Mariners "Cyber" Prospect Talk for June 4
Every week or so we try to link you up with other goings-on in the digital world.
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Gotta start with Shannon Drayer's post with a recording of Dave Neihaus reading "Casey at the Bat."
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Do you remember that folks pointed out that Jack Zduriencik and Tom McNamara seemed a little downhearted that they "settled" for Mike Zunino in last year's draft ... as if they had their mind set on one of the high school hitters who went No. 1 and No. 2 ahead of him?
Here's why:
Carlos Correa (Astros) .275/.383/.401 playing shortstop every day in the Midwest League at 18
Byron Buxton (Twins) .333/.435/.545 playing center field every day in the Midwest League at 19 -- and Buxton has 26 steals in 52 games.
Note: teenagers playing in the Midwest League is a very good sign (see, e.g., Franklin, Nick circa 2010).
And you gotta love the reaction of the camera-person on this video.
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Speaking of Zunino, you may be aware of his massive home/road split (self-promotion [because somebody has to]: we were talking about it in Our Little Corner of the Internet before it became "buzzworthy").
Anyway, Tacoma resident Ryan Divish had some suggestions for how to get Zunino to warm up to hitting in his town.
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A tip-off from our faithful minor-league devotee Bat571: Mariners sign 17-year-old Brazilian. His name is Daniel Missaki.
Bat was part of the conversation when we came to the collective realization (new to me) that baseball in Brazil is mostly Japanese in origin, and, not only are many of the players of Japanese anscestry, but apparently the coaching and training is Japanese in character.
Thus, the unique blend of Latin passion and Japanese precision (more details in the comments to our Luiz Gohara profile).
I know Bat passed along a link (which he might helpfully provide again [ :-)] ), but here's one of Missaki pitching for the Brazilian national team at age 16. Unlike Gohara, he obviously is more on the Japanese side of the ledger.
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The always-valuable Mike Curto of the Rainiers broadcast crew has some good tidbits from last week's 25-6 blowout game in Colorado Springs.
My favorite: the team raised its team batting average by eight points in one day.
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Jon Sickles had Nick Franklin as his Prospect of the Day last week.
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I'm not including draft links here, since we'll try to cover that separately. But if you didn't notice in the Shout Box, Gordon has bestowed his Seal of Approval on D.J. Peterson of New Mexico and Hunter Renfroe of Mississippi State.