Down On The Farm: Montgomery Makes It Three Affiliates In Championship Series

Montgomery 12, Mississippi 5 (Montgomery wins series 3-1). John Jaso got the Biscuits off to a good start with a 3-run home run in the first inning, and Montgomery broke things open with a 7-run sixth inning, to advance to the Southern League championship series for the second straight season. Mike Prochaska was hittable, allowing 9 hits and 2 walks in 5.2 innings, but only allowed 3 runs. Erold Andrus had a 3-run home run in the 6th inning and went 3-5. Reid Brignac was 3-3 with 2 walks and he drove in 3.

NOTES FROM DOWN ON THE FARM…

• The Durham Bulls will use he same rotation for the finals that they used in the the first round of the playoffs. JP Howell will go in game 1 on Tuesday, followed by Jeff Niemann and Jae Seo. [Our Sports Central]
• Heath Rollins will start in game 1 tonight for the Columbus Catfish. Will Kline will go in game 2, followed by Jeremy Hellickson. [Ledger-Enquirer]
  

Down On The Farm: Will Kline Makes Debut

Durham 4, Louisville 2. JP Howell made his second spot-start for the Bulls, striking out 10 in 7 innings. He gave up 2 runs on 5 hits and 3 walks. Chad Orvella pitched the 8th and 9th for his 13th save. Jason Pridie was 3-5 with 2 RBI. He is hitting .311 since his promotion from Montgomery.

Vero Beach 7, Ft. Myers 4. Al Reyes started for the Biscuits in a rehab appearance pitching the first inning. He gave up 2 hits including a solo home run. Mike Wlodarczyk came on and pitched the next 5 innings allowing 2 runs. Sergio Pedroza was 2-3 with his 11th and 12th home runs. He drove in 4 and now has 5 home runs in the past 9 games.

Columbus 3, Rome 2. The Devil Rays second-round pick, Will Kline made his professional debut, throwing 2 innings. He struck out 1 and gave up 1 hit. Seth Dhaenens rallied the Catfish from down 2-0 with a 2-run single with 2 outs in the 9th. Jorge Acosta scored the winning run in the bottom of the 10th on a wild pitch.

Hudson Valley 13, Williamsport 1.

Princeton 4, Greenville 0.

NOTES FROM DOWN ON THE FARM…

• Will Kline will be on a very strict pitch count with the Catfish. Kline has already thrown 125 innings this season while on the Ole Miss squad that made the NCAA tournament. [Columbus Ledger-Enquirer]

The Hangover: Ken Rosenthal Is A Smart Guy (Sometimes)

White Sox 6, Devil Rays 1.
just a quick “Hangover” today…we promise to drink more tonight…

DEVIL RAYS WEBTOPIA…

• Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports says it would be a mistake to trade Carl Crawford (we agree):
  

  “I wouldn’t even consider trading him,” the GM (of a rival team) says. “Some might say, ‘Look at all you could get.’ But it doesn’t matter what you could get. You know what you have with that guy…Crawford to me, is like what Kirby Puckett was in Minnesota. When your best player plays harder than anyone on the team, you’ve got something special…Every kid coming up is not going to be as good, but he had better play as hard. That’s pretty unique. When you’ve got it, you don’t let it go. As soon as you move a guy like Crawford, you spend the rest of your career looking for one.”

• John Heyman of SI.com thinks that Al Reyes would be a good fit for the Brewers
  

  Milwaukee would like some bullpen fortification, and this ex-Brewer certainly would do the trick. He’s come out of nowhere to go 12 for 12 in saves with a 1.31 ERA. A far cry from his mop-up days in Milwaukee, when the Brewers were an AL also ran, not an NL Central contender.

• The Devil Rays #2 pick in this year’s draft, William Kline has signed and threw a bullpen session before Turesday’s game. Kline will begin his professional career with low-A Columbus.
• We aren’t sure what Marc Topkin means by “(Josh Wilson) may have played his way into their long-term plans,” but we would be surprised if Wilson is a member of the 2008 Devil Rays.
  

David Price Was The Choice All Along

I’m sure many of you noticed that in the day or two before the draft we started getting more and more enamored with Georgia Tech catcher Matt Wieters. Let’s just call that pre-wedding jitters. When it comes down to it, the Rays made the right decision and it sounds as if the decision was an easy one for RJ Harrison and the rest of the front office.

So why were they so secretive while sitting at the top of the draft board? That’s easy. Until a couple of days before the draft, Vanderbilt and David Price were still playing in the NCAA tournament. The last thing Major League Baseball and the Devil Rays needed was to publicly announce that Price was their guy and then have him throw out his arm in a tournament game. The Rays would have egg on their face and it would be a very unfair situation for Price.

In the end, the decision was an easy one. A big power lefty is the rarest of commodities in baseball. And when a team has an opportunity to acquire one, they grab him and run…real fast.

David Price is considered the closest player to the majors in this year’s draft. So where will the Rays assign Price once he signs? First of all, we need to keep in mind that Price has already thrown 133 innings in 2007. The Rays are not going to want to add too many more to his young arm this season. It would not surprise us if he is assigned to AA Montgomery, but high-A Vero Beach is more likely to be his first stop. Depending on when Price is signed, look for only a half dozen starts from him this year (30-35 innings) and a AA Montgomery start next season, with hopes of a mid-season move to AAA Durham. If all goes well he could get 5-6 starts for the Rays in September of next season.

DEVIL RAYS DRAFTOPIA…

• In a change from previous drafts, the Rays have until August 15, to sign their first three picks. If they fail to sign the pick before that deadline, they lose the rights to that player and will be awarded a nearly identical pick in next years draft. For example, if the Rays fail to sign David Price, they will be awarded the #2 pick in 2008.
• Here is a scouts video clip of David Price pitching. This is the first time we have ever seen Price throw. We are obviously not a scout, but we played past high school and we even coached for a few years. First of all, WOW. We have seen a lot of high school games and a lot of college games, and this is the most impressive pitcher we have ever seen at either level. We now see why the scouts drool over him. First thing we noticed is he has an “ease” to his delivery. There is no wasted movement. Notice how, despite being a power pitcher, that he lands like Greg Maddox. That is, very easy on the follow-through (fast forward through the warm-up pitches to the game action. He is not “letting it go” in the warm-up pitches). When a pitcher has such a simple and easy delivery, there is not a lot of strain on the arm. This is why many have stated that he is less likely to have arm troubles than other pitchers. At the end, you get a view from the first base side. Notice how, despite the easy delivery, he generates a lot of arm speed. Never seen anything like it at the college level. And for those that are not familiar with this type of radar gun, it measures the speed at the point of release and also the speed as it crosses the plate. An average fastball will lose 7-10 MPH from the hand to the plate. You would worry if a pitcher was consistently in the 10-11 MPH drop-off range. Price’s fastball looks to be just right, losing around 8 MPH on average. Hold on…we need to clean this drool up.
• In the second round the Rays selected Will Kline, a right-handed pitcher from Ole Miss. Ole Miss is still alive in the NCAA tournament. Kline had Tommy John surgery in high school. A junior, this is the first season in which he was used as full-time starting pitcher since having the surgery.
• In the first 5 rounds, the Rays selected four pitchers. Even MLB.com does not have scouting reports on any of the Rays selections past the second round. So, if anybody thinks they know how well the Rays did in this draft are smoking.