While I'm here....

[Brewers GM (Marty)]

I figured I'd post what I see during the games. For the week, I'll be seeing the Brewers, Dbacks (tonight), Reds, A's, Mariners, and Indians. If you have someone you are curious about on these teams, let me know and if I see them I'll post a small sickels-style blurb. I have to say, there is a world of difference in how strong MLB guys are vs. the AA guys that also show up in these games. Kyle Wren, AJ Schugel, Yoan Lopez all looked like they just graduated high school in comparison in terms of physical maturity. Their uniforms look 3 sizes too big on them.

Guys I saw tonight:

Yasmany Tomas: Sorry, I don't see an impact player. At the very least not this year, maybe he figures out some things after a year of failure. I saw 3 AB's, and he just flailed away. I think he saw 4 pitches, and one was a dirtball. He can't possibly have a plan at the plate. For example, Michael Blazek (who threw well) threw 13 pitches and 11 were balls to 3 hitters in a row in his final inning. One was a 4 pitch walk of some random pinch hitter I can't recall, then Pollock walked on 4, next batter was Enciarte who pounded a 3-1 pitch into a DP. Tomas apparently wasn't watching and swung at the first pitch, which was a slider that started outside then looked to break off the outside corner from the way he bent over to hit it and grounded weakly to 3B. Next AB, he gets a Rob Wooten slider on the first pitch and rolls it over to 3B. He looks to be sitting dead red, but either has to cheat to get to velocity or doesn't ID spin because he swings at the breaking pitch starting in the zone as if it's a FB. Both sliders bent him over at the waist as he struggled to keep the bat in the zone for contact. On top of that I'm fairly sure he's carrying about 20 lbs in his gut alone, more elsewhere. He seriously looks like the out of shape version of Pablo Sandoval. He's also not half the 3B that fat Sandoval is. I wonder if he can handle LF. He seemed like a nice guy though.

Yoan Lopez: He started today, and he is a stick figure. Stadium gun had him at 90-91, and since I was sitting behind the 3b dugout I couldn't tell if he was throwing a slider or a change. If I had to guess, I'd go slider. It looked like it had about 3-4 inches of downward movement, couldn't gauge sideways movement. The movement I saw looked sharp, and the Brewer hitters didn't look comfortable with their swings against it. They chewed up his fastball though. Looks like a good athlete, I'd guess with some muscle he'd pack on the MPH. He's not close to the majors though.

AJ Pollock: He looks like an all star. Squared up everything but got unlucky. If he's healthy, he's going to put up numbers.

Michael Blazek: He chewed up a bad lineup. Looked to be using a 92-94 sinker rather than the 97-99 wild-ass but straight fasball he was throwing last year. The Dbacks pounded the ball into the ground for 4 innings. He looked good, might be getting a shot at a starting role as depth behind Jungmann and Pena in AAA.

[Brewers GM (Marty)]

Saw the A's on a day game.....Not a lot to report on kids, mostly vets today.

Marcus Semien had a rough day. Seemed to have a problem with the inside fastball as Jimmy Nelson got in on his hands all three times. Also not sure he's a SS. He played a Luis Sardinas slap grounder into a single and looked a step or so shy on range in both directions.

Brett Lawrie looked like a world beater. The same Nelson fastball that was getting in on everyone's hands he laced hard 3 times. Gomez ran down a ball at the wall that never got more than 20 feet off the ground, Parra froze and watched another ripped liner go over his head and off the base of the wall, and the last one also landed in Gomez's glove as he ran back to the warning track on a smashed liner. If he wasn't already a Royal I'd be putting a full court press on right now.

Max Muncy is a little bowling ball. I think he's probably not a starter on a first division team, but given what the Brewers have trotted out since Fielder left, I think he could start at either 3B or 1B for several teams and be productive. I don't know if that team is the A's or not. The Brewers didn't make him field a ball so I didn't get a feel for 3B defense.

Luis Sardinas will be an exceptional bench player. He made an error, but he looks nice in the field at 3 infield positions with plenty of arm and range. And he can fly. From what I saw today and yesterday, he has a good eye at the plate, but his approach is very slap and dash. Even if he carves out a starting role for a team, he won't be fantasy relevant.

Jimmy Nelson is a 3 starter at best. Good movement on his fastball and slider, but I didn't see much of a change. He doesn't have much control, and it's hard to see it coming with his mechanics. I think that he's a guy that will get into a rhythm with his mechanics and throw 3-5 really nice starts in a row, then he'll lose them and get blasted for several in a row.

Sonny Gray was clearly working on finding his curve today. He threw a ton of them, and a lot were buried. Gomez bashed a get over fastball on the first pitch of the game, but for the most part it was breaker after breaker. Not many were over the plate.

