Jackson Generals Thoughts: Part II

Just because I won’t get a real chance to do this later. I’m going on a road trip tomorrow with my little brother and I’ll be out of pocket for roughly a week. I’ll still most likely have a post up and around but it’ll be a little crazy and random.

So we’re going to do some crazy bullet point thoughts on the Jackson Generals. Ready.Set.Go.

• Nick Franklin is small. He makes Dustin Ackley look big. But he has solid bat speed. I still don’t think he should give up switching hitting. I’ll give him until next year.
• Speaking about Franklin he was really impressive at short tonight. There is no doubt that he is a much better fielder than Carlos Triunfel, my buddy not knowing who he was mentioned twice his arm strength in positive sentences. It may not be a “plus” arm, but it’s not as big of a worry as some people painted it to be.
• Triunfel continued to show good range and looked good at second. I’ll be interested to see if he stays in Jackson much longer. He has been pouding the ball and while it hasn’t lead to amazing things. Overall it’s been a great improvement over last year. I know what people say about his throwing errors but I would like to see the organization try to keep him at short for a bit longer.
• Rich Poythress has a really long swing and the first time around I saw him it didn’t worry me too much. I thought that his eye made up for it and that it helped him make solid contact. But, the more I see it, the more I worry about it. It’s really long and while he can make contact it’s not always good contact.
• Johermyn Chavez has changed his batting stance since the last time I saw him. That Cal Ripken Jr-esque thing he had going on has been eliminated. I like his new stance better and while I’m still not thrilled with it, it’s still an improvement. He struck out twice and had an RBI single. It wasn’t
• Had an interesting talk with Chris Harris (Jackson’s play-by-play broadcaster) after he spent time with Buster Olney last week and he seems to think Kyle Seager is the must have prospect involving any Mariner deal. No specific teams were mentioned so it’ll be interesting to see what happens. I gather that Seager’s trade value is extremely high. Speaking top-100 type value right now.
• Jake Shaffer was decent out there in left field tonight. I took an extra effort to make a note of any thing that happened out there. While the majority of plays weren’t difficult he did show good range on a play down the line that he let Franklin catch and probably could have and really should have made the catch.
• Speaking of Shaffer he took a fastball, left over the middle of the plate, for a ride 400+ feet away from home plate for a home run. It went out with the wind blowing in from right field and was rather impressive. He followed it up with a solid single and a walk while striking out in between the two. Overall a very impressive night.
• Brian Moran continues to confuse me. He looked really good against the first hitter than had control issues with the next couple of hitters than found it to end the inning.
• Anthony Vasquez was really impressive. His big slow curve ball is a plus pitch in my mind and the fact that he moves his fastball velocity everywhere from 86-90 mph helps. The biggest problem was there was times he just couldn’t throw the curve for strikes. But when he did he got plenty of swings-and-misses. He also had a nice looking change-up that worked for him.
• Vasquez not only got 6 k’s he also got 9 ground balls. I still think he could be a decent back-of-the-rotation pitcher going forward. But he may turn into a better version of Aaron Laffey.
• Nate Tenbrink struggled at the plate but man he wanted everything. You could see how badly he just wanted to help the team. There was a dropped third strike and he got on board because of his hustle and then took advantage on the base paths with two steals.

I’m sure there is more but this is just what comes to mind. Ask me if you have any questions and I’ll do what I can to answer them. It’s been a late night and I have to get going at a decent hour tomorrow.