Not Much In The Way Of News…But Something

It’s a slow news day as players continue to roll into camp. Jesus Montero hit balls a long way, Vinny Catricala did the same and I guess Carlos Peguero hit a ball off the batters eye in center field. While yes, it’s cool demonstrations of power, it’s batting practice. We all know that Peguero could slaughter a deer 500 feet away, if he didn’t swing and miss that is. Anyways, it’s certainly not surprising, just fun to watch.

According to a random number the seems to continue to circulate, the team it would appear, has 60 of it’s 66  players checked into camp and the deadline for position players is tomorrow. Kinda of makes you wonder, where the hell are those 6 people? I mean everyone else is here.

What I thought was kind of interesting, and my interesting is different than anyone else’s, was the annoucement of some of the Mariners prospects that have come rolling into town.

A group of 35 of the Mariners top Minor League players are in camp today for physicals to take part in the team’s annual mini camp for many of top lower-level prospects. The first workout for mini-camp players is tomorrow and workouts will run through March 1. Mini-camp is an opportunity for players to receive one-on-one instruction from the coaching staff and work on improvement plans for Spring Training and the rest of the 2012 season.  Among players taking part in the mini camp are highly regarded prospects right-handed pitchers Victor Sanchez and Carter Capps, catcher Marcus Littlewood, infielders Brad Miller and Cavan Cohoes and outfielders Guillermo Pimentel, Phillips Castillo and Jabari Blash.

Now hardly any of those guys are really surprising. Most of them being drafted the last couple of years or being young international signees. What caught my eye was Victor Sanchez. You may remember him as being the big fish of the International Free-Agency catch this past summer. Many different evaluators called him the best pitcher coming out of Venezuela last year and perhaps of the entire crop last year. Baseball America had him rated as the #3 prospect coming out of from beyond the international boundaries.

While he was only 16 (now 17) and was barely 6 feet tall, what sees to me as the most often marketed statement concerning Sanchez, was his feel for pitching and how it was “beyond his years”. Does that mean he knows more about pitching than the average 16 or he just shows intelligence while dealing with hitters out on the mound. I’m not entirely sure. As it stands there are a considerable amount of question marks concerning his velocity due to his stature as well as the fact that he keeps getting nailed for being physically mature. Which wouldn’t leave much in the way for projection or growth of size.

I’m not sure I entirely buy a 16 year old, now 17 year old, being done growing. But if that is the case it does question whether or not he’s going to add any extra velocity. Though I imagine with him getting stronger and refining his mechanics it would hardly be a surprised if he showed up in camp , say 5 years from now, throwing harder than he does now.

It’s great that we’re already seeing him stateside and considering the career path of both Philips Castillo and Guillermo Pimentel we should see a good 5-10 starts out of him in Arizona this summer and it’ll be fun to finally get some thing in the way of data and more scouting analysis.

One other note is that Jeff Evans and company referred to Marcus Littlewood as “catcher”. Does this mean that his transition to the new position was successful or even complete? I imagine we may get a sneak preview from the likes of either Lonnie or Jason Churchill. But be on the lookout, I’m sure there will be atleast one follow-up story this spring.