I wish Billy Burns was a Brewer. He and Sardinas on the bench would shore up your defense late in games, and they'd drive pitchers nuts as pinch runners. I mean if Ben Revere can have a starting CF job, why can't he? I think he's going to eventually be a solid player for someone. No power, but didn't show a slappy style of swing either.

[Brewers GM (Marty)]

Mariners today, not much to see. M's were split squad, and the Brewer prospects are boring.

One thing I did see was a battle between "#5 starters" Roenis Elias and Mike Fiers. Both have similar stuff, but there is a big difference between them that I never noticed before because I rarely get behind the plate tickets when I'm at Miller Park. You can see what pitch Elias is throwing as it's leaving his hand. You don't know what pitch Fiers has thrown until it's about halfway to the plate and starting to break. They all look the same out of his hand. You could tell that the M's hitters weren't comfortable even with Fiers' 87 mph fastball. Elias was throwing noticeably harder (no stadium gun), but the Brewer hitters were able to hit it hard, and they were also able to sit back and knock his curve around. Davis' 1st inning grand slam was on a 1st pitch Elias curve that stayed up. The Mariners could not stay back on Fiers' curve or change, and they were not getting good swings on his fastball either. It's much easier to see how Fiers is successful after today getting the batter's point of view, then getting to compare him to a similar starter wearing a different uniform.

I waited an extra inning and a half to see Kivlehan hit in a 15-1 spring game and he repaid me with a 1 pitch rollover of a Rob Wooten slider. Goddamnit. He played 1B today.

[Brewers GM (Marty)]

Almost forgot, saw Pat Venditte pitch yesterday which was really cool. He seemed to prefer throwing as a lefty, since that's what he chose when he faced switch hitters. Interesting, because when a comebacker hit him and he went to field it, he chucked his mitt so that he could field as a righty. Anyhow, he could be a 6th/7th inning loogy as a lefty, mopup type as a righty. I don't think he has the stuff from the right side to be a dominant matchup reliever. Still pretty cool to see a guy switch hands mid-inning.

[Brewers GM (Marty)]

The Reds home spring training mascot, Zizzy, looks like a dildo. Noah may have to google that reference. Someone needs to take a step back and rethink that costume design.

Night game vs. the Reds. They played the same lineup all game long with no interesting guys tonight, except.....

Raisel Iglesias threw tonight. No stadium gun, but I figure that Garza worked about 91-92 like normal, which put Iglesias about 93-95 by my eyes. He threw a fastball that had a little late run on RH hands and a slider that was pretty rough in the first inning. It was a pretty loopy pitch rather than a tight breaker. Gennett planted one about 400 feet as the first hitter of the game, then Lucroy hit a waste-high middle in fastball over the LF wall 2 batters later. From that point he was pretty solid as he started working down in the zone and his slider tightened up. I don't see a starter here though. Righties were pretty uncomfortable after his slider stopped looping, but the only lefty that was worth anything (Gennett) got good swings on him. I don't see a pitch that keeps them honest, and I think that he'll have trouble turning a lineup over that third time. Probably a 3-5 starter that has good outings vs. right handed dominant lineups, but could be a dominant reliever.

Also saw Orlando Arcia. He makes me wonder if analysts just regurgitate what other analysts say about a player rather than actually watching, or if I'm just way off base here. Reports I'd read made me picture a little guy that just takes a little flip of the bat swing hoping to loop it into the OF or up a baseline ala Luis Sardinas. That's not the case. He took his hacks tonight. He took two decent sliders in his first AB and then ripped a inner half fastball off the left field wall. His 2nd AB I thought Jumbo Diaz would overmatch him. For 3 pitches, it looked like that would be the case. Then he laid off two chest high 95+ fastballs and a slider out of the zone. Next pitch was another fastball above the belt that he got on top of and crushed a liner to the right center gap that shorthopped the wall 380 feet away. He's going to be a better major leaguer than his brother.....bold prediction.

Contrasting that with Tyrone Taylor....I see a 4th OF. Where Arcia gets no love when it comes to his power but gets some good press for his contact ability, Taylor strives to just make contact where Arcia makes contact while trying to drive the ball. Big, big difference. Taylor showed a good eye, but when the ball came near the zone he made a seeming 3/4 effort at the ball hoping to get a single. In his AB vs. LeCure, he took two sliders that chewed up the next guy on this list. Then he got a pretty hittable fastball and looped a flyball into RF that wasn't deep enough to score a runner from 3B. In a 2-1 count he made no effort to get his pitch and drive it. His intent was to just loft a ball to the OF. I have a strong feeling that his doubles are the up the line version rather than the in the gap liner types that translate to HR power.

Clint Coulter would the the guy that was smashed by 3 LeCure sliders that were out of the zone. He was overmatched completely.

[Brewers GM (Marty)]

Fucking hot today. Only saw one guy of interest.

Mike Papi needs some meat on his bones. Showed a good approach, but I think he needs some strength. Looked better at the plate than Aguilar did. Lyle Overbay career?