Breaking Down the Draft: Culberson and Noonan

Carlos Gomez just published the latest in a series of articles covering draft picks. In this installment, he covers Giants picks Charlie Culberson and Nick Noonan.

BTW, both have signed already with the Giants, I see their name in the lineup for the Giants' Arizona Rookie League team. Charlie agreed to sign on Monday June 11th, for slot money, $607,500 plus they included an extra college scholarship too (reported in Chattanooga Times Free Press). Charlie noted the Giants will start him at SS but could move him to 2B or 3B and he hopes to make it up in four years and to have a 15 year career. Nick signed on Thursday June 14th according to this article, and the deal is estimated to be worth a hair above $1M (that appears to be about slot). It includes $100K+ for college. They both jumped at their deals once they got their offer.

I also found a blurb on sfgiants.com noting the signings. It also notes that the Giants signed a total of 31 of their selections from the draft, including their other supplemental pick, Jackson Williams (the 43rd pick).

SS Charlie Culberson

Charlie (51st pick overall) got an overall positive evaluation with a few nits to pick. And that's to be expected, with the odds of finding a good player so low by this point in the draft, you are really only picking up players who will have to develop and growth to become major leaguers. If the odds are stacked against even the 10th pick, you can imagine how much worse it is for the 51st pick.

Comments:

• "Culberson looks smooth on the field with a good, plus arm."
• "His swing is pretty good, but a little noisy". It was noted that he has too much movement before the swing, which "will make it difficult for him to succeed at the next level," and he has a tendency to "leak (he doesn't stop his body from moving forward as he starts to rotate." This will cause him to struggle. He is advised to "spread out his stance, reduce the hip/hands load a bit, and let the ball travel." This will cost a little power, but provide more consistent contact.
• Though Carlos notes that Culberson was drafted too high, he still likes the pick because Charlie will have a little more pop than the average middle infielder.

I have to assume that Charlie looks good for the most part because he had a dad who was a professional ballplayer. Given what he needs to learn and adjust, he probably will advance one level at a time, starting from Salem-Keizer, assuming no set-backs. That would be a six year trip to the majors, and he'll be 24 at that time. Not quite his timetable, but not bad either. After all, making the majors at 22, which is what Charlie is targeting, is pretty rare.

Still, it is good that he has some goals in mind for making the majors and that he has big ambitions. Hopefully he will back that up with tenacity and industriousness. He noted in the article linked above that "... I know I'll have to work hard and get lucky. Hopefully in four years I'll be up there playing [in the majors]. One of my biggest goals is to play 15 years up there." That's a good sign that he knows he doesn't need to just show up and everything will happen, but that he will have to devote his life to baseball (which he noted in the article too, stating "my life now is baseball") and work hard to get what he wants. Again, that's probably something his father passed on, while he was drafted and signed by the Giants, he never made the majors. A Leon Culberson made it during the 1940's, I wonder if he is related; could be, he was born in and passed away in Georgia, where Charlie was born and live in.

SS/2B Nick Noonan

Carlos really like Noonan (32nd pick overall) enough to say that he would "take Noonan in a heartbeat" over Peter Kozma , the 18th pick overall, even though he sees Noonan ending up at 2B and Kozma having more of a chance of sticking at SS.

Comments

• "With a quick-release arm and smooth on the field, Noonan is a ballplayer."
• "I agree with most: he's likely to end up at second base."
• Don't really like his stance, with the bat upright.
• However, Carlos likes how "he loads his hands by bringing them back slightly while also loading his hips to rotate powerfully against his front leg. Noonan has excellent balance, stays behind the ball really well and has good swing balance. He lets the ball travel well and his hands follow a nice, circular hand path.

I dug up some more stuff on Noonan, I liked finding the Culberson stuff. Noonan made the Aflac All-American High School Baseball Classic, so he had a player profile there. There is stuff lauding how good he is but it doesn't note his shortcomings so I don't know what's real and what's fluff. However, I will note that here he is compared with Derek Jeter "for his tools and feel for the game."

However, I found it interesting that he "works as a coach and umpire in the local Little League and T-Ball organizations." That, for me, speaks to the quality of his character, despite all the demands of high school plus his playing for the high school team, he still makes time to contribute back to younger players via coaching and umpiring, and still get a 3.2 GPA (though I must note that some schools, ah, make it easier for athletes to get a good grade, not that Nick necessarily got a free ride, particularly at a private school).

Question on Bowker

Someone commented on one of my old posts, regarding Bowker's nice first half surge this season. The person noted:

Although it is only half way through the season, do you still feel the same
about John Bowker's performance? We all know about Dodd stadium, and with that
in consideration, his numbers so far this season are quite impressive. Do you
still feel the same way as you did in feb, or do you think he could be a
considerable prospect in the upcoming years?

