{"id":14352,"date":"2017-08-31T09:02:34","date_gmt":"2017-08-31T13:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=14352"},"modified":"2017-08-31T09:02:34","modified_gmt":"2017-08-31T13:02:34","slug":"afl-2017-who-is-going-and-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=14352","title":{"rendered":"AFL 2017; who is going and why"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Robles<\/a>

Robles headlines our AFL contingent for 2017. Photo via milb.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Arizona Fall League 2017\u00a0rosters<\/a> were announced earlier this week.<\/p>\n

Here’s the Nats announced participants<\/a>: Victor Robles, Dakota Bacus, Jimmy Cordero, Kyle McGowin, Austen Williams, Taylor Gushue, Kelvin Gutierrez.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, that’s an interesting bunch. \u00a0We generally see AFL participants named for one of several reasons:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. They were hurt and need more ABs\/Innings on the year.<\/li>\n
  2. They’re uber prospects from the mid-minors who the team wants to see challenged as a “finishing school” kind of situation.<\/li>\n
  3. They’re rule-5 eligible in November and the team wants to make a decision on whether or not they’re worth protecting.<\/li>\n
  4. The AFL roster is short a catcher, pitcher or middle infielder so the team has to pony up one to fill the roster.<\/li>\n
  5. They’re working on something new … a new pitch, switch hitting, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So, given those rules, lets do quick judgements on why these particular players are playing in Arizona.<\/p>\n

      \n
    • Robles<\/strong>: Reason #2: he’s the team’s undisputed #1 prospect; he’s heading to AFL as a finishing school challenge ahead of him likely working his way into a 2018 call-up.<\/li>\n
    • Bacus<\/strong>: Reason #1 and perhaps Reason #3 as well: Bacus missed two months this year on the D\/L, but also took a big step forward performance-wise. \u00a0He’s been Rule-5 eligible for two years now, but suddenly he’s succeeding at a high enough level that the team may be thinking about protecting him.<\/li>\n
    • Cordero<\/strong>: #3 primarily: Cordero was outrighted in August and has had a pretty ugly 2017 season stat-wise. \u00a0But he was on a 40-man roster prior to his acquisition for a reason, and the team may want to see a bit more of him before deciding whether to protect him again.<\/li>\n
    • McGowin<\/strong>: Reason #1, maybe #5: McGowin missed about two months with two different D\/L stints … and was demoted twice this year. \u00a0Is the team looking to convert him to relief? \u00a0I don’t think he’s a rule-5 jeopardy even though he’s eligible for the 2nd time.<\/li>\n
    • Williams<\/strong>: #3 mostly; Williams is Rule-5 eligible for the first time but struggled in AA for the second year running. \u00a0He did miss some time this year, but this seems more like a “challenge” AFL placement.<\/li>\n
    • Gushue<\/strong>: #3 again, perhaps #4: Gushue is probably under advisement for rule-5 protection by virtue of the fact that he’s a Catcher and he can hit, even if he’s repeating High-A again in 2017. \u00a0You can never have too many catchers on the roster for depth, and with the team likely parting ways with\u00a0Jose Lobaton<\/strong> we’ll need more on the roster. \u00a0Catchers on AFL rosters are also in short supply, so there’s a double reason here too.<\/li>\n
    • Gutierrez<\/strong>: #1 primarily: he’s shown promise at the plate 3 years running at successive levels, but got hurt and missed a chunk of time after making the Carolina league all-star team. \u00a0He’ll get some catch up ABs in Arizona and the team will get to see him challenged too (he’s never been above High-A).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      We’re all curious to see how Robles fares against top-end minor league competition of course. \u00a0But who among the rest of these guys is even considered a top end “prospect” in our system? \u00a0The next closest thing to a “top 10” guy is Gutierrez, who has been in the 8-12 range on the last few rankings. \u00a0Gushue was ranked 25th on MLBpipeline.com’s mid-season ranking; the rest of these guys are not even on the top 30. \u00a0So, not a great crop of talent necessarily but a slew of guys who the team may want to add at the fringes of the roster later on.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Arizona Fall League 2017\u00a0rosters were announced earlier this week. Here’s the Nats announced participants: Victor Robles, Dakota Bacus, Jimmy Cordero, Kyle McGowin, Austen Williams, Taylor Gushue, Kelvin Gutierrez. So, that’s an interesting bunch. \u00a0We generally see AFL participants named for one of several reasons: They were hurt and need more ABs\/Innings on the year. They’re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[2469,2005,3390,2239,3694,3380,3683,2757],"class_list":["post-14352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minorspitching","category-natsgeneral","tag-austen-williams","tag-dakota-bacus","tag-jimmy-cordero","tag-jose-lobaton","tag-kelvin-gutierrez","tag-kyle-mcgowin","tag-taylor-gushue","tag-victor-robles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14352"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14357,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14352\/revisions\/14357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}