LOUISVILLE COLONELS (July 6, 2015 – 83 games)
Gillespie has taken some of the pressure away from losing McConnell, and increased his potential arbitration demand in the process. Young and Ferguson will have all of July to decide the right field spot. Ferguson has been disappointing so far.
Surprise player of the year has to be SP Will Spencer. He and Gentry will be among next year’s rotation candidates. The bullpen is better than their stats. Sanderson had a sub-2.00 ERA before one bad outing got him.
If there is any trade bait for the deadline here, it is SP Juan Rodriguez. Mazzone has pitched well enough to stay in the rotation when Ordonez comes back. Clark could be the fifth starter or one of the AAA pitchers could get a shot.
Continuing my point about the bullpen, take a look at the BABIP figures for Brooks, Merced, Sanderson, and Irvine. I expect those numbers to trend back to .300 over the second half, meaning the key bullpen pitchers will be recording lots of outs. On the other hand, one might expect Trauttmann and Spencer to be worse in the second half.
Ferguson looks to be way behind Young in their position battle, but Ferguson has a sizeable edge in fielding and steals. At second base, Morrison is a lot closer to Searles until you look at fielding and steals; then Searles is a clear winner. I could just use WAR in this chart instead of VORP but I like to see the separate numbers to get the “why” and then check WAR to confirm my thinking. In case you are curious, the WAR figures are: Young (0.8), Ferguson (0.8), Searles (1.8), and Morrison (0.8).