by jiminy

I just wanted to say thanks for a really informative and thought-provoking article. I feel like 80% of what I know about Masterson I just learned here -- and I thought I knew about him before. I really love the blend of scouting, mechanics, medical analysis, interviews, and statistics. Just great stuff from beginning to end. Thanks, and keep 'em coming!

Did he say anything specific about his progress on improving secondary pitches or control? I'd be especially interested in hearing what he had to say about that. No one is concerned about his fastball but if he could improve his other pitches he could really reach another plateau entirely. From what I hear.

Please, please don't rush him before he's ready. It's depressing to watch a guy with talent fail to develop it in the majors, squanding his potential, and years of service time. Seen that too many times before. Give him a year at AAA and make him improve to earn a promotion. Clean up his swing, improve his plate discipline, whatever it takes. The most depressing thing about that fangraphs scouting report was not that he has little power, doesn't walk, and is only an average fielder. While acknowledging his fantastic hand-eye coordination and plate coverage, they say his mindless pulling of outside pitches is creating frequent ground balls, and if he doesn't get smarter, he's doomed. They say he's getting away with a lot of failed pull attempts as groundballs squeak through the infield, but in mlb, they'll just shift to close the hole in the infield, and they'll all be outs. What is the downside of making a player earn his promotion by fixing flaws? As far as I can see, it's win-win. The player greatly improves his skills, career numbers and earnings. The team avoids wasting a year of service time on a dingbat kid, but instead gets the same number of years from a more mature, superior player. Everyone's happy. The only reason to rush him is to make the 2014 more exciting. Just like we did with Hicks, Gomez, Young, etc. Do fans really want to watch tantalizing potential be frittered away? Or would they rather watch you build a good team. Would Arcia's OBP be better if he'd spent a solid year in AAA instead of swinging for the seats for two years of partial duty? Who knows. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on that. Personally I'd err on the side of focusing on improvement in the minors during their free years in exchange for production in the majors during their mature years. It's certainly possible Arcia is learning more against major league pitching. But it's hard to argue that Hicks, Young, and Gomez benefited by being rushed to the majors. I think in all those cases the driving force was PR. Hicks had to play to justify trading Revere and Span. They couldn't trade both and just leave a gaping hole. The narrative had to be, he's too exciting and too ready to get stuck in the minors. That was clearly wrong. Young couldn't be an unpolished, undisciplined hitter with great potential; he had to be a budding star that justified losing Garza and Bartlett during what turned out to be a near-playoff year. Gomez couldn't be sent to the minors, even though he clearly needed seasoning, or they'd have nothing to show for the Santana trade. In all those cases, the results were disastrous. In this case, the PR debacle is four 90-loss seasons. Will they make the same short-sighted decision again?

That Levi Michael -- what a bust!

I'd like this idea if we could watch the AAA team on TV, instead of the MLB team.