Turns 35 next month; it just seems like he’s been playing since 1980. Lee was a hot prospect way back in 1997, when the Padres called him up. After the season, he was the biggest take the Marlins got for Kevin Brown when they sold off their first set of champions, and Lee was inserted [...]
The latest, but hardly the greatest, of the long line of shortstops from San Pedro de Macoris. Signed by the Braves at allegedly 19 years old in 2003, he looked like nothing more than organizational fodder until 2007, when he hit .308/.366/.429 combined at Myrtle Beach and Mississippi, mostly the latter. (Note that the previous [...]
He returns! Of course, it’s a little different now than in 2005, when he joined as the closer for a Braves team desperately in need of anyone who wasn’t Dan Kolb or Chris Reitsman to fill the role. Farnsworth was born in Wichita but raised in Fulton County. He was drafted in the 47th round [...]
Well, he’s famous. A lot more famous than his results dictate. Ankiel was the #1 prospect in baseball at one point, a hard-throwing lefthanded pitcher. He made it up to the majors briefly with the Cardinals as a 19-year-old, and at 20 went 11-7 with a 3.50 ERA, 194 strikeouts in 175 innings. And then, [...]
Michael Dunn Minor League Statistics & History – Baseball-Reference.com. Acquired from the Yankees in the Vazquez deal, Michael Dunn was drafted in the 33rd round in 2004 out of a junior college. He was originally used as an outfielder, but after hitting .178 and .086 was moved to the mound. I think that this is [...]
For most of his career, Gonzalez has been most notable because there was another player, also named Alex Gonzalez, also a shortstop, with similar skills and limitations. It was all very confusing. When this sort of thing happened in the eighties, one of the centerfielders named Willie Wilson selflessly allowed himself to be known as [...]
Cristhian Martinez Minor League Statistics & History – Baseball-Reference.com. Command-and-control righty. I’m not quite sure what’s going on with Martinez’s first name, or why he wasn’t signed (out of the Dominican by the Tigers) until he was 20. A late growth spurt, maybe? After a bit of rough introduction to the minor leagues in 2003, [...]
Gregor Blanco Statistics and History – Baseball-Reference.com. He is what he is, a player with some real strengths that are outweighed by real, and major, weaknesses. Blanco can do basically three things: he walks, he runs the bases, and he catches the ball. However, the walks are washed out by Blanco’s high strikeout rate, which [...]
The Tigers’ Ryan Langerhans, a high draft pick (second round) who kept rising through the system because he has obvious physical gifts, but never did anything to make you think he was a real prospect. Clevlen did have a year, 2005 in High-A, in which he drove in 102 runs, but he was repeating the [...]
Craig Kimbrel Minor League Statistics & History – Baseball-Reference.com. Throws hard, bad control. Kimbrel, a short righthander from Huntsville, was drafted from a junior college in the third round in 2008, and has rocketed up the system basically because nobody can hit him: he’s allowed only 53 hits, only two of them homers, in 110 [...]
