Xmas32
New member
That's good to hear. Jay Yencich from USS Mariner does a great job of breaking down the Ms draft picks and minor league stuff and this is what he had to say...
http://www.ussmariner.com/
Round One: RHP Logan Gilbert, 6’6″, 225 lbs, 5/5/1997, Stetson
2016: 2-1, 21 G (5 GS), 2.74 ERA in 49.0 IP, 44 H (3 HR), 19 R (15 ER), 43/27 K/BB
2017: 10-0, 15 G (12 GS), 2 CG, 2.02 ERA in 89.0 IP, 65 H (HR), 23 R (20 ER), 107/26 K/BB
2018: 10-1, 14 G (14 GS), 2.52 ERA in 100.0 IP, 60 H (7 HR), 31 R (28 ER), 143/20 K/BB
This is a paradoxical one, in that on the one hand, it’s a name I’m fairly familiar with, having been mocked to us by MLB.com most recently and off-and-on by evaluators throughout. On the other, I hadn’t anticipated Liberatore, Gorman, Singer, or various others to be among the available picks at the time, and was starting to think “What about Turang? What about Rocker?” Of course, the scouts themselves have their own preferences, and I had a notion that we might be looking in the direction of the SE, thus lining up with Rocker or Georgia prep Ethan Hankins. I’ll admit, I didn’t bother looking up where Stetson University was, which would have pointed me in the right direction being in central Florida.
Gilbert’s a peculiar one, in that he’s a college arm, but doesn’t fit the more moderate ceiling projections that we often tag on those guys, nor is he someone who had a late growth spurt and gained about a foot sometime after junior high. Instead, he’s a converted infielder who didn’t start pitching regularly until late in high school and on into college. It means less mileage on the arm, which is comforting, but it also means there’s more room for potential development in the offerings beyond the general pitching smarts and change-up that appear to already be there. One knock on Gilbert right now is that he’s yet to commit to one breaking ball or another, throwing both but neither as quite a plus. At the same time, I see it as a good match for us, in that we’ve had some success getting our guys to develop a true breaking ball. For whatever else you can say, you can look at the video overlay .gif and see the same basic slot producing both two distinct pitches. For a guy who hasn’t been pitching forever, you wouldn’t anticipate the mechanics being as good as they are.
You also wouldn’t really anticipate the numbers being where they are either. As you can see from the numbers above, the hits and the walks have steadily gone down (and the WHIP, for whatever use you have for that) and the Ks have kept going up. The only two real blips that you can see on there are that the home runs seemed a bit excessive this season and that the ERA (again, for whatever use you have for that) went up a little his junior year. As the numbers go, one issue mentioned is that he had some trouble getting going this season, and rather than throwing in the mid-90s, he was down to the low-90s earlier on. He still is a long-armed dude who spots the ball down well, so he was able to play just fine without it, but if the velocity comes back to the mid-90s, you can see where it could be a strong arsenal.
So, we didn’t pick one of the consensus top players left available, but Gilbert himself is in a fascinating position being both really good and, developmentally, somewhere between a college arm and a prep arm as far as his general track goes. He’s grown into his body and gone through the awkward phases, but possesses more room to improve on his offerings the likes of which can only come with more repetition and experience. This could end up extending his development time, but we’re getting the best of both worlds if we’re patient with him and confident in how we can get him to where he needs to be.
