Posts belonging to Category College Baseball

In a previous post I commended San Francisco’s Kyle Zimmer for his standout career both as a student and as an athlete and suggested that he also will fall in the first half of round 1 come June, so I felt as though I should follow that up with a brief scouting report.

Zimmer has a prototypical pitcher’s frame at 6-foot-4 with lengthy limbs.  He is an excellent athlete and often receives better grades for athleticism than for anything else, a terrific sign given the fact that he has had to learn pitching on the fly.  He did not go to the University of San Francisco to pitch but rather as an infielder, but his arm is so strong that eventually he was bound to wind up on a mound even as simply an experiment.

Zimmer has added a lot of extension and length to his delivery and is far more solid in back than he was early in his pitching career, exactly what one expects from a converted infielder or catcher.  Quality deliveries require enough length to provide the time necessary to reach a repeatable release point from a healthful slot.  Zimmer definitely has a delivery now that allows him to do that.  He has been up to 99 mph this spring already and could throw up a triple-digit readout at any time.  With a potentially triple-plus fastball and some polish to his delivery, he immediately shoots into the one-one conversation.

His secondary stuff is behind the fastball, but not nearly as far as it could be given how little time he has spent on the mound thus far.  His curveball (we are only considering the sharper and quicker version even though he has used a loopier one in the past as well) already is a 50 pitch, and his changeup, while fringy now, has shown enough promise to assume that it will always be useable and will always be improving.

He commands the ball well to both sides of the plate, and his numbers back up his projectability.  He has filled out a lot in his time with USF (around 220 lbs. now), but he probably still has some development left in him as well.  His changeup has already looked better in his spring starts than it did on the Cape, and he has used his tighter bender more frequently as well.  All of this shows Zimmer’s propensity to listen and react to criticism.  Zimmer’s makeup is off of the charts, and I like him a lot more than other righties in the 1-1 conversation right now.

• There’s been a growing buzz surrounding University of San Francisco RHP Kyle Zimmer, as he’s asserted his name into the No. 1 overall discussion.  In his first couple starts of the season, his command of four pitches has been great while consistently bringing it in the upper-90s.  John Kilma of Baseball Prospect Report – formerly known as Baseball Beginnings – details what he likes about Zimmer and provides some personal video of the right-hander.

• In the back-end of a double header on Sunday, Georgia Southern right fielder Victor Roache broke his wrist while diving for a ball and is expected to miss the remainder of the 2012 season.  Roache, who is ranked by Baseball America as the No. 9 prospect on their draft board, was coming off a monster offensive season in which he slashed .326/.428/.778 with 30 home runs.  Prior to the injury, he was hitting .412/.600/.765 with two home runs.

• Andrew Pentis of MLB.com wrote a great article on Trevor Bauer and his quest to be the perfect blend of a power and finesse pitcher.  Bauer apparently has nine (yes, nine) pitches, each one specifically designed for a given scenario and/or count.

• After watching endless video and reading a host of scouting reports, a player I like more and more everyday is David Dahl.  I love his setup at the plate as well as his bat path and balance to the point of contact – it’s pretty.  All the tools are there and everything he does on the baseball field looks natural.  Conor Glassey of Baseball America recently posted a first-hand video of Dahl recorded this past summer.  Baseball America also named him a 2012 First Team Preseason High School All-American.

• The great John Sickels of Minor League Ball has finally released his Top 120 prospects for the 2012 season.  In my personal opinion, his list is always one of the best and this year is no different.

• If you’ve enjoyed Dee’s articles on scouting philosophy and the evolution of the prospect landscape, then be sure to check out Nathaniel Stoltz’s “There’s No Such Thing as a First Base Prospect” at Seedlings to Stars.  Stoltz and the rest of the S2S staff have done an impressive job since launching last May, and I find myself reading it daily.

• Over at FanGraphs, Mark Anderson compares Pirates pitching prospects Gerrit Cole and Jameson Taillon.  He examines their respective mechanics and arsenal as well as their overall command and mound presence.  However, I’ll let you find out who he ultimately prefers.

As opening weekend of NCAA baseball came and went, baseball fans, particularly those of the amateur and collegiate ranks, were once again swept up in the joy of spring and a return to normalcy.  We have been without the game since the end of the Arizona Fall League in many ways.  Although there is no such thing as the off-season for us here at The Sombrero, the recruiting season just isn’t the same as the spring and summer seasons.

The premier series of the weekend saw Vanderbilt travel to Stanford where Mark Appel, arguably the top talent headed into the 2012 MLB Draft, deal on Friday night.  This series also featured the loaded 2011 Draft’s only unsigned 1^st-rounder, Tyler Beede, toss his first collegiate pitch.  Both of these teams rank in the top-10 and are absolutely loaded talent-wise.  What they also are loaded with are entire rosters of players devoted to academic excellence.  This weekend also saw Duke travel to 13^th-ranked Texas in a game that also featured nothing but standout student-athletes.  Next weekend Texas travels to Stanford where the same applies.  These teams come from prime-time athletic conferences and perform well in sports other than baseball, but consider the fact that last year’s Texas squad hosted a series against Brown, a school in which no player on the field was receiving athletic-based financial aid, and actually dropped a game to the Bears.  They’re the University of Texas.  Just imagine for a minute the 40 or so kids that the Longhorns football team might send to the hospital if the Bears were to travel to Austin for a football game.  This hypothetical scenario reflects the idea behind this piece.

