Reflections: Saturday at the 2010 Scout's Showcase

I just got back from the ballpark in Anchorage, where I spent the entire day watching baseball. It was the single greatest baseball experience of my life. I got tons of photos and videos, which I will share with you all eventually, but first I want to go ahead and type out some of the notes I've got. I don't have that much; by this point in the season it seems like I've seen most of the batters, anyway, so I don't have a lot of notes and the ones I do are mainly concerned with pitchers.

One cool thing I do have is velocities. I sat behind the scouts and had the luxury of having 20 radar guns pop up in front of my face every pitch, so I can finally post actual pitch speeds rather than just guesses as to whether a guy has "good" velocity or not. Some of my previous predictions were wrong, so that will be interesting. For what it's worth, these are all Stalker type guns.

I think I'll just post them all together into this one post, but break them up into the separate games. So here we go with game #1: 

Reflections: Bucs @ Miners, 7/1/2010

The Bucs' Eddie Rohan has a strong upper body
and a compact, crouched batting stance.

After a long break from the park, I finally got down to Hermon Brothers to see the Bucs take on the Miners tonight. I didn't get any photos; my main focus tonight was to flesh out some of my scouting reports, which I accomplished, and to keep my assistant/four-year-old from throwing rocks on the field or knocking her head on the ground, which I had more mixed success with. In any event, I feel like I got a good look at some guys I hadn't seen before, and some more bits to flesh out the reports on some that I have.

First, a preliminary note. Miner Quinn Pippin was a late scratch from this game; word is that he rolled his ankle in batting practice and took the game off as a precaution. Apparently it's not a big deal, though, and he should be good to go tomorrow (thanks to Troy for the tip).

Now, on to the players. Casey Hauptman took the hill for the Bucs. He's one of the more well-known players on the club, the big right-hander out of Nebraska. He came into the first inning and established himself immediately. It looked like he was throwing a good, hard fastball mixed in with a change and a curveball with late break. (Edit: I should also note that he displayed good defensive reaction, knocking down a comebacker with his bare hand, although in hindsight that might not have been the smartest thing to do.) He seemed like he cruised through the first four innings, but in the fifth inning things changed for him. It looked like he was out of gas and I could see a noticeable drop in velocity. I don't have access to a radar gun, or box seats to sit behind the people who do, so I have no empirical evidence to support this, but it just didn't look like he had a good crisp fastball after the fourth and that he was relying more on his other pitches to get outs. Still, he went strong through three more innings, pitching 7.0 and giving up 3 R (2 ER).

Reflections: Oilers @ Bucs 6/9/2010

Naturally, I was very excited when the Oilers came up to Anchor-Town to take on the Bucs for the first league game of the season. It's the official opening day, who wouldn't be excited? But when they announced the starting pitchers -- Casey Hauptman for the Bucs and Cody Kendall for the Oilers -- I was super stoked. I knew it was going to be a pitching duel, and I love a good pitching duel. I turned out to be right with a final score of 2-1, in a game that was scoreless until the fifth. The only bummer part for me is that I'm still in Oregon, so I had to catch the audio, and as I give you my reactions keep that in mind and I'll try not to over-imagine what happened.

Hauptman is the ace of the Nebraska staff and one of its best prospects. And man was he dialed in tonight. Right from the get-go, he seemed like he was on top of his game. He mixed his pitches well and used his curve and change-up effectively for strikeout pitches. Though he plunked one guy, it seems like overall he was hitting his spots and showing really good control. His line for the evening: 5.0 IP 1ER 3H 5K 0BB 1HB. Besides the hit batter, there's nothing wrong with that.


Cody Kendall looked pretty good as well; he didn't seem like he was locked in as much as Hauptman, especially during the first inning; he was missing the zone a lot, especially with his breaking ball. But when it counted, he managed to induce the outs and get himself out of a jam. He also showed a nice pick-off move to second to nab Sean Sullivan. Kendall left the game after four even frames, but surrendered only one hit and two walks. A very effective performance.

Reflections: 2010 Bucs/Pilots DH opener

Hello baseball fans. As you may know, yesterday marked the first contests between the Bucs and Glacier Pilots of Anchorage at Mulcahy Stadium. It was a beautiful, sunny summer day in Anchorage...or so I hear. I was on the road traveling from Montana to Portland and my day was far less sunny. More like driving through the world's longest car wash. Of course, that meant that I couldn't take in the games, or get them on the radio. My next recourse was to have a good buddy who has expressed interest in potentially contributing to this blog live-blog the games for you, but I was too busy packing to get that set up for him in time.

But on a monumental occasion such as this, I can't let things pass me by without a few words on the matter. So after immersing myself in the recaps & box scores, here's my thoughts...

Just to set the record straight, this was a seven-inning home/away twin billing for the teams, for exhibition purposes. Despite the fact that they're both ABL teams, the results aren't part of the "league" standings. This is kind of a departure for the league which usually ships up a few traveling teams for its warm-up series. As stated in a recent ADN article on the matter, this is mostly due to financial reasons; it doesn't pay to import teams up to the great white north with the economy and traveling costs the way they are these days. With the exception of the Heroes of the Diamond military all-star squad, the ABL has turned to internal options, such as this match-up.