Posts belonging to Category Daniel “Dee” Clark

While it is hardly early for this sort of piece considering the 2010 draft took place over a month ago, I think it is time the Sombrero begins investigating some of the guys in 2011’s class.  This first piece will examine the top three collegiate arms and the top collegiate hitter.  They are all potential franchise guys with an enormous upside and the polish that first-round draft picks are expected to showcase.  These guys are not typical, though.  The hitter, and consensus top talent available, is 3^rd Baseman Anthony Rendon of Rice, recipient of the Dick Howser Trophy and BA’s College POY.  The arms are UCLA’s Garret Cole, UT’s Taylor Jungmann, and TCU’s Matt Purke.  None of these guys should be taken outside of the first 10 picks, and none of them spend a lot of the game under 94 mph.  None of them had an ERA over 3.40, and they all possess at least one 60 or above secondary offering.  They are exceptional.

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Monday evening, fans at Ricketts Park saw the final two rounds of the Farmington Connie Mack City Tournament, a night closing out the most grueling and exciting week of New Mexican baseball each year (in this writer’s opinion).  Still left on the final evening were the Strike Zone Cardinals of Farmington, the Four Corners Thunder of Durango, CO, and Naataanii, an academy located in Gallup, NM.  These were the three teams most local baseball fans including myself anticipated being alive on the final night of the tournament.

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With the upcoming city league tournament set to begin Wednesday evening, tension around the Farmington baseball community is very high.  The team that wins city receives one of the three Connie Mack World Series berths not requiring a regional title.  It is basically the path of least resistance into the Series, and as a consequence locally based teams put everything they have into this single week of baseball.  In a typical year, only two teams have a realistic shot at winning the event.  Of these two teams, normally every kid on the field and a strong majority of the dugout will ultimately play collegiately somewhere in this country.  At least a kid in the league usually will be drafted each season.  Occasionally a kid will make it to the big leagues eventually.  The point I’m trying to make is that the caliber of the event is high on its own.  When the implications of a World Series berth are taken into account, it makes for the most exciting baseball event of the summer for practically every guy in the Four Corners region who has any remote ties to the sport.

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If you check back to my preseason predictions, you will find that mine for the American League are spot on.  While the exact order of teams is not perfect, the top of each division is without blemish so far.  In the National League, however, I’m not right on a single division through the first half.  If someone would have told me that at the halfway mark the Phillies would be third in their division and fifth in the wildcard, I would have most likely laughed and degraded whoever said that.  Well, they are.

What’s more is that the Cardinals, another team I considered an absolute lock to win their division, find themselves behind the Reds…that’s right…by two games as a write this.  The biggest mystery has to be the West, though.  The rankings today for that division read the Padres at the top followed by the Dodgers, Rockies, Giants, and Diamondbacks in that order.  No one is within three games of the Padres as well.  My prediction for that division read Dodgers, Giants, Rockies, Diamondbacks, and Padres in that order.

How are the Padres, a team many viewed as perhaps the worst team in the game going into 2010, winning their division as the All-Star break approaches?  Let’s take a look at how the Padres have done everything right and what the rest of the division is doing to allow such a pathetic bunch of players to beat them.

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I told a couple of friends at school who are Dallas locals that I would write occasionally about the Rangers this summer.  Today seems like a pretty reasonable day to do that considering that they now sit comfortably atop their own division and tied with the New York Yankees for first in the American League.  As a fan of the game and someone who follows the draft and the minor leagues to some extent, it comes as no surprise to see the Rangers doing so well.  It was regarded as almost laughable by many of my friends from Dallas when I suggested that the Rangers were playoff-bound in 2010.  Despite coming within shouting distance last season, the Rangers most recent playoff appearance came in 1999, and they have never won a pennant.  While I think they may be a move from securing what I think would be a top 3 team in baseball, everyone with an inquisitive mind understands that the playoffs are a roll of the dice, and once in, any team has a shot.  Barring injury, these Rangers seem like a lock for a playoff berth even without a major upgrade at the deadline.

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