, and 48 were fastballs, most of which checked in around 88 mph. [...] Continue Reading »

With general manager Mike Rizzo no longer sporting an "interim" ahead of his title, changes have started coming to the Nationals organization. On Saturday, the Nationals fired farm director Bobby Williams and minor league hitting coordinator Ralph Dickenson.

Williams spent three years as the Nats’ farm director, the same length as Dickenson’s tenure. Former GM Jim Bowden had hired both men, making it absolutely no surprise that both were let go. However, former Reds manager Bob Boone, who came with Bowden to the Nats, remains as the assistant GM/vice president of player development.

With the seasons over for all their affiliates, the Nationals’ minor league teams finished with a .501 cumulative winning percentage at 380-378, the second straight winning season in the organization.

First base prospects have little margin for error.

Many of the best major league first basemen—Mark Teixeira, Miguel Cabrera, Kevin Youkilis, Jim Thome and Carlos Delgado, among others—began their careers at other positions.

There are exceptions, like Prince Fielder, but minor league first basemen usually have to have pretty special ability at the plate to become major league regulars, as first former top 100 prospects Jason Hart, Eric Munson and Calvin Pickering and others have found out.

High Class A Salem’s Anthony Rizzo is already at first base, but his skill set at the plate and in the field makes the Red Sox prospect more well-rounded than most minor league first basemen.

The lefthanded Rizzo, who turned 20 last month, reached base twice on a pair of line-drive singles to left field yesterday at Winston-Salem.

"The barrel of his bat is in the zone for a long time," Salem manager Chad Epperson said. "That’s special for a kid his age. So many guys that age are just flying open, flying open. He’s not—it’s in the zone for a while. He’s very mature for his age, on and off the field."

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