It's difficult to get a read on Rookie League baseball. In an era of deep statistical analysis, I think it's often helpful to go back to one's introductory statistics course and use the measure of standard deviation to remind one's self about the uneven nature of competition in the GCL and AZL. The scatterplot of talent/skills varies widely from any perceived performance mean. One day, hitters may be facing a future Hall of Famer and the next, they may face a guy who will be saying "Would you like fries with that?" by the end of the month. The other issue is there is a variance in experience levels in the complex leagues, with college players squaring off against high schoolers and younger Latin American players. Added to that, I lot of the Latin American players are in their second or third year after graduating from the Dominican Summer League, which gives them an advantage against recent high school graduates who were usually using aluminum bats up until signing a pro contract. Water usually finds its own level and the cream rises to the top (Thanks Cliche-o-Matic!), but the wide variance in age and experience makes for an odd melange.
I think the one thing that stood out more than anything in the Gulf Coast League this season was the weather. 9-inning game rainouts often followed by 7-innings doubleheaders rained out. No word as to whether MLB/MiLB is planning on moving operations to the Sahara Desert for the 2020 season.
The GCL Braves ended up 18-31, good for 5th out of 6th in the league's Southern Division.
The biggest standout for the Braves' GCL entry in 2019 was 3rd round pick Michael Harris. Harris was a two-way player in high school and a number of scouting outlets saw him more as a LHP than an OF. Braves have had some luck taking guys who project in both areas and turning them into hitters (Klesko, Simmons, Schafer) and they may have struck again with Harris. Harris' .349 BA would have been good for second in the league if his August promotion hadn't prevented him from qualifying in the GCL. His .917 OPS would have been good for 5th. 9 BB and 20 Ks in approximately 120 PAs. Note: There were likely other performers in the GCL whose rate stats would have put them in the upper echelons of GCL stats.
Next up in the good column was 11th rounder SS Vaughn Grissom. Grissom built his stats up steadily throughout the season and ended up with a .288/.361/.400 slash while playing (at least in two dimensions) decently at SS. 3 HRs to rank second on the team behind Darling Florentino. 16 BB/27 K in approximately 180 PAs.
1B Mahki Backstrom received a lot of buzz coming into the league and didn't disappoint. He was a late signee (which adds another level of uncertainty to the mix) and showed his power potential with 7 XBH in just over 80 PAs. He slashed .300/.402/.457, but K'd 27 times (K-rate > 30%). He did walk 12 times.
Beyond those three hitters, things became a mixed bag in the hurry. Brandol Mezquita--the last man standing from the international signing scandal and the only player declared a free agent who chose to remain with the Braves--had the second highest BA of qualifying hitters on the team with a .246 BA. I guess that sums up the hitting side of the equation for the team fairly well. 5th round pick Steven Paolini and 19th round pick Kadon Morton both ended up below the Melvin Mendoza line, but Paolini walked a ton (isoOBP of .123). His K-rate ended up just under 30%. Morton had contact issues, striking out close to 40% of the time, but had 8 XBH in approximately 110 PAs. Both these guys are tool-centric players and it will take a bit before we know what we have in both of them.
Other note on the offensive side of things was Darling Florentino, who started the season in Rome due to depth issues in the low minors. As stated above, Florentino led the GCL Braves in HRs with 6, but he makes Mike Hessman (obligatory Hessman reference) look like a contact hitter (47 Ks in approximately 110 PAs). Obvious power and the Braves must really like the kid. He skipped the Dominican Summer League altogether in 2018 and debuted stateside as a 17-year-old and made the odd jump to Rome to start 2019. Francoeur-level patience. Slashed .202/.259/.404.
The GCL Braves' pitching staff was a revolving door of rehab assignments and promotions/demotions. As I laid out in the Danville thread, a fair number of pitchers on that staff--Owens, Leban, Yeager, Vines, Williams, and DeVito--started the season in the GCL. Add to that rehab assignments from Tarnok, O'Day, Webb, Dirks, Clouse, Withrow, and Beck (Tristan, we hardly know ye!) and you can see if was a movable feast. 3rd-year RHP Eudi Ascencio led the team in IP with 33.0 followed by 2nd-year RHP Zach Seipel with 31.1. Seipel is an interesting story. First player ever drafted out of the University of Minnesota-Crookston (get out your Google maps gang). He was an undersized catcher out of a Twin Cities suburban high school who managed to grow 8 inches from 5-7 to 6-3 while at UM-C. Supposedly throws low-90s. 33 Ks/12 BBs and 1.12 WHIP. Lots of eyes on post-10th round overslot RHPs Jared Johnson and Joey Estes. Neither pitched a lot. 6 G/15 IP from Johnson and 5G/10 IP from Estes. Hard to get a reading. Estes appeared to have some control issues, but both of these guys were late-risers in the 2019 pre-draft discussions, so there's likely more tools than refined skills on both of them at this point. 12th round pick LHP Andy Samuelson put up big K numbers (21 in 12.2 IP, but got cuffed around a bit). He's another toolsy guy.
Other 2019 draft picks who pitched for the squad were LHP Davis Schwab (11G/22IP/20K/11BB/3.68ERA), RHP Indigo Diaz (6G/10.1IP/15K/2BB/3.48ERA), RHP Chad Bryant (11G/24.1IP/23K/13BB/8.88--2.22 worse than the Sign of the Beast), and resident-Kiwi via Chandler-Gilbert (AZ) CC RHP Ben Thompson (2G/4.1IP/4K/1BB/1.93).
A late free agent signee who is interesting is Brenton Burgess. Burgess most played almost exclusively at SS during his college career (JC ball at Spartanburg Methodist CC where he was a teammate of Braves' minor league 1B Mason Berne). He played his junior year at Middle Georgia State College (where he played with his brother Chris who is currently in the Orioles' system) mostly pitching. He spent his senior year Georgia Gwinnett College, where he again played more SS than pitcher. He was drafted twice--38th round by the Yankees in 2017 and 40th round by the Rangers in 2018--as a RHP. 15 Ks in 12.1 IP with 8 BB.
The instructional league will probably determine the future of a number of these players more than anything that happened on the field in 2019. There's a lot of potential here and the performance of the post-10th round players will be monitored very closely to see how the strategy fared. I won't hazard to guess where guys will end up, but of the hitters, I think Grissom and Backstrom will probably be in Rome. Given the heavy concentration on college hitters in the mid-rounds there won't be any pressure to move other tools-centric guys up too fast.
So it was a wet summer in Florida. I don't think they will have to resort to playing on floating baseball diamonds in the Gulf of Mexico, but it is frustrating to not see more guys get game competition even though it doesn't mean as much at this level as it does as players move up the chain. I have included a picture below of a Gulf Coast official trying to determine whether or not games will be played.
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Originally Posted by nsacpi