Baseball is unique in the world of collegiate athletics in that it provides academically inclined players and institutions many if not all of the opportunities that those players and schools where athletics must come first are provided, which quite clearly is not the case across the collegiate sports landscape.

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Via the Confederation of European Baseball:

This evening Herts Baseball Club confirmed the acquisition of pitcher and infielder, Robbie Unsell, from the Richmond Flames. This is arguably the biggest player transaction so far this winter in the National Baseball League (NBL).

The 25-year-old American who is now based in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, confirmed his decision late last night. He said: “Herts’ home ballpark has been one of my favourite places to play at since joining the League three years ago. The Club has some of the best facilities in Great Britain and fantastic organisation, which makes it a very attractive club to play for.” He added: “I am also really impressed with the club’s marketing efforts and the promotion of baseball in the UK. That’s why the prospect of playing for Herts is exciting for me.”

Herts Falcons Manager, Lee Manning, is also excited to have Unsell in his team: “Robbie would be one of the first players in the starting lineup in any of the NBL teams, so for us this is a major boost. I am looking forward to working with him.’

Unsell makes the move to Hertfordshire as a free agent after spending the last three seasons with the Flames. During that period he has become one of the most valuable players in the NBL picking up a large collection of awards. He is considered one of the best short stops in the country and was given the NBL Short Stop Fielding Award in 2011. Last year he was also added to the Richmond pitching rotation and his performances on the mound were phenomenal. He had the lowest ERA (earned run average) of 0.90 and WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched) 0.98. We have to go back to Troy Kantor of the 2008 London Mets (ERA 0.51) and Simon Pole in 2002 with the London Warriors (ERA 0.62) to see the kind of pitching stats which Robbie Unsell had last year. He deservedly received the 2011 NBL Most Valuable Pitcher Award*.

Unsell will also bring a lot to the Herts Falcons offensively. His speed around the bases has caused havoc for opponents over the years winning the Most Stolen Bases title in 2009 (21) and 2010 (23). Last year he led the league in On-Base Average (.589) and in Runs Scored (42) confirming him as one of the most dangerous lead-off men in the country. The arrival of Robbie Unsell in Hertfordshire will open up the opportunity to compare his speed with that of the 2011 MVP for the Herts Falcons, the lightning-fast Sri Lanka National team player, Mahendra Prasad.

Unsell’s time with the Flames proved to be one of the most successful periods in Richmond’s history. They won the NBL title in 2010, runner-up in 2009 and reached the postseason playoffs in 2011. Herts is one of the biggest sleeping giants in British baseball. Will Robbie Unsell’s arrival bring the same kind of success for Herts?

The Falcons have struggled in the last two years in the NBL, however Unsell sees this as an exciting challenge and an opportunity to turn the team around. ‘I honestly think that with a few additions, we can have a real positive impact on the Herts team this year’ he said.

Aspi Dimitrov, President of Herts Baseball Club, explained how significant Robbie Unsell’s arrival is for the club as a whole. He said: ‘Whether it is fans of MLB baseball clubs or Premier League football clubs, new players can bring a lot of excitement in the hope of success on the field of play. However, acquiring players like Robbie means a lot more to our club. It will add value in every department. It enables us to market our club and the game of baseball much better. Members and fans of the club can look forward to seeing the highest quality of baseball at Grovehill Ballpark. Adding such talented players will also inspire the players of the Herts youth teams to emulate them.’

Herts expect to make several other recruitment announcements shortly. Dimitrov added: ‘We are in advanced discussions with more players and we hope that Robbie will be the first of many more players to join Herts this year and for many years to come.’

Via Grinnell College Baseball:

Grinnell College catcher Mike Nodzenski ’12 has been named a Preseason First-Team All-American by D3baseball.com.

Nodzenski, from Naperville, Ill. (Naperville North) earned All-America recognition as a junior from both ABCA/Rawlings and D3baseball.com. He claimed spots on the second and third teams, respectively.

Nodzenski is a three-time Midwest Conference South Division Player of the Year and ranked among the national leaders last season in several categories. He was fourth in slugging percentage (.850), fifth in batting average (.465) and on-base percentage (.556) and sixth in home runs (12).

He led the MWC in batting average, slugging percentage, home runs, RBI (47) and total bases (91) and was second in on-base percentage and runs scored (38). He established Grinnell school records for RBI and home runs in a career, as well as RBI in a game (nine), home runs in a game (three) and home runs in a season.