Due to some computer problems I had, I am going to break these posts up into several parts over the next few weeks.
Chad Rogers – RHP
Rogers started the first game of the series for Pensacola while I was in town. Going into the game I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. He had outstanding numbers in Bakersfield and was only making his second start in AA. I didn’t get many reports on him while with the Blaze, but essentially the ones I did get were that he was still just a fastball/slider guy. I even did a game breakdown of him for his June 1st start where he was a fastball/slider guy. In the game I saw this time, he was certainly a fastball and slider guy, but he may have been mixing in a 3rd pitch as well. I am not entirely sure, perhaps his slider just had a wide variance in velocity. Either way though, he was impressive. He can spot his fastball well at the lower half of the zone and his offspeed stuff more often than not was the same way. With his arsenal and the depth of starting pitching the Reds have he will still likely wind up in the bullpen in the future, but after watching him in person I feel there is a little bit of a better chance that he could stick as a starter than I did before. He carried stuff with him through the 6th inning with an above-average fastball and above-average slider.
Billy Hamilton – Shortstop
Offensively, it would be an understatement to say that Hamilton has made improvements from 2011 to 2012 in terms of his swing. I still like him from the right side much better than the left side. He has a tad more bat speed, seems more balanced and his swing is much smoother. From the left side though he has made big improvements. He seems to be able to cover more of the plate, has better balance more often than he used to and seems to be seeing the ball better. As Mike Newman stated in his article last week in Fangraphs, I too think Hamilton may struggle with fastballs consistently up in the zone from the left side if he can’t make some swing adjustments. Still, he has come a very long way in just a years worth of time, something that you always like to see. One thing that I noticed between his swings is that his stride is quite long from the left side, leaving him quite spread out, while from the right side it is shorter. Defensively, if you watch the video below you can really see why there are a wide array of opinions with Hamilton’s defense. In most of the throws he makes, he drops his arm and slings the ball to first. When he does that, he has a below-average arm and an inaccurate one at that. When people talk about how weak his arm is at shortstop, this is the arm they are seeing. However at the 6:18 mark you can see where he needs to make a throw from deep in the hole and he raises his arm slot and is able to get something on the throw. When he does that, his arm is noticeably stronger and is an arm that could play fine at shortstop if he were to utilize it more often.
More to come later this week.