BA Highlights:

Francisco Mejia, c, Indians. Mejia, owner of a 50-game hit streak earlier this season, ripped a two-run homer and drove in all three runs but it was not enough as high Class A Lynchburg fell to Myrtle Beach (Cubs) 5-3 Wednesday as the Cubs’ affiliate won the Carolina League championship, aka the Mills Cup finals. Myrtle Beach is the the first Carolina League team to win the title in consecutive years since Winston-Salem in 1985-86.

CLE AA Allen, Greg CF 4 1 1 0 .286 BB (2)
CLE AA Mathias, Mark 2B 4 0 0 0 .000
CLE AA Papi, Mike LF 4 0 1 0 .143
CLE AA Rodriguez, Nellie 1B 3 0 1 2 .286 BB (1)
CLE HiA Bradley, Bobby 1B 3 0 0 0 .067
CLE HiA Chang, Yu-Cheng SS 4 0 3 0 .471 2B (1)
CLE HiA Krieger, Tyler 2B 4 2 2 0 .278
CLE HiA Mejia, Francisco C 4 1 2 3 .353 2B (1), HR (1)
CLE HiA Paulino, Dorssys DH 3 0 0 0 .200 BB (2)
CLE AA Kaminsky, Rob 6.2 7 2 2 0 8 2.70 W (1-0)
CLE HiA Brown, Mitch 1 2 3 3 1 3 27.00 L (0-1)

Justus Sheffield promoted to AA for the playoffs will be on the mound against Akron today. His former teammate in Lynchburg, Nick Pasquale, 5 years older than Sheffield, goes for the Ducks, in Trenton.
With Gomes off the Akron roster, it would be nice if Mejia could fill in behind the plate but I don't think roster moves are permitted at this point.

Double-A Akron. The Indians’ affiliate finished a three-game sweep of Trenton (Yankees) with a 2-1 win Friday to win the Eastern League crown. Nick Pasquale and two relievers combined on a four-hitter. Eric Haase had seven RBIs to win the series MVP. Former Indians prospect Justus Sheffield—sent to the Yankees with Frazier in the deal for Andrew Miller—took the loss despite allowing just two hits and a run in 4.1 innings.

CLE AA Allen, Greg CF 4 1 3 0 .455 2B (1), 2 SB (2)
CLE AA Papi, Mike LF 3 0 1 0 .200 BB (2)
CLE AA Rodriguez, Nellie 1B 4 0 0 0 .182
CLE MAJ Naquin, Tyler CF 4 2 2 0 .302

Instructional League roster:

http://www.baseballamerica.com/minors/c ... zL4AJWq.97

Included are:
PITCHERS:
Brady Aiken
Grant Hockin who missed all season, a 2nd or 3rd round pick a couple years ago
Luis Oviedo a 6-4 17-year-old. Don't know who he is but that's a big youngster.
Dylan Baker who has pitched about 20 innings total over the past 3 minor league seasons; spent the whole season on the Indians 40 man roster and for some reason never went on the 60-day DL. There's some strategy or rule I don't understand to explain that.
Francisco Perez a 6-2 18 year old lefty who was pretty solid in the Arizona league.

POSITION PLAYERS:
As well as Jones and Benson and the other kids drafted this summer:
Luke Wakamatsu from the 2015 draft who missed nearly all summer 2016 with early injury
Gabriel Mejia and Todd Isaacs who are not kids any more and spent their summers hitting well in the NYPL.

and I missed another big teenage pitcher:

Jhonneyve Gutierrez 6-5 200 RHP age 17

Our teams finished #4 overall in won lost record after a scorching April.

4 Indians 383 313 .550 Playoff champions: Akron (EL) Runnerup: Lynchburg (CAR)

Seeing Ramirez hit so well lately makes me want to point something out.

In the minors he hit .304 with an OBP of .355 and had almost the same amount of walks as K's. in 5 years he hit 13 homers and had 72 doubles.

You guys may remember when rumors of trading Sabathia broke out one of the guys from the Brewers system I mentioned that I wanted was Michael Brantley. That was because in the minors he hit .302 with a .387 OBP and walked 76 more times than he struck out. In 7 minor league seasons he hit 16 homers and 90 doubles.

Jim Thome hit .317 with an OBP of .419 in his minor league career. Yet only had 52 homers and 80 doubles in 7 MiLB seasons. He walked 249 times to 310 K.

Brian Giles hit .306 and had OBP of .396. In 10 MiLB seasons he only had 70 homers. He walked 385 times to 326 K's.

This is just a few of my faves from memory.

Any way, my point is I think the most over-rated stat in MiLB is homers and slugging %.

I remember not long ago Bobby Bradley hit a homer and I read an article that listed him near the top of most homers hit by Indians minor leaguer. The other names on the list I barely remembered. Never did much of anything.

You want to look for guys who are patient, not afraid to work a walk. Look for good pitches to hit. More often than not the power comes later for these guys. Professional hitters. To me BA, OBP, BB, and K are far more important than HR and SLG %.

