Know Your Prospects: Jordan Brown, 1B/OF, Cleveland Indians
And he’s sad, sad Jordan Brown,
He’s the saddest slugger in the whole damn town.
He’s better than a minor league star,
But with the Indians he won’t go far.
-From Jim Croce’s unreleased Sad, Sad Jordan Brown
The Cleveland Indian’s hard-hitting, lefthanded first baseman/outfielder Jordan Brown is major league ready.
But from the Cleveland Indian’s treatment of him, one would think otherwise.
Through four full professional seasons, Brown has excelled at every level: in 2006 he captured the high Class A Carolina League’s Most Valuable Player award; in 2007, the Double A Eastern League’s Most Valuable Player award; and in 2009, the Triple A International League’s batting championship.
Still, Brown has yet to receive even a September call up to the big league club.
Yesterday, Brown’s contract was purchased by the Indians, effectively protecting him from the Rule 5 draft and thus ensuring he will be in the Cleveland system in 2010. And since Brown is blocked at all of his natural positions by prospects and established stars higher in Cleveland’s depth chart, it would appear that he’s destined for another year of toiling in Triple A.
While it’s always nice to have a job, the cliched “change of scenery” was Brown’s best chance at cracking a major league roster.
A University of Arizona product, Brown was drafted by the Cleveland Indians in the fourth round of the 2005 amateur draft. Scouts liked his aggressive approach at the plate and fluid, compact swing from the lefthand side. He wore out the gaps, possessed good pop, and showed average speed on the basepaths. His defense was suspect, so the Indians drafted him at first base instead of his natural position in left field.
After a run in the New York-Penn League, the Indians sent the 22-year-old Brown to the Carolina League’s Kinston Indians in 2006.
Brown’s first professional campaign was a tremendous success. He led the Carolina League with 87 RBI and notched 15 homeruns and 71 runs in 125 games. His .290 average wasn’t eye-opening, but Brown showed patience and a natural ability to work the strikezone, earning 51 base-on-balls in 473 official at-bats, enough for a .362 on-base percentage.
He earned the league’s Most Valuable Player award and was promoted to Double A Akron to start 2007.
Brown’s statistics improved across the board at Akron. His average jumped 43 points to .333, a mark that secured the league’s batting title. His on-base percentage went from .362 to .421. His walks went up, his strikeouts down. His slugging percentage boosted nearly 20 ticks.
Once again, Brown earned the league’s Most Valuable Player award. The consecutive MVP seasons put him in the elite company of just one other player: the Indian’s 3-time All Star catcher Victor Martinez accomplished the feat in 2001-02.
Brown’s stock took a major hit in 2008. Making the jump to Triple A with the International League’s Buffalo Bisons, Brown saw his production drop significantly against tougher competition. For the fist time in his professional career, Brown didn’t reach double digits in homeruns, didn’t knock in more than 75 RBI or score more than 70 runs. The great patience he showed at the plate disappeared and scouts openly wondered if he was pressing to hit homeruns to impress the front office.
Around this time, Brown’s defense also became a major cause of contention. One half of those following Brown’s career saw him as a sluggish first baseman/left fielder with a poor arm and bad instincts; the other saw a hard-worker that had become a good first baseman, able to move deftly around the bag and make adjustments.
As a result of his 2008 stumble, Brown returned to Triple A in 2009 with the newly affiliated Columbus Clippers. He stopped pressing and compiled his most impressive campaign to date, finishing atop the league in batting average with a .336 clip. His natural power returned and he hit 15 homeruns to go along with 35 doubles.
A September call up seemed imminent on a floundering Cleveland team. It seemed a given.
On September 8, 2009, the Cleveland Indians made their last call up of the season. It wasn’t International League batting champion Jordan Brown though, but utility infielder Niuman Romero.
To many, the snub signified the end of Brown’s tenure in Cleveland.
