Most minor-league teams, including all the Orioles' affiliates, don't archive their audiocasts. But among the teams that do are some of the teams against which the Orioles affiliates play - the Potomac Nationals (Carolina League), Asheville Tourists (South Atlantic League), and Staten Island Yankess (NY-Penn League). By listening to the games those teams play against Orioles' affiliates, I can learn more about the Orioles' prospects (and non-prospects), plus get some observations from a non-Orioles perspective.
In 2013, the Potomac Nationals played twenty games against the Orioles High-A affiliate the Frederick Keys, all of which are available for listening on the milb.com audiocast archive. I haven't yet listened to all twenty, but I did listen to the four started by Orioles' prospect Tim Berry. Berry is a left-handed starting pitcher ranked by Baseball America as the Orioles' #6 prospect and by Baseball Prospectus as the Orioles' #7 prospect. I will explore Berry's four starts against Potomac.
First, the basics. The following table includes Berry's Game Score for each start, as well as the basic box-score line:
Date
|
IP
|
H
|
R
|
ER
|
BB
|
SO
|
GS
|
May 23
|
5 2/3
|
8
|
3
|
2
|
1
|
2
|
44
|
June 9
|
7
|
5
|
2
|
2
|
0
|
8
|
67
|
June 14
|
6
|
9
|
4
|
4
|
1
|
5
|
38
|
Sept 2
|
6
|
7
|
3
|
3
|
0
|
3
|
49
|
- He's left-handed.
- He has excellent control.
- He doesn't consistently strike out a lot of batters.
- He gives up more base hits than you would like, but doesn't give up a lot of home runs.
Date
|
GS
|
Fly
Balls
|
Line
Drives
|
Grounders
|
Walks
|
Strikeouts
|
May 23
|
44
|
6
|
5
|
9
|
1
|
2
|
June 9
|
67
|
6
|
3
|
7
|
0
|
8
|
June 14
|
38
|
6
|
5
|
10
|
1
|
5
|
Sept. 2
|
49
|
4
|
7
|
10
|
0
|
3
|
Totals
|
22
(28.3%)
|
20
(25.6%)
|
36
(46.1%)
|
2
|
18
|
In the lower-level minor leagues, generally speaking, the better players are the better prospects. That's not necessarily true at AAA, where typically half of each team consists of minor league veterans and players who have lost rookie eligibility. Therefore, it's not necessarily true that the best hitters a pitcher faces will be the hitters he faces in the major leagues. But, at the lower levels including Class High-A, the better prospects will most likely be promoted to the next level. It's obvious that pitchers will have the most success against the worse batters. But if a pitcher is having substantially more success against non-prospects, that's a sign that he might have trouble as he moves up to a higher level. Using Baseball America's 2013 Prospect Handbook, I divided the players Berry faced into three classes -- those who were among the Nationals' top 30 prospects; those were included in the organizational depth chart; and those who weren't mentioned at all. Below are the results when Berry faced batter in each class:
Prospect
Status
|
Plate
Appearances
|
Slash
|
OPS
|
Top Thirty
|
27
|
.333/.333/.481
|
.814
|
Depth Chart
|
49
|
.326/.326/.408
|
.734
|
Not Mentioned
|
20
|
.222/.300/.222
|
.522
|
As expected, Berry did best against the non-prospects. It is interesting that both players Berry walked were non-prospects - interesting, but probably not significant. Berry allowed base hits at about the same rate to the low-level prospects as to the top-30 prospects, but the top-30 prospects hit with noticeably more power. Although I don't have any data for comparison, I'm a little bit concerned that Berry was so much more effective against non-prospects as I described above.
Tim Berry is a left-handed starting pitcher who appears to be a young Tommy John-type pitcher. It's been noted that Tommy John-type pitchers are more effective later in their careers. Jeff Ballard and Zach Britton were two similar Orioles prospects in my lifetime; both were promoted very quickly to the major leagues. While both had or have had moments of success, they've both failed to live up to their minor-league promise. I think that it would be best both for the Orioles and for Berry if the Orioles were patient with him, giving him a full year at AA and a full year of AAA before promoting him to the majors. I think he's a good prospect, albeit one who'll require careful handling and patience.
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