Tyler Alamo came to the Cubs organization as the 24th round pick in this year's amateur draft. A strong, big-bodied catcher out of a Cypress, California high school, Alamo was ranked as the 348th best prospect in the draft according to the BA 500, and was expected to be a tough sign, or at least an overslot pick. Alamo apparently was more ready for professional baseball than most thought, however, as he signed on July 7th for only the $100,000 slot bonus, providing no hit to the Cubs' bonus pool. He has spent the season in the AZL, refining his skills as a catcher and providing one of the most emo Twitter accounts I've ever seen. He caused a minor Twitter angst-storm when he tweeted (now deleted) about how baseball wasn't even fun anymore and how much he missed home. He remained in Arizona, however, and seems in better spirits now, having hopefully adjusted a bit to the life of a professional baseball player.
Performance
Alamo appeared in just 11 AZL games, offering a disappointing performance in just about every way you can in such limited time. For starters, he collected only 3 hits, 0 XBHs, and 15 Ks in 30 PAs, posting a .111/.167/.111 line. He also allowed 7 stolen bases and had a CS% of 0. I don't know AZL league averages for gunning runners down, but zero seems low.
Not much else to say here. The bad news is the numbers all suck. The good news is that 11 games is a meaningless sample. Chalk it up as an adjustment period and see if he can improve on them next season.
Scouting
There's actually decent video on Alamo, which is nice. Here's a nice showcase clip on YouTube:
I'm not a scout, and I offer my thoughts with the caveat that I'm just sort of starting to develop an eye for this sort of thing. That said, the swing looks long to me. In game action his bat looks a little quicker to the ball than it does in the BP portion, where it looks to me like he's opening up too quick and trying to crush everything. The game action also shows him using a double-tap stride, which is unusual. He does do a good job of staying balanced, but there's a lot of motion in his trigger. Defensively, all that stand's out for me is that he's kind of a stabby receiver.
Baseball America lines up with most of this assessment (phew). This came from BA's report filed on March 5th, when he, at the time, was ranked as the 48th best high school prospect:
Alamo stands out for his tightly-wound, 6-foot-4, 205-pound frame. He looks like a hitter at the plate, but has some moving parts to his swing that could be toned down. He uses an aggressive stride, collapses his backside at times and has a tendency to stride toward third base, opening his hips early. There is some length to his swing at times, but he has obvious strength potential and an intriguing bat for a catcher. Behind the plate, he shows good agility for his size, along with strong hands and above average arm strength.
They followed up with the scouting report included in the BA 500, where he apparently lost an inch of height and five pounds:
Alamo's durable 6-foot-3, 200-pound frame has plenty of strength, but scouts use words like "rigid" and "stiff" to describe him behind the plate and in the batter's box. His receiving skills have a long way to go to become passable. He has slightly above-average arm strength, but his footwork affects his accuracy, and he takes too long to unload the ball. He is an upright hitter whose grooved swing features an arm bar. He swings and misses too often, and scouts consider him a guess hitter. He does flash promising raw power.
The raw tools are there for a productive, useful player, but he's got a long way to go to realize them. And as much as I joke about his twitter account, the fact that two months into his professional baseball career he was publicly wondering if he even liked baseball anymore raises some fairly serious makeup questions.
Outlook
Alamo will almost certainly start 2014 back in short-season ball, and will have to show some serious want to get much further beyond that. The raw power he displays should earn him a decent number of chances, but the hit tool will have to improve to get to it, as will the receiving skills. He doesn't have the natural baseball instincts that would allow him to coast without a ton of hard work and passion for what he's doing, so if he doesn't really commit to improving his game, I could see him washing out surprisingly quick.
All in all, I wouldn't expect Alamo to have a major-league future. His carrying tool is power, with not much else to support it, and his natural swing is quirky enough where I'm not sure how far he could refine it. If he can improve defensively and become an acceptable catcher, and the hit tool becomes passable, he could have a ceiling as a competent backup on a major-league team somewhere, but I have a hard time imagining him becoming much more.
Comments
sitrick wrote:
You need to autopost the new shit comments
Suburban kidQuote Reply
Suburban kid wrote:
With the Kevin Gregg avi, I read this in a Napoleon Dynamite-esque voice.
sitrickQuote Reply
@ sitrick:
(dying laughinggggg)
Suburban kidQuote Reply
Outside Mile High today.
/insert Mile “High” pun
BerseliusQuote Reply
@ Berselius:
That’s awesome.
So is this:
dmick89Quote Reply
sitrick wrote:
http://youtu.be/ZAIVktlpOT8
uncle daveQuote Reply
@ dmick89:
Getting back to the login thing, I really didn’t do anything to fix it. It just kinda started to work for no apparent reason. (Maybe it was because I turned it off and back on again, who knows.)
uncle daveQuote Reply
@ uncle dave:
Could have just been one of those things when the restart resolved it or it could have been resolved when we dumped the site cache. Odd.
Thanks for letting me know about this and please let me know if it happens in the future. At least you don’t have to enter the modern age of browsers anytime soon. Maybe you can wait another 10 years. (dying laughing)
dmick89Quote Reply
The defense sounds kind of iffy behind the plate, but I’m sure that’s true of most kids his age. I wouldn’t expect much offensive development early on. If the Cubs intend to keep him behind the plate, the focus will primarily be defense. It would awesome if he does shine offensively, but I think that’s secondary to getting better at the position at his age.
dmick89Quote Reply
new shit will auto-publish tomorrow at 7 am. So SK has a link and doesn’t have to scroll to the bottom: copy and paste and the current the URL and replace and tyler-alamo with marco-hernandez. Or just go to the home page and click on the link.
dmick89Quote Reply
New shit may be posted before then, but I don’t think anything is coming up.
dmick89Quote Reply
dmick89 wrote:
The commitment is the biggest question for me. How hard can you be willing to work to improve if two months into your pro career you’re thinking about quitting? I dunno. Rubs me the wrong way.
sitrickQuote Reply
@ sitrick:
Yeah, I agree. I actually don’t even remember him saying it, but I probably just tucked it away in the irrelevant portion of my mind since odds are we’d never see this guy in Chicago anyway.
Hopefully it was just one of those days. The guys has some skill, but certainly some question marks.
dmick89Quote Reply
6 td for manning so far… Geez
WaLiQuote Reply
shit: http://obstructedview.net/minor-leagues/2013-cubs-prospects-review-marco-hernandez.html
dmick89Quote Reply
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easy websiteQuote Reply