Brown is blocked for the foreseeable future by an abundance of prospects higher in Cleveland’s depth chart. Top 10 prospects Matt LaPorta, Michael Brantley, and the promising Nick Weglarz almost guarantee that Brown does not have a future at his natural positions of first base or the corner outfield spots. Designated hitter Travis Hafner has the role locked up until 2011 after signing a four-year contract extension in 2007.
With the front office wary of Brown’s defense, he figures to be the odd man out in a deep Cleveland system, an assumption clarified by former-manager Eric Wedge:
[Brown] had a great year this year. It’s tough to find a position for him right now defensively. With Hafner being our DH this year and moving forward, that’s where the pick gets tough for us.
Brown has not posted a fielding percentage below .989 at any position he has played at significantly (more than 40 games), meaning that some of the speculation regarding his defense could be based on his horrendous play during a short stint in rightfield during 2009 and an error-laden campaign at first base in 2008. If Ultimate Zone Ratings were available for Brown, they would almost certainly reveal an average to below-average fielder with little range, justifying the criticism. Still, Matt LaPorta is far from a Gold Glove caliber first baseman, making Brown’s future with the team even more murky and curious.
It’s entirely fair to say that the Indians may not know what their plans are with Brown. They could be holding onto him simply because he’s too good to give away without a return or to lose in the Rule 5 draft.
Brown has voiced his disappointed about not being called up in 2009, stating he didn’t expect for the Indians to purchase his contract in 2009.
But that’s exactly what happened.
Sad, sad, Jordan Brown.
Places RHP John Lackey won’t end up: Washington Nationals
Zip. Zero. Zilch. Nada. None.
That’s the likelihood that John Lackey, 2010’s blue chip free agent, ends up with the Washington National’s ball club.
But that’s not what some would have us believe. Today MLB.com’s Nationals beat writer Bill Ladson announced that the Nationals will be bidding for the services of the 31-year-old righthander.
Well, duh. I have $3,000 in my savings account and I’m in the damn bidding.
The Washington Nationals can certainly afford to sign John Lackey, don’t get me wrong. Earlier this offseason, Austin Kearns’ shouldn’t-have-done-that salary came off the books and catcher Josh Bard and hurler Livan Hernandez followed him into the free agent pool shortly thereafter. Dmitri “Da Meathook” Young also departed and reliever Ron “Suitcase” Villone packed his bags once again, too.
All in all, it’s expected that the team will free up nearly one-quarter of its $62 million payroll from 2009. For around $15 million per season, it is hypothetically possible they could lock Lackey down to a five or six year deal, which is inline with what he’s supposedly demanding.
Still, General Manager Mike Rizzo will have to outbid the deep pockets of the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, and New York Mets, all of which own payrolls at least twice as large as the Nationals.
But there’s other factors too. The main one being: the Washington Nationals are a terrible team.
Lackey has played for a World Championship contender for the past eight seasons. He has pitched in five different playoffs; 60 percent of the time he’s been a member of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, he’s reached the postseason. Hell, the guy has even won Game 7 of the World Series.
Now, it would be really cute to imagine a world where John Lackey signs with the Washington Nationals and they immediately reach the postseason. But unfortunately, we live in the real world and that isn’t likely to happen anytime soon.
Mr. Rizzo stated that Lackey might want to become a Washington Natinal (intentional) because :
We think with the additions of an Adam Dunn, a Josh Willingham and Nyjer Morgan, it’s going to attract some veteran players. These guys know what we are doing here. It’s all over the league where we are at and what we are trying to do. I think they can see this is the beginning of a good, exciting ballclub.
Yeah, a good, exciting ballclub that has lost 100 games in consecutive seasons. Yeah, a good, exciting ballclub that cites Josh Willingham and Nyjer Morgan as reasons to come join a perennial loser. I’m sorry, Mr. Rizzo, but you lost me at “Adam Dunn.”
