Archive for the ‘Kyle Drabek’ Category

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Drabek Impresses

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Was it just another game?

Drabek’s father, 1990 NL Cy Young winner Doug Drabek, reminded him of those points in a phone call Tuesday night.

“He told me it’s just another team,” said Kyle, who went 12-3 with a 3.19 ERA in 25 starts at Class A Clearwater and Double A Reading last season. “He goes, ‘Don’t get too excited, just go out there and pitch. Don ‘t try to overdo anything.’ So that’s what I went out and tried to do.”

But was it just another team?

“Definitely not,” Drabek said, laughing.

Kyle Drabek, traded by the Phillies to Toronto in the Roy Halladay deal, allowed a hit and a walk in two scoreless innings. Read the rest of the story here, courtesy of the Philadelphia Daily News.

Posted in Kyle Drabek, Past BlueClaws, Spring Training | No Comments »

Hamels Vs Drabek, Not Hamels Then Drabek

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

drabekIf you asked the Phillies last June about their 2012 starting rotation, they might well have said that right at the top would be Cole Hamels and Kyle Drabek, two former BlueClaws. But of course, things change. First, the team brought in Cliff Lee at the trade deadline last year, and then, Lee was shipped to Seattle to make room for Roy Halladay. To bring in Halladay, Drabek was sent to Toronto.

Now, the two will pitch today in Dunedin as part of a big league Spring Training game, as the two continue to get ready for the 2010 season.

Hamels will be #2 behind Halladay with Philadelphia, and Drabek is likely headed to Triple-A Syracuse to open his 2010 season.

Dave Murphy of the Daily News asked Tuffy Gosewisch, another former BlueClaw, to talk about Halladay and Drabek. He has caught Halladay in the bullpen this spring and caught Drabek last year at Double-A Reading.

“It’s pretty disgusting,” he said. “You’ve got Roy, who has proven what he can do, probably the best pitcher in the game right now, and you’ve got Kyle, who’s got enough talent to probably do the same thing.”

Then you have Hamels, who is working on a new cutter. So far so good. From Todd Zolecki on MLB.com.

“I’ve watched guys like Andy Pettitte, Cliff Lee, [Jon] Lester have so much success with that pitch, that I think it’s something if I’m able to add that in with the type of changeup that I have, it can only make me that much better,” Hamels said.

Hamels will start for the Phillies and Drabek throws second for the Blue Jays.

Posted in Cole Hamels, General Baseball, Kyle Drabek, Past BlueClaws, Phillies, Spring Training | No Comments »

Spring Training Notebook

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

blueclaws-notebookA quick look from around spring training with a former BlueClaws flavor.

We’ll start in Clearwater, where Todd Zolecki wrote this article for MLB.com about the Phillies revamping their farm system.

“We were fortunate to be in a position to do it,” Phillies assistant general manager Chuck LaMar said Sunday at the Carpenter Complex. “Secondly, we were able to do it because we weren’t completely wiping out the system.”

Remember, as we talked about with Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times, the Phillies cupboard was replenished at least a little bit with the prospects they got back from Seattle in the Cliff Lee portion of the Halladay trade.

“It becomes a little bit more difficult to continue to pull from your Minor Leagues,” Philadelphia general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. said. “You keep doing that, and you kind of defeat the purpose of what we’re trying to do, which is try to extend our ability to contend for more years than just 2010, 2011 and 2012. We want to extend it beyond that. But time and circumstance will dictate what we want to do and what we’ll be able to do. We have some depth in certain areas. We have less depth in others, just like every other organization. But we’ve moved a lot of talent from our system and you want to try to preserve the talent as much as you can.”

Dave Murphy writes here about Domonic Brown’s education, learning from some of the best in the game to prepare himself to join them, someday soon most likely. As detailed in the article: when Brown first heard about the Halladay trade, he was driving to Port St. Lucie to see his mother. He called Michael Taylor, and it was Taylor who told Brown that he, not Brown, had been traded away.