Next guy on my list, Yandy Diaz. ... He has hit .307 with an OBP of .403. He has walked 198 times to 191 strike outs.

Trust me, this guy is our next Jose Ramirez. Most likely develop into more of a home run hitter than Ramirez too. But Jose is a double machine and clutch as hell so who cares.

Talk about minor league HRs being overrated. Now we have people writing about Tebow's batting practice HRs.

HB:

So let's see who are talented walkers were in 2016:

I'll list anyone who's BB were more than 1/2 their K total.

Columbus:
No one was near even in BB/K. Yandy;s 47/70 was the only one who had more than 1/2 as many walks as strikeouts

Akron:
Greg Allen 19/27
Yandy Diaz 24/16
Mike Papi 41/72

Lynchburg:
Greg Allen 58/51
Tyler Krieger 28/52
Mark Mathias 48/87
F. Mejia 13/24
Papi 30/42
Although the ratio is no good, Bobby B did draw a lot of walks: 75/170. It's a bit better than NellieRod in Akron: 75/186

Lake County:
Jodd Carter 20/36
Connor Marabell 33/50
Ka'ai Tom 21/13, but then he sat out the final 3/4 of the season

Mah Valley:
Andrew Calica 16/16 but then 1/11 in Lake County
Gavin Collins a 3B 22/28
Logan Ice 23/38
Michael Tinsley 5/7

Arizona:
Connor Capel 11/20


That's a pretty short list.

The amount of minor leaguers in your system any given year that goes on to be good major leaguers usually is! (a short list)

It's funny, you look at your list and it contains all the guys I liked this year I think. The ones I would post about that BA left off their list I mean. Krieger, Carter, Calica, as well as the guys like Diaz and Frankie that BA did updates on.

But that's just part of the equation. Walks to K's. Also got to look at BA, K per at bat. OBP. Toss it altogether.

Let's say we currently have 3 to 5 guys in A ball and above that will go on to be good every day major leaguers. Wouldn't shock me at all if they all came from that list you just posted.

Only one I'd give a shot that isn't there is Zimmer. He has so many tools that I won't dismiss him entirely, like I would someone like Bradley.

But as always, this is just one mans worthless opinion. I'll keep following them all, as I'm sure you will. It's fun.

What bothers me about Zimmer is his terrible split vs LH pitchers. For now he looks like a solid 5 tool platoon player, which is about the same as Naquin

One player not on your list who I'm very interested is Yu-Chiang Chang His bb/k was 45/111. 30 doubles, 8 triples, 13 homers in 417 at bats is a ton of a power for a SS age 20 in High A. He won't stay at SS and I don't know enough about his defense. But at 3rd or LF he could be valuable.

Anthony Santander came close on the BB/K ratings, with 54/118. 42 doubles, 20 homers in a great return from a couple injury-played seasons. My concern with him is that he's no longer playing RF, he's been confined to Left. So he might not have the defensive skills to match the offense.

As for Zimmer, when you add his AA and AAA numbers they're rather like Bradley and Rodriguez: 77 BB/171K, but he also far surpasses them with his 38 steals, his excellent defense. But I didn't realize he hit only 1 homer in 149 TAB in AAA. I know why the Yankees wanted Clint not Brad

While I wasn't looking, BA started its annual Top 20 prospect lists from each minor league, so I've missed out on any chats. As they explain in their preface to the lists, these are based on reports from minor league managers so current performance may have a greater weight than in the team prospect lists where future results are projected. Here's what I find for the Tribe guys in the lists that are already posted

We dominate the Arizona League list with 3 of the top 6:

No. 3 Will Benson
No. 5 Brady Aiken
No. 6 Nolan Jones
No. 13 Oscar Gonzalez

Since Benson and Jones didn't produce all that well, there's obviously plenty of weight on future prospects.

In the NYPL

No. 2 Triston McKenzie
No. 17 Aaron Civale

Here's a Q that involves Jones:

Warren (New London): I like your AZL list, but I'd like it more if you switched Anderson Tejeda with Nolan Jones. Your writeup on Jones didn't really touch on his strikeout rate, which was enormous. I'm sure he was working a lot of deep counts, but how concerning are the strikeouts?

Bill Mitchell: I’m glad you brought up Tejeda’s name since we did a lot more homework on the Rangers shortstop prospect because of how he performed after being promoted to the Northwest League. The big difference between Jones and Tejeda is the physical projection of the former compared to the latter. Jones was sometimes too timid at the plate in his first pro season, which contributed to his high strikeout totals, but he projects to develop a lot more power in time. Tejeda hit a lot of homeruns in the NWL but I don’t believe that’s the kind of hitter he’ll be long term. I like both guys quite a bit, but there’s more projection with Jones.

Most Valuable Player
Oscar Gonzalez, of, AZL Indians

Oscar Gonzalez (Indians) was voted the league MVP, leading all hitters in slugging percentage (.566) and tying for the lead in home runs (eight).