The only way John Lackey suits up as a National in 2010 is if he decides to perform charity and “mentor” the likes of Jordan Zimmermann, Ross Detwiler, and Stephen Strasburg. It’s certainly going to take something or someone drastic to improve a team pitching staff that ranked 16th in wins, ERA, shutouts, hits allowed, earned runs allowed, and base-on-balls.
But once again, it’s really just sweet dreams to imagine a sport where ace pitchers doom themselves to perpetual loser-dom.
If John Lackey touches Washington with a 10-foot pole, I’d be surprised.
Zip. Zero. Zilch. Nada. None.
No chance.
If Greinke doesn’t win the Cy Young, I’m going to…
So I woke up this morning to find my neighbor distraught. Sometime during the night, someone bashed in the small, blind spot window on the passenger side of his 14-year-old Cutlass Supreme.
But I have more bad news for him.
If the Royal’s Zack Greinke doesn’t win the American League Cy Young award, I’m going to be pacing the neighborhood taking vengeance upon small animals, i.e. squirrels and quail, and irreplaceable car windows.
I’ve already called Neighborhood Watch.
I don’t expect there to be as much competition in the American League Cy Young race as many of the popular media outlets prophesy. It’s going to come down to two guys: the Royal’s Greinke and Seattle Mariner’s ace Felix Hernandez. If anyone else wins, it’s official: I’m switching to football.
First, I think its important to put their numbers side-by-side. Here are their statistics, per order of ESPN’s Cy Young Predictor module:
At just 23-years-old, King Felix finally had the breakout that had tantalized many analysts since the beginning of his career. In 2009, Hernandez posted career highs in wins, innings pitched, games started, strikeouts, and earned run average. He kept lefties to a .228 average and righties to a .226 average using his dazzling fastball, 2-seamer, hard curve, slider, and change.
The campaign was good enough to earn him his first All-Star nod. His incredibly consistent season also placed him atop the leaderboards for Win-Loss Percentage, Wins, and Hits Per Nine Innings with marks of .792, 19, and 7.542, respectively.
Not too shabby, by any measure.
But Greinke’s 2009 was even better.
Sure, he started one less game and pitched nine less innings. Sure, his win-loss record of 16-8 pales in comparison to Hernandez’s 19-5.
But wins are slowly becoming an antiquated stat, one that will almost surely lose its significance one of these days (my guess being December 21, 2012). Simply put, pitchers don’t have much control over whether they win or lose. They can stack the deck in their favor by pitching well, but the statistic is almost completely reliant on potent offenses and capable late relief.
And Greinke played for the friggin’ Kansas City Royals; the fragile, anemic team with the 12th worst batting average among the 14 American League clubs, the team that slugged just 144 homeruns over the course of a 162-game season, good for 13th best in the same field.
But that’s not even the worst part. That dubious distinction would belong to the tremendously awful bullpen. In 2009, the Royal’s bullpen went 16-26 with an earned run average over 5.00. They let 45 percent of inherited runners score, 11 percent worse than the league average. Just one regular reliever, stud closer Joakim Soria, posted an ERA below 4.00.
In two starts where Greinke left the game without allowing a run, he got no-decisions. In two more starts in which he allowed just one run, he got a loss.
The team ended the season 32 games below .500.
Assumptions like this are almost always faulty and unfair, but it’s fair to proclaim that Greinke should have a markedly better record.
And let’s not forget that Greinke allowed 11 fewer runs than Hernandez in just one less start. And that he struck out 25 more batters in nine less innings.
Greinke’s season was part of history. Hernandez’s wasn’t.
Chances are that many of us have forgotten about this now, but his 6-0 record and 0.40 ERA through the season’s first six starts put him in the elite company of just two men: Walter “Big Train” Johnson and Fernando Valenzuela. Extend that through his first 10 starts and Greinke’s 0.84 ERA is a measure of dominance unseen since Juan Marichal’s historic run in 1966.
A Cy Young Award would be another notch in Greinke’s headboard.
And if he doesn’t win, well, watch out neighborhood: there’ll be hell to pay.
UPDATE: Everyone is safe.