(more…)

Posted in Carlos Carrasco, Domonic Brown, Jason Donald, Kyle Drabek, Lou Marson, Matt Maloney, Michael Taylor, Past BlueClaws, Phillies, Spring Training | No Comments »

Baseball America’s Top 100

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

domonicbrown2Baseball America does a great job with their prospect rankings, and they’ve come up with another list: Top 100 in all of baseball. Five former BlueClaws on there, four of them have been traded by the Phillies.

You can see the full list here, but below are the former BlueClaws (year in Lakewood):

  • 15. Domonic Brown (2008): top Phillies prospect was one of the few from the top of the system that was NOT traded in the last eight months. Probably headed to Lehigh Valley to open 2010.
  • 25. Kyle Drabek (2007): Traded to the Blue Jays in the Halladay deal and is in their big league camp now. Pitched two months for the BlueClaws before being shut down and having Tommy John surgery.
  • 29. Michael Taylor (2008): Had an exceptional half with Lakewood (.360-10-51) before a promotion to Clearwater. Traded as part of the Halladay deal to Toronto who immediately traded him to Oakland, where he will compete for a spot in their outfield.
  • 64. Jason Knapp (2009): It’s too bad his last outing with Lakewood (and the Phillies) was a 2/3 of an inning six run nightmare, but he was traded to the Indians while on the DL in July. He still led the ‘09 Claws in strikeouts, with 111 in 85 innings.
  • 81. Travis d’Arnaud (2009): Also sent to Toronto in the Halladay deal and earned an invite to big league camp. Hit 13 home runs with Lakewood last year and hit 50 points higher in the second half despite catching five-six games per week.

Phillipe Aumont, who came back to the Phillies in the Lee to Seattle trade was ranked 93rd.

Two other notes from Dave Murphy:

  • BA rates RHP Arodys Vizcaino (69), who NYY traded along w/ Melky Cabrera + Mike Dunn for Javier Vazquez higher than any of the three Cliff Lee kids
  • Brown is highest-rated Phillie since RHP Gavin Floyd (#9 in ‘03), and fourth since ‘90 to crack Top 15 (Burrell #2 in ‘00, Rolen #13 in ‘97)

Posted in Domonic Brown, Jason Knapp, Kyle Drabek, Michael Taylor, Past BlueClaws, Travis d'Arnaud | 1 Comment »

Former Claws at Other Camps

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

10springtraining1We’ve already looked at (here) the 16 former BlueClaws in Phillies big league camp, but there are 20 other former BlueClaws in 12 big league camps around baseball.

The most heavily populated team with former ‘Claws? No surprise, the Toronto Blue Jays.

  • Travis d’Arnaud (2009): starting catcher on the 2009 SAL champion BlueClaws (.255-13-71), and was sent to the Blue Jays as part of the Roy Halladay trade. A non-roster invitee for the 21 year old who had never been above Lo-A is significant and impressive.
  • Kyle Drabek (2007): more on Drabek here, but the 2007 BlueClaws pitcher is considered one of the top 20 prospects in the sport. He could debut in Toronto later this summer or early 2011. He is another non-roster invitee.
  • Jesus Merchan (2005): Now in his 6th organization, Merchan played 25 games with the BlueClaws in 2005 and is a non-roster invitee here. Hit .339 with Arizona in AAA durign the 2008 season.
  • Randy Ruiz (2004): Hit 27 home runs with the BlueClaws, debuted with the Twins in 2008 and is now on the Jays 40-man roster. He homered in Yankee Stadium last year.

(more…)

Posted in Adrian Cardenas, Carlos Carrasco, Gavin Floyd, General Baseball, Jason Donald, Josh Outman, Kyle Drabek, Lou Marson, Matt Maloney, Michael Bourn, Michael Taylor, Past BlueClaws, Travis d'Arnaud | 1 Comment »

Checking in on Kyle Drabek

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

Kyle Drabek is one of three (Travis d’Arnaud, Randy Ruiz) former BlueClaws in Blue Jays camp this spring, as the 2007 BlueClaw was sent to the Jays as part of the Roy Halladay trade in December. The right-hander, considered the top pitching prospect in the organization and one of the top arms in the minor leagues, found out about the trade while watching ESPN at home in Texas.