Since that post is almost 5 months old, I thought I would post my answer here - thanks for the comment, Anon.

Wow, Bowker

He is having a great first half for AA Connecticut, batting .303/.347/.523/.870, with 12 homers in 304 AB, or 25 AB/HR. He could even be better right now, at home he's hitting .269/.318/.423/.741 while on the road he's hitting .338/.379/.628/1.007. As I showed in a previous post, power in Dodd Stadium is greatly reduced relative to the overall league. And his power is similarly diminished by Dodd, at home 52.0 AB/HR whereas on the road, 16.4 AB/HR (that is like going from Edgardo Alfonzo power when he was a Giant to Barry Bonds power during the late 1990's); same for ISO, 154 at home, 290 on the road. Plus he has gotten better each month, improving his walks and HRs each month this season. So those are all very encouraging.

His age is a plus and a minus. He just turned 24, so that's still young, he could be in AAA next year at 25 and the majors at 26 in 2009. However, frankly that's a little on the old side for AA, so it could be that is why he's doing so well, because of the age advantage for him over most of the other players.

Why his sudden surge is suspect: his career up to this season has been on a steep dive. He had a really nice professional debut in 2004, but his 2005 and particularly his 2006, where he spent all his time in Advanced A San Jose, really took the bloom off his rose. He struck out too much and walked too little during his time there and his power went down in his second year there and overall his performance there was pretty sad for a hitters league. That's a lot of disappointing results.

So I was surprised that they promoted him to AA; however, looking back at his stats, I suppose he earned it with his nice second half surgette, hitting over .300 with around a .830-.840 OPS and better BB/K ratio. But until this year, he was like a Travis Ishikawa without the homers, walks, or defense; in other words, nothing much to recommend him by.

I will be more encouraged about him when and if he duplicated this (and more) in AAA Fresno. While his overall stats look good, and look even better when viewing his road stats, the negatives are his still low BB/K ratio, you ideally want over 1.0 for that and a minimum of 0.5 but he's at 0.36 for the season and approximately that for both home and away (same as for 2006 as well, which was 0.37). His walk rate is still a bit anemic at 6.3% (7.4% last season) and again basically the same home and away. His strikeout rate is significantly improved, which probably led to his surge, he dropped it from 21.6% to 18.5%. Ideally, you want it under 15%, so he's getting close to the target there, and under 20% is considered good.

But some players are able to play in the majors with poor peripherals like that, and perhaps he can be one of those. However, not only will it be hard for him to make the majors on any team in any regular situation, but with Lewis, Schierholtz, Ortmeier, and EME ahead of him, he has all these similarly young players ahead of him plus Roberts and Winn ahead of him for the next two seasons, 2008 and 2009. If he's making the majors, it is probably not until 2010, though maybe he could be a September call-up in 2009. And by then, there is the possibility that Villalona will have eaten his way off of 3B and into the corner OF (or perhaps 1B), which would be another obstacle for him. And Villalona said that he wants to make the majors in two seasons (which to me means 2009).

The road will be long, and it will be hard, but at least now it seems like it is possible. Before, Bowker didn't have much of a prayer, being stuck in A-ball in San Jose for two years and declining overall. I wish him continued good luck on his performance, particularly since it appears that he will need it, sabermetrically speaking. However, as I noted, not every successful baseball player has to have great peripherals - the odds are just longer when you don't have those qualities.

Are the A's Still Having More Fun?

About a month, month and a half, ago, Ann Killion's column headline blared out "A's are having more fun than the Giants". I thought it would be interesting to revisit that assertion now, using the same opportunistic, knee-jerk reaction that prompted that article.


This is the problem I have with making grand assertions during the season, there are ups and there are downs. And a whole heck of a lot of it. Today, after a frustrating 2-0 loss yesterday, blowing a 5.15 ERA pitcher's most probable best game ever in the majors, the A's are .469, 11.5 games behind the AL West leading Angels, losers in 11 of 13, 13 of 17, 23 of 32. In funner times: they were .525, 3 games above .500, 6 games behind. Ironic that the losing started around after that column came out, when they were on a hot winning streak; so I had to bring this up after their epic 9 game losing streak happened.


Still, where their overall record is, that's admittedly better than the Giants, who are now mired in last place, 14 games under .500, 12.5 games back. Even after winning the series against the NL leading Brewers, they still have the 4th worse record in the majors, putting them in line for a top 5 draft pick next year. And they are facing 38 games in the next 38 days, so things aren't going to get much better.


But the focus here still remains: Are the A's having more fun than the Giants? I guess it is all relative. They have a slightly better record, I suppose they should be having more fun, but their place in the standings is not much better than the Giants, 11.5 games back vs. 12.5 games. And that isn't really anything to crow about, that can reverse in just one day.


