Fastest Guns in the ABL

Six of the quickest catchers of the 2010 ABL at a glance

As someone who's just kind of dabbling into the scouting world, one thing I really liked to take to the park with me this season was the stopwatch. A lot of other scouting info can only be gained only through experience and judgment, and while I think my talents in those areas are developing, there's nothing like empirical evidence. And one area in which I managed to gather data was catchers' moves from home to second base.

This can be accurately defined as a "glove to glove" time; that is, from the time the pitch hits the catcher's mitt until the ball hits the glove of whoever is covering the bag. Therefor it includes not only the strength of the catcher's arm but the quickness of his hands.

Below I've included all the catchers who've shown what I consider to be above average moves to second in 2010. And since we're prospecting here, I'm going to by MLB standards. Obviously this is significantly higher than college standards, so the handful of guys listed below are exceptional in this category. Sometimes a catcher will also make a "lazy" throw down to second, or maybe they juggle the ball a bit, so I've thrown out any obvious statistical outliers and averaged what was left.

But first, I'd like to make a few caveats. First off, these are all based on a small sample size so there may be a significant margin of error. Second, just because a guy didn't make this list below doesn't necessarily mean that his arm sucks. There could be plenty of other reasons why so-and-so didn't make the cut, up to and including the fact that I never got a time for some catchers in the league. so with that out of the way, here's the data:

Reflections/Photo Post: Oilers @ Miners 6/24/2010

I am officially on the Wittels Wagon.

Another crazy game in the valley...don't I say that every time I go to a Miners game? This one was a back-and-forth contest between the Oilers and the Miners, which I thought was destined to go into extra innings as we were all knotted up, down to the final out of the ninth, full count and the bases loaded. Then the unthinkable happened; the Oilers walked in the winning run and the Miners leap-frogged them for first place in the Alaska Baseball League.

There were a lot of stars in this game, but if there was one guy who looked like a big-league player last night, it was Oilers third-baseman Garrett Wittels. I knew going to the ballpark that he was a guy to watch, but I was trying not to drink the Kool Aid. Well, I drank it. He's good. We all know he can hit, but that's not really what stood out to me. He's really got something special going on in two other areas of his game. First, he can flash the leather. He made several gritty plays in the field to save his team some runs. Great work in the dirt by this guy. Second, his makeup. He's a team leader, very fired up and vocal. Maybe a little too vocal sometimes, as the umpire threatened to bounce him and Miners' 3B Quinn Pippin out of the game for exchanging some unpleasant words early on. But he's also constantly encouraging his teammates and making sure everyone is aware of the situation.

Last night was my third look at Miners reliever James Allen, a guy I was really impressed with the first time I saw him. These previous two sightings of him he's been roughed up a little bit and looked like he's just missing his spots a tad. Obviously, since he walked in the tying run, he's not getting the calls that he'd like. But one positive thing I'd like to note about Allen is that I really like his mentality. He comes with a game plan and doesn't let the opposing team rattle his cage. On the other hand, when Wittels tip-toed from first to second to get a prancing stolen base, completely on Allen, without even drawing a throw, it makes me wonder if he's a little too locked in to his own mind, but I digress. My point is that he's unflappable. Even after he walked in the run to tie the game, he came back and struck out Wisdom 1-2-3. And to be fair, he didn't surrender a hit in that inning; it was all walks, one of them intentional, and some good sacrifice hitting by the Oilers.