Contemplating the Crawdads

(pictured, Leonel De Los Santos, courtesy of John Setzler)


It's funny how the local paper doesn't cover away games and the Greenville paper only covers the game if their team wins.

4/16/09, Hickory 8, Greenville 0

(Box Score)

19 year old, Wilfredo Boscan pitched another gem. On opening night errors and an anemic offense spoiled a respectable outing from Boscan, but not on this night. Crawdads hitters combined for a season-high 13 hits including homeruns from Eric Fry and 19 year old Leonel De Los Santos.

Boscan is shaping up to be the horse of the Hickory staff. On his best night, Wilfredo's stuff isn't as electric as what Martin Perez and Wilmer Font can offer, but if you need a reliable, steady outing by your starting pitcher, you turn to Boscan. Boscan works very quickly on the mound and deals strikes. He gets his K's when he's keeping the ball down. From what I saw, Boscan doesn't have a nasty "out pitch"; he relies on locating his fastball. Last night he had a groundball-flyout ratio of 6-7 which was similar to his line opening night. In summary, the 6'2", 190lb Boscan is not a filthy K machine, he's not a groundball inducer, but boy, he's as steady a horse as they come.

Clark Murphy got his first extra base hit of the season, an RBI double. That's a three game hit-streak for Clark. Baby steps...

Leonel De Los Santos turns 20 in October. Without question, De Los Santos has the most upside of the three catchers in Hickory. Leonel's bat continues to be solid. In three games he's hitting .444 with 5 RBI. 2 of those RBI's came last night including 1 on the catcher's first HR of the season. De Los Santos is an excellent thrower and showed his arm off last night picking off a man at first.

The exciting thing about De Los Santos is he's a true "upside" guy. When you look at A-ball players there are some that you can tell have already filled out physically and there are others that still look like teenagers that still have a lot of growing to do. Leonel falls in the second category for me. He already has all the tools as a teenager; we can only wonder what those tools will produce as De Los Santos blossoms physically.

Check out Mike Hindman's take on the Crawdads pitching thus far here.

Jamey Newberg has 4 Crawdads pitchers in his current Top 20 Rangers Prospects (not including Wieland and Neil Ramirez who will be joining the team shortly). Take a look here.

Scott Lucas points out:

"You don’t want to win this contest -- most at-bats without a walk this season (on-base percentage in parentheses):

31 – Engel Beltre (.097)
29 – Clark Murphy (.172)
28 – Julio Borbon (.276)
25 – Edward Martinez (.160)
24 – Joaquin Arias (.154)
24 – Jose Vallejo (.208)"