I don't feel that anyone should ever be having any fun at .500 nor, particularly when you are more than 5 games behind. I don't find that fun. I can understanding enjoying the good times when a team is going good, or enjoying the moments during a bad season when things are going good, like when Lincecum dominates, but to put it as "the A's are having more fun than the Giants" is just more of the kissing up to the A's that the Mercury has been doing since the A's announced they are moving to Fremont.

The Giants losing is not fun. But I've been able to enjoy how well the pitching staff has been doing. Have they been perfect? No, but that's the growing pains we have to go through when you are rebuilding, the young players aren't consistently good. But on the whole, the young players have delivered and bodes very well for the future, starting next season.

We Are Close

That's what gets my goat about some Giants fans calling for Sabean's head and/or a complete rebuild. We've already rebuilt the pitching staff. It is basically done, though we clearly still need a closer (Wouldn't it be nice if we had a closer then we won't have to worry about our leads...) and the lineup is next. Almost all vet contracts are expiring this season and next, so the lineup can be almost totally different on opening day in 2009.

A rebuild the way some fans have been calling for would trash any chances of winning over the next 2-3 years, killing a large portion of the time we control Cain, Lincecum, Lowry cheaply. By the time the rebuild is done, the three of them will soon be free agents, and perhaps tired of losing.

Getting rid of Sabean as some had called for, the new GM would clearly feel a mandate to shake things up, perhaps he goes for that trade of Cain or Lincecum for some great hitter. But then the undeniable strength of our future is eliminated, we have 3 pitchers capable of being top pitchers in Cain, Lincecum, Lowry, trading one of the two who could be aces would break that up unique strength. And who is to say that the other GM is any good, that would be speculation and wishful thinking on the part of the Sabean naysayers, all they can say is that anyone else would be better and that would by hyperbole.

Imagine once Cain and Lincecum gets things together and consistently dominate. We could go to a 4 man rotation during the playoffs and pretty much guarantee a series win, with Cain and Lincecum pitching 3 of the 5 games in the first round, 4 of 7 in the following rounds. And Lowry and Zito in there should get us a win in one of the other games, at least.

This is what I've been writing about for a while now, the way to win in the playoffs is to get multiple pitchers who can be dominant against any lineups. Like Koufax/Drysdale. Or for a more recent example, like Randy Johnson/Curt Schilling for the D-backs. Clearly Cain and Lincecum could be that for us.

But the clock is now ticking, and we can either seize the moment or squander it. As I've been stating, I think the best chance of doing that is to keep Sabean, keep his strategy going. Obviously, others strongly disagree.

But he has had a long line of success in identifying good players. He was head of scouting and player development with the Yankees, instrumental in helping them sign and develop key players like Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte, and Mariano Duncan. He made a lot of key trades and player acquisitions that got the Giants winning immediately, after one of the Giants worse losing seasons in franchise history. And kept that going for 9 years, acquiring players like Jeff Kent, JT Snow, Daryl Hamilton, Ellis Burks, Jason Schmidt, and David Bell and keeping Rich Aurilia instead of trading him off, when he was a prospect in our system.

And as much as Giants fans have complained bitterly about his more recent history, I would say that overall, he did the most important things: keep Cain and Lowry, and draft Lincecum when 9 other teams had passed on him. I think people need to keep an overall perspective, he was a coach and a scout before becoming GM, so player evaluation is core to his strengths and advantages. I don't think something like that goes away just like that, particularly in someone still relatively young as he is.

And if you are GM for any good length of time, you are going to have a clunker eventually - for if you don't take some risks, you risk not getting great gains - and not all your trades are going to be home runs, some will be singles as well as outs. But the key point to focus on now is what we do have and that is, we have a rebuilt pitching staff, it is done except for closer. We will have new hitters joining us next season, and hopefully some of our hitters will continue to develop, like Frandsen, Lewis, and Schierholtz.

And if the pitchers are as good as expected, we don't need a great offense to win, we just need one good enough to support Cain and Lincecum. So even if we don't have a lot of good hitters, as many people have derided the Giants for, as long as we have enough OK hitters, we should be fine going forward. People forget that the offense, based on Bill James Pythagorean formula, should be around 47-49, which, while not great, at least would be near .500 and close enough to the leaders to think about making a run at them still. It is just a bad luck year, based on James assertion that such inequities in winning is normally balanced out over time.

So give him a year to show that he still has it, this is now time to recraft the lineup, and if he fails, yeah, then we can get rid of him, we've only lost a year, but if he succeeds, as his past history suggests, then we should be ready to compete relatively soon as long as our pitching continues to do what they have been doing for the most part.