“It was a total shock,” he told Andy Martino in the Philadelphia Inquirer. “That was the first things that I saw of it.”

2007 saw Drabek pitch well for two months with the BlueClaws, including a 7.2 inning, two hit, one run outing in the second game of a split-double header that year. But he got hurt in June, had Tommy John surgery that basically cost him 2008.

2009, however, was a great year for 21-year old (he turned 22 in December). From Clearwater, where he had 10.8 Ks/9 and earned a spot in the Futures Game, he went to Reading, where he went 8-2, 3.64, though his Ks dropped to 7.2 per 9.

He shot back up the prospect rankings and was in high demand. While the Phillies held onto him at the trade deadline, they sent him to Toronto two months ago.

Tommy John surgery is not considered to be career-threatening anymore, but it’s still surgery. Drabek told us last year, however, the improvements in medicine, and specifically those coming back from this surgery, calmed him down a little bit.

In talking to the doctor he told me that about 90% of the people come back stronger and that was a huge confidence booster because I knew that I could come back nice and strong. When I began to throw it felt great and that also helped my confidence a lot.

He reflected on his time with the BlueClaws this way:

I had a blast in Lakewood. The field was amazing, the atmosphere was awesome and the fans were amazing. I had never played in front of that many fans before and I played with a lot of great guys. I had a lot of fun there.

Now it’s off to Toronto, and adjusting to a new team, new teammates, new uniforms, and a new situation. That’s where it helps to have a father who played for a long time in the big leagues, and Doug was there to help.

“He said, ‘You know what? It’s baseball,’ ” the younger Drabek said. ‘ “This stuff happens, and you just deal with it and try to do your job.’ ”

And we expect that we’ll get to watch him do his job in the big leagues pretty soon.
—
One other note, since Drabek is in big league camp, he won’t be playing the Phillies minor leaguers every third day like they would in the minor league camp, since Dunedin and Clearwater are about five miles apart.

Posted in General Baseball, Kyle Drabek, Past BlueClaws, Spring Training | 1 Comment »

Q&A: Jonathan Mayo of MiLB.com

Monday, February 8th, 2010

Thanks to Jonathan Mayo of MiLB.com (blog here, Twitter here) for taking some time to answer a few questions for BlueClaws Blog about the recent MiLB.com top 50 prospects, which featured several former BlueClaws (14 Domonic Brown, 17 Kyle Drabek, 35 Michael Taylor).

Without further adieu…

Q: First, what was the basic criteria in selecting prospects? How much was age a factor?

A: I poll as many scouts as possible, asking them to give me their individual top 30 lists anonymously. I dump them all into a big spreadsheet and I use an AP poll type format to come up with the rankings. For example, if a scout put Jason Heyward atop his list, he’d get 30 points. Strasburg in 2nd would get 29 points, and on down. The cumulative points is how I rank the players. I’ll break ties and tweak things a little here and there, but I let the scouts’ opinions dictate how things end up for the most part. My only criteria is that a player should still have rookie status entering the season. The rest–age, ceiling, closeness to the big leagues, etc–I leave up to each scout.

(more…)

Posted in Anthony Gose, Around the Farm, Domonic Brown, Jason Knapp, Kyle Drabek, Michael Taylor, Past BlueClaws, Phillies, Q&As, Travis d'Arnaud, Trevor May | No Comments »

Now That The Dust Has Settled

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

It’s been over six weeks since the Roy Halladay/Cliff Lee trade(s) in which the Phillies swapped one Cy Young winner for prospects and different prospects for another Cy Young winner.

While the buzz at the time centered around Halladay, an adding a proven ace (and signing him to a contract extension), recently, the Phillies have taken some heat for making the Cliff Lee portion of the deal.

Ruben Amaro, at the Philadelphia Sports Writers Association banquet on Monday walked up to the podium and said, “First, the Cliff Lee trade was all Charlie [Manuel], who was sitting next to him. Obviously he was kidding, but it was mildly surprising that he even needed to make the joke, considering the elation of December.

(more…)

Posted in Around the Farm, Kyle Drabek, Michael Taylor, Past BlueClaws, Phillies, Travis d'Arnaud | No Comments »

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