John Sickels broke down the Tigers top 20 prospects today. The good news is, they have two very good prospects in Cameron Maybin and Andrew Miller. The bad news is, nobody else even warranted a better then a B- rating so the farm system is still pretty thin.Â
The wild card will probably be Brent Clevlen. He had a rough season Double A, but actually hit the ball pretty well when he got called up. He’ll probably start the season in Triple A because there’s really no spot for him right now with the Tigers surplus of outfielders. Jair Jurjjens is a name that’s being thrown around as being on the back end of the Tigers pen but Sickels indicates he should get more time in the minors.
One thing I’m hoping to expand next year is my coverage of the minor leagues. I don’t know if it’ll be on Tigerblog or another site because I’m going to have some help (okay, I’m going to have someone do it for me). It’s always been something I’ve followed on the peripherary but never close enough to warrant talking about it too much.
For a ton of great prospect information, I highly recommend John Sickels book. I highlighted it in my five must reads a week or so ago.
I don’t know if it’s fair to say Clevlen has been lousy for five seasons in the minors, but it’s disturbing that his 2006 was more like his 2004 than his MVP 2005. But because his track record is about 50/50 good, bad (at best) and the most recent stuff is part of the bad, I bet he’s going to be something more like a fourth outfielder than a star.
Actually, he reminds me of Jordan Tata, who is another guy who had a good 2005 sandwiched between less-than-stellar seasons in ’04 and ’06. If you look at Tata’s rate stats (K/9, BB/9, H/9) for ’04 and ’06, they are nearly identical and they’re nothing to get excited about.
I get more excited about a guy like Jurrjens who has shown growth and improvement despite his promotions and age and is said to be improving his pitches. Even he has a massive jump in innings on his resume, though. That makes me nervous about his arm holding up since he’s so young and pretty small.
These are just things I’ve noticed looking at the numbers, though. There could easily be things the Tigers see or could explain that would make my thoughts invalid.
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Brian, you’re talking about 39 major league at bats. Are you going to use those as an indication of his ability, or are you going to use the 5 full seasons of lousy minor league play?
Besides, to go with his 3 major league homers, Clevlen walked only twice, struck out 15 times. Uh, I think it’s safe to say that Clevlen is not a “wild card”. He actually sucks.
--Posted by Dan on December 14th, 2006 at 11:32 am