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First Pitch: Reactions After Seeing the New Prospects in Morgantown

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This is our second year as a subscription site, which means it’s the second year where I’ve actually been able to afford to go cover the new players in the system. It’s funny how that works. When your primary source of revenue is a declining ad network system that essentially pays pennies per reader per year, you can’t afford to cover as many things, but when everyone throws in just a few dollars per month, your ability to cover things goes way up. Actually, that just makes a lot of sense.

I just wrapped up week one of an almost three week trip covering the farm system. The first week was all about covering Morgantown, and seeing a lot of new draft picks for the first time. When I’m setting these trips up, I always think it’s a good idea to go see the players for the obvious reason that the coverage is going to be better getting an actual look at the guys. But every single time, I’m always surprised at just how productive and informative live coverage can be.

You see this in a way when guys get called up to the big leagues. The first two months of the season, I said that Jameson Taillon is extremely polished and ready for the big leagues, while Chad Kuhl was looking like he was more ready than Tyler Glasnow. This was all based on seeing them live throughout their careers, and this year. Even the people who put stock in my reports were surprised when all of this played out, because there’s something different about actually seeing things with your own two eyes that you just can’t really describe.

So I book the trip to Morgantown, Charleston, and Bristol, and I’m thinking it’s going to be good, but only in the basic “I’ll get my first look at some new players” and “Live coverage is a good thing to have” type of way. And at the end of my stretch in Morgantown, I got more information than I could possibly have hoped for, and the trip felt extremely successful, which is always the feeling I get at the end of a road trip.

There’s one thing I’ve noticed a lot this year, and that’s how much information is left out of the draft reports. You probably noticed this with my reports on the prep pitchers last month. Most of them were only fastball/changeup until high school, and they all have poor quality breaking pitches right now because they’ve all only been throwing their breaking pitches for 2-3 years, or less in some cases. None of this info was explained in the pre-draft reports. That makes a lot of sense, because the national outlets have thousands of possible players to cover, so they’re not getting the details on every player, instead just getting the general information.

I noticed this trend again in Morgantown. For example, I had read that third round pick Stephen Alemais had labrum surgery in high school on his non-throwing shoulder, but I didn’t hear that from every outlet. I also never heard that he re-aggravated the injury this year at Tulane, which definitely played an impact in his lack of hitting during his junior year. I didn’t know about that until he told me last week. I also knew he was regarded as a good defender, but I had no clue just how good he was until I saw him in person. After seeing him live, my thought is that he is definitely going to make the majors on his defense alone. I’ll have more on him in a feature tomorrow.

There were other interesting things that I noticed either with live views, or with interviews. I read in a few places that sixth rounder Cam Vieaux throws a slider and a curveball, but in talking to him, I learned that he hasn’t thrown the curveball for a few years, and that’s no longer part of his arsenal. I also learned that by not seeing him throw a curveball at all in his start on Sunday. I read that Dylan Prohoroff has some control issues, and his ten walks in 19.1 innings confirms this. But after seeing him throw one pitch, I learned the reason — he has a high effort delivery, with a violent head tuck, where his head will tuck into his armpit, sometimes to the point where he’s not even looking at the plate when throwing, but looking down. I’ll have features on Prohoroff and Vieaux this week as well, expanding on these things, along with other areas of their game.

Overall, I’ve got eight more features to upload from Morgantown, and that’s after today’s feature on Will Craig, a few updates from last week, and the live reports in the Prospect Watch and Top Performers. I also have a few special features, taking a more macro look at the development at this level, based on my talks with the coordinators that were in town.

I’ll save the rest of the player specific reactions for the features this week, and for the subscribers of the site (got to make sure you guys keep subscribing, so I can keep getting future reports). I’m now in Charleston, covering West Virginia for five games, with a look at Mitch Keller, Gage Hinsz, and new prospect Taylor Hearn. I already have the “Live coverage will be good, but how good could it be” feeling, and by Saturday I’ll probably be like “It was a great decision to see West Virginia a second time this year!” Those features will come next week, after we run through all of the Morgantown reports.

For now, check out today’s article on first round pick Will Craig, the Top Performers article with reports on a few other players, and all of the other articles this week. And if you haven’t subscribed, you can sign up today to get this coverage that you won’t find elsewhere, and your small amount of a few dollars per month will make it possible for us to continue providing the same live coverage in the future.

**Prospect Watch: Tough Night for Hutchison; Strong Outing From Ike Schlabach. Brian Peloza with a live report on Hutchison’s second outing with the Pirates.

**Will Craig is Showing His Hitting Ability, But Can He Stick at Third Base? The first of many features this week from Morgantown, and the first round pick is certainly a great place to start.

**Top Performers: Keller, Kuhl, Tucker, Eppler, Waddell and Osuna Highlight Last Week’s Best. Reports on the best players from the last week, with a few live reports from the top performers in Morgantown.

**Morning Report: The Road to Signing a Pro Contract Out of Australia. John Dreker talks with Nick Hutchings about the process of signing a pro contract out of Australia.

Tim Williams
Tim Williams
Tim is the owner, producer, editor, and lead writer of PiratesProspects.com. He has been running Pirates Prospects since 2009, becoming the first new media reporter and outlet covering the Pirates at the MLB level in 2011 and 2012. His work can also be found in Baseball America, where he has been a contributor since 2014 and the Pirates' correspondent since 2019.

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