May 6, 2021
Prospect writers Kevin Goldstein and Eric Longenhagen will sometimes have enough player notes to compile a scouting post. This is one of those dispatches, a collection of thoughts after another week of college baseball and the return of minor league play. Remember, prospect rankings can be found on The Board.
Kevin’s Notes
After nearly 600 days without them, it was sure nice to have minor league boxscores. It was also overwhelming in terms of thinking about who to highlight for today’s notebook. During a lunchtime call with Eric Longenhagen, we probably discussed 40 or 50 guys. To celebrate the long-awaited return of minor league baseball, I’ll push the draft aside for a week and talk about some prospects with real numbers next to their names for the first time in over a year. Instead of just finding five players, I decided to focus on a quintet of catchers who had big starts to the season. Catching prospects fascinate me as it’s the toughest position to find.
KVRR Local News
Redhawks’ Frank Duncan Picked Up By Rockies
The right-handed pitcher is the third Redhawk to have his contract bought by an MLB team this year
May 5, 2021
Courtesy: FM Redhawks
FARGO, ND – The Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks have sold the contract of right-handed pitcher Frank Duncan to the Colorado Rockies, the club announced Wednesday.
Duncan is the 83rd player in RedHawks history to have his contract purchased by an MLB club and the third in 2021 after Matt Tomshaw and Drew Ward had their contracts purchased by the Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers, respectively. Duncan previously played in the Rockies organization in 2018 with the Double-A Hartford Yard Goats.
Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks logo.
FARGO, N.D. The Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks have sold the contract of right-handed pitcher Frank Duncan to the Colorado Rockies, the club announced Wednesday.
Duncan is the 83rd player in RedHawks history to have his contract purchased by an MLB club and the third in 2021 after Matt Tomshaw and Drew Ward had their contracts purchased by the Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers, respectively. Duncan previously played in the Rockies organization in 2018 with the Double-A Hartford Yard Goats.
Duncan, who signed with the RedHawks on April 13, is entering his eighth season of professional baseball in 2021. He originally signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates organization in 2014 after he was taken by the Bucs with the 401st overall pick in the 13th Round of the 2014 MLB Amateur Draft out of the University of Kansas. He was previously drafted in the 39th Round by Cleveland in the 2013 MLB Amateur Draft.
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How much contact does Bobby Witt Jr. need to make to be a star? Even with a raucous 2021 spring performance on his ledger, there are reasonable concerns among pro scouts who saw him about how often he’s going to swing and miss. None of this is new. Witt swung and missed a lot during his showcase summer but his subsequent fall and spring were strong enough to make him the second overall pick of the 2019 draft class, and he’s the type of talent who’d be a threat to go first in most drafts.
His skillset compares quite closely to Trevor Story‘s. There are going to be some strikeouts here because Witt’s swing path makes it hard for him to get to pitches down and in, but his combination of defensive fit and game power make him a likely impact player anyway. He’s is a big, athletic young guy who moves so well that he makes the field look small when he’s running the bases or ranging for a grounder, and he is very likely to not only stay at shortstop but be quite good ther
Somewhere in the archives of
Baseball America, there’s a story by an Italian journalist named Giovanna de la something or other, and she attempts to verify, through old box scores and personal testimony, an at-bat that supposedly took place in the Venezuelan Winter League in the early 1980s. Technically, it was a plate appearance. Ended up HBP, but that only happened after four hours. Three different pitchers. Foul ball after foul ball and a series of minor delays instigated by, depending on the version, a pigeon or a goose or a troupial (or, according to one old man she interviewed just outside a prison in El Dorado, a