New Hampshire: First Half Review

Wednesday, July 12 2006 @ 08:00 AM EDT

April was bad. May was good. June? Not so much.

The Fisher Cats fell to 38-50 after Sunday's 5-4 loss – 12 games below .500, the worst this franchise has ever been. The offense is still average in terms of runs scored and OBP, and even their ability to steal bases is quite poor – 56% success rate through June, with the fewest steals by far. The pitchers must still be pitching to contact, as their strikeout and walk rates are among the lowest in the league.

Shall we move on to the prospects, then? (Only one Romero will be found here, by the way; Davis is plying his trade in Triple-A.) Career and 2006 stats are linked through First Inning; current stats for all players with New Hampshire can be found here, and splits for each player can be found here. (Here's how old I am: I remember when the only place I could get minor league statistics was in Baseball Weekly. For that matter, I remember Baseball Weekly.)

David Purcey, somehow, didn't walk anyone on June 25 against Portland. He did walk 13 others in the month, though most of those came in his two starts with Syracuse – he's walking a batter every third inning now after his demotion instead of every other inning. Things didn't end very well in June, either; seven runs and eight hits in four innings is cringe-worthy. Expect him to finish out the year in Double-A; Syracuse was probably too much, too fast for him. Interesting note: not counting Monday's start, he has allowed just one homerun in 26 innings for the Fisher Cats.

Adam Lind had a .292 GPA in the first half, which puts him 13 points ahead of Simon Pond. All kidding aside, he's still hitting very well, having slugged .500 or better in every month except April, when he had a .488 mark. Keep in mind that the average Eastern League hitter went .236/.306/.349 in April, so Lind's 784 OPS in the first month is nothing to sneeze at. He's hitting .367 on balls in play (not counting Monday's game), which seems really high, but he had a .352 mark last year and .340 with Auburn in 2004. So what's not to like? Well, he went from striking out in 21% of his at-bats in April to 24% in May to 31% in June. Ryan Howard struck out 31% of the time and even with his power (.279 career ISO to Lind's current .219), people doubted his ability to produce at the major league level. He's still one of the best hitters in the league, though, and he's still 22 years old (for five more days, anyway).

Trivia question: With a two-run shot Monday night, Lind moved back into a tie for the league lead in HR. He also leads in hits. Who was the last major league player to do that?

Curtis Thigpen has been leading the team in on-base percentage for a while, but his numbers are mostly due to his lefty-mashing, as he is hitting just .224./.342/.358 and striking out almost twice as often against RHP. June also saw a serious sap in his power. None of this is all too serious, though, as he's actually been moved to the leadoff spot after Tony Miller's return to the disabled list. Hitting coach Gary Cathcart said Thigpen is “our best guy, if you’re looking for quality at-bats, knowledge of the strike zone, decent speed and on-base percentage...He seems to have a better grasp of the strike zone, a little bit more than some of the guys right now.” However, Thigpen will apparently be the DH, not the catcher, when leading off -- “He’s got to get his pitcher ready, deal with his gear and it’s just tough to do” -- so I don't know how positive of a move that is. I'd rather see them develop him as a catcher first, since the current major-league-ready catcher depth chart after Molina and Zaun consists of Jason Phillips and frantically searching for Ken Huckaby's cell phone number.

Chip Cannon's most similar player, according to First Inning, is the 2001 Josh Phelps. By the time Phelps was 24, he had hit .309 with 15 HR in a half-season with Toronto. Cannon? Not quite there yet. (Also on that list are Ryan Howard and Travis Hafner. I imagine, like Baseball-Reference, the similarity scores are more for interest than analysis.) Knocked off the top spot on the Toronto Organization Best Name Leaderboard after the drafting of Baron Frost, he responded with some power in June, knocking out more homers (7) than in April and May (3, 3) combined. Swinging for the fences comes with a side-effect, though, and he struck out in nearly 40% of his ABs. And despite the extra power, he hit groundballs at a higher rate. All this being said, though, the power is definitely there.

Until this week, Ismael Ramirez had been out since June 10 with an bone spur. Our intrepid minor league guru Gerry McDonald reminds me that this was an injury that affected him last year as well. Ramirez was activated and pitched in relief on Monday. One of Mike Murphy or Bob Lipman, I don't recall who it was, said on the air during that game that “a lot of people would like to see him in Syracuse.” Count me as one person on that list.

Ricky Romero is new to the Fisher Cats, having made just two starts before the All-Star Break. And neither of them are the ones you'd write home about. He's still the player to watch on this team, though – John Sickels calls this the Double-A Test for a reason. Let's see how he does.

It's hard to be a sleeper these days, but Kyle Yates comes close. He was Toronto's Pitcher of the Month for June, and while First Inning suggests he is “too hittable to have much success in the upper minor leagues”, Yates has certainly performed well in that area so far. He's given up more hits than innings pitched just twice in 7 starts for New Hampshire in June. He closed out the month with this performance on June 29. Seven shutout innings? Eight strikeouts? I'll take it. Yates held opposing batters to a line of just .174/.250/.270 with only one home run over the month and his secondary numbers are just as good now as they were earlier in the year – that's what a .441 average on balls in play in April does to you. The Hardball Times included him in their list of “top 10 pitching performances” in the Eastern League, making him the third Fisher Cat along with Davis Romero and one other guy...

...who is Michael MacDonald. No, that's not the Daily Double question, but if it was, Alex Trebek might say “This right-hander has put together a breakout year at a time when he needs to step up or get lost in the sea of pitching prospects in the Toronto organization.” MacDonald has struggled with the long ball as of late, giving up five homers in June after none in April and one in May. Historically, he's been very homer-stingy, and his overall numbers this year still bear that out (6 in 106.2 innings). His walk rate is also nice and low, but since April, he's been dangerously close to the Michalak Line with 42 strikeouts in 80.1 innings.

Thanks to Dino Lima (FisherCatFan) for the photos. You can see more of his baseball photography here.

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