Souting Video: Zach Vincej

SS Zach Vincej
2010 Anchorage Bucs
Height: 5'11" - Weight: 165lb
Bats: Right - Throws: Right
2010 Level: DI Freshman
2010 School: Pepperdine
Draft Eligibility: 2012 (DI Junior)
Previous Draft: N/A
Posts regarding Zach Vincej

2010 Player Profile: Zach Vincej

Zach Vincej, the scurviest Buc to ever sail the high
seas of Cook Inlet.  Photo courtesy of Rachel Leask
& the Anchorage Bucs.

#7 Zach Vincej
SS - Anchorage Bucs
Height: 5'11" - Weight: 165lb
Bats: Right - Throws: Right
School: Pepperdine
Year: Freshman
Hometown: Saugus, California
More articles regarding Zach Vincej

Zach Vincej is only a freshman at Pepperdine, but he's already a veteran of the Anchorage Bucs. The shortstop came up with the Bucs in 2009 straight out of Saugus High in California, where he was one of the most highly-touted players in the state until the Waves won the battle for him. The member of the Youth World Championship gold-medal team fielded recruitment calls from several big-name baseball programs. After his rookie campaign with the Bucs, he made his debut at Pepperdine and nailed down all-freshman honors in the WCC as well as all-conference honorable mention.

Having already garnered such acclaim, as well as the illustrious 49th State Hardball Player to Watch status, it's easy to forget that Vincej has yet to begin his sophomore year of college. But as a Division I player, he won't be draft eligible until 2012. In a way, that's good for him; he'll have another two full years of college ball (and dare I say, another season as a Buc?) before he goes on the market. That being said, he's already shown some skill on the diamond that pro teams would love to have.

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/Photo Post: Heroes of the Diamond @ Bucs, 6/17/10

Ty Griffith added a little local flavor for the Bucs today.

The baseball Gods finally cut the Alaska League some slack and parted the clouds for an afternoon exhibition between the Heroes of the Diamond US military all-star team and the Anchorage Bucs. Of course, only a couple dozen people managed to make the game -- which is about what I expected for a Thursday afternoon, and is just fine with me as amateur photographer/scout/scorekeeper/journalist who brings plenty of junk to the park and needs a good seat with room to spread out -- but I had a very enjoyable afternoon at the park. I even got a little color in my pasty white face.

The game ended in a zero-zero tie; the two teams combined for seven hits overall, and one of those was pretty generous, with Bucs right fielder Colin Zimmermann letting one bounce off the wall about waist high right by him. I originally wrote E-9 on my scorecard; that's how it looked to me, but I'm not the official scorer and I could very well be wrong, and it's going in the history books as a double. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that there wasn't a lot of offense in this game and it moved along at pretty good clip, wrapping up in about two hours even.

Not surprisingly, I noted a lot of really good defensive work for the Bucs. But first, let's talk about the offense: I have a growing man-crush on Chris Serritella. He looked really good in the batting cage today, with a lot of pop in his bat, driving the ball to all fields, and displaying home run power despite the wind blowing in from left field. Maybe they should have put him in the lineup, but hey, I'm not a manager either.