Jared Mitchell scouting report

FutureSox:

He swings under a lot of balls and racked up a lot of strikeouts in college. His walk rate did improve, but his plate discipline is still a work in progress. …

As mentioned earlier, the Kannapolis Intimidators placed Mitchell on the 7-Day disabled list.

Ozzie Guillen’s Bartolo Colon report

What are you hearing from your spy Ozzie?

“The control was outstanding, his velocity was not there and he threw more breaking balls,” said Guillen of Colon, who gave up one run on two hits over five innings during the Knights’ 7-1 victory over Norfolk “That’s it. You know the way Colon is. He’s like, ‘OK, let me go out and do it.’ It was nothing impressive, but it was good.”

Guillen’s initial report on Colon, who walked two, struck out one and threw 40 of his 65 pitches for strikes, came from his son Oney, an employee of the White Sox organization currently located in Charlotte. Oney added that Colon threw some breaking balls on 3-2 pitches, a mixture of fastballs and off-speed offerings the White Sox wanted to see from the burly right-hander before Colon even was considered for a return to the Majors. …

From what Oney says, Freddy is training in Charlotte.

Jared Mitchell to the DL?

MiLB.com says so:

07/10/2009: “Kannapolis Intimidators placed CF Jared Mitchell on the 7-Day disabled list.”

Maybe some procedural move?

Ozzie stays with Clayton

Mark Gonzales:

Guillen said the Sox have studied videotape of Richard, “but we don’t have any better choice,” Guillen said. “We have to wait to see how Colon is doing, and see what happens. Right now, I’m supporting him (Richard).”

what about Freddy Garcia, Ozzie?

“He hasn’t turned the corner,” said Guillen, who talked to Garcia recently but said Garcia is “throwing well.”

Scouting Bartolo Colon’s minor league start (UPDATE)

A major league source observed Colon’s start with the Charlotte Knights yesterday and compared it favorably to his April 23 start against the Baltimore Orioles:

“He definitely threw more breaking pitches and change-ups. You could notice he was throwing more sliders and wasn’t afraid to throw them to left-handers as well as right-handers. He was throwing in the 88-to-90 (mph) range. It looked like when he wanted to throw harder, he did. He was throwing more four-seam fastballs. I could tell because he was trying to raise the hitters’ eye level.”

UPDATE: Colon’s next start will be Tuesday for Class-A Kannapolis against Savannah.

Jerry cuts back on the All-Star bonuses

Daily Herald:

Cubs starter Ted Lilly will get a $75,000 bonus for being named to the All-Star team, the same as ex-Cubs starter Jason Marquis of Colorado. Lilly is 8-6 with an ERA of 3.32.

White Sox starter Mark Buerhle’s payday is $15,000. He is 9-2 with a 3.14 ERA.

Yeah, I know those were already negotiated.

BlackJack on Clayton Richard

Jack McDowell:

Manager Ozzie Guillen calmly states that the White Sox have “no other choice” but to stick with Clayton Richard in the rotation. But in the same breath, Richard’s struggles even prompted the young lefthander to almost beg out of the rotation! …

Fangraphs on Bobby Jenks

Death Grip category:

Bobby Jenks: Jenks quietly turned in an excellent first half, with 8.79 K/9 and 1.88 BB/9. An inflated HR/FB rate (18.5%) has left his line looking merely good, but Bobby has reduced his percentage of contact within the zone nearly 10 percent from 2008 (93.1% to 83.6%). He’s missing bats, displaying sharp command and still burning worms (54.2 GB%). That’s a recipe for success.

GIDP leaders

Players with the most grounded-into-double-plays over the last 10 seasons:

1 Miguel Tejada       208
2 Paul Konerko        189
3 Vladimir Guerrero   185
4 Magglio Ordonez     168
5 Albert Pujols       168

Simple xBABIP Calculator

Derek Carty:

For those who have been hanging around these parts since this past off-season, you’ll surely be familiar with Chris Dutton and Peter Bendix’s work on creating an expected Batting Average on Balls in Play metric (xBABIP). This was terrific work, which I later examined a little closer to find that xBABIP was indeed a very strong predictor of future performance.

Today, I’d like to announce that I’ll be working with Chris Dutton to develop an even more advanced version of xBABIP. This is something that I’ve been thinking about for quite some time, and when I heard that Peter Bendix had taken a job with the Rays, I thought it made perfect sense to team up with Chris myself. We don’t currently have an estimate for when the new xBABIP will be ready, but hopefully the payoff will be a good one.

To wet your whistles while you wait, Chris has put together a very nice Excel tool for calculating a simplified version of xBABIP. This is almost identical to the version that I tested in my article that I linked to above, which turned out to be quite predictive itself. The tool also does a number of other cool things, so Chris took the liberty of putting together a quick explanation/tutorial for everyone. …

Smells Like Mascot: Snowball

Carl’s latest:

http://smellslikemascot.blogspot.com/2009/07/snowball.html

Dayan Viciedo to move to 1st base?

Sun-Times:

On the surface, trading away Brandon Allen for Arizona Diamondbacks reliever Tony Pena was a slight head-scratcher, especially with how well Allen played in the spring and for Class AA Birmingham. But the Sox are finding out that Dayan Viciedo is not a third baseman and likely will have to be moved to first base. Considering they have Paul Konerko and Josh Fields at first on the big-league team, something had to give.