Late Night Raymblings - 10/21

This is the kickoff of a new series of articles here at DRB called Late Night Raymblings. The word "article" is being used loosely here. These will be more like a collection of random observations than any kind of structured story. There will be data points, but maybe not a whole lot of conclusions. So, ramblings.

Major Leagues

Brad Miller's 2016 GB/FB/LD rates are almost exactly the same as 2013-2015, but resulted in far more ISO. He pulled more, had a career high hard hit rate, and the HR/FB rate ballooned. It would be interesting to look at what his season line would look like if he didn't go through that horrible BABIP luck early in the season (and now looking at his splits page I see his Sep/Oct was even worse). He had a .290 BABIP going into the season and ended the year with .277. So 13 more points of BABIP would only end up in something like 9 points of batting average, so I guess it wouldn't look a whole lot different, but with that ISO it would have been a pretty significant bump in production.

Minor Leagues: Arizona Fall League

JWill has the 2nd highest OPS in the league so far, similar to what he did to the Australian Baseball League last offseason. That's a long stretch of baseball for that guy. Winter league ball, roll into a full season of A+ and AA, then immediately into fall league ball. Wow. It'll only add up to around one full MLB season of PA because of a mid season injury, but it's still a long string of baseball with little off time in between. Essentially 12 straight months.

Nick Ciuffo had a good day at the plate after struggling in the first week. He said in an interview recently that he's been working on a change in his swing, something to do with a leg kick (added or removed?). He's at least a plus defensive catcher from multiple sources and Davenport thinks he's elite, so any improvements in the offense department could put him in starting MLB catcher projection territory.

The AFL PITCHf/x cameras might not be tracking movement on pitches very accurately, but it's still too early to tell. If they are working properly, Greg Harris has a two seamer than runs a foot and a half to the right, and his changeup runs almost a foot. Insane. Diego Castillo is averaging 96 and hitting 99 on his fourseam and compliments it with a pretty good slider. Honeywell's average is being tracked at 93.43mph, but I think there is a classification issue there. Looking at the pitch logs, there is a cluster of pitches in the 86-89mph range classified as fourseams, as well as 92-96. I think the 86-89 are probably cutters, meaning his fourseam average is probably closer to 95. Also, Honeywell's been mostly fastball/changeup so far, and the changeup data looks really, really good. 10mph separation with very good movement.

From the Rays Transactions page:

10/9/16    Tampa Bay Rays signed free agent RHP Carlos Gomez to a minor league contract.

No, not that Carlos Gomez. All I see is he was born in 1999 and he's from Colombia. 17 years old!