MVN - Most Valuable Network

Trenton Thunder Preview

Thunder fans had a lot of candy to watch last year. They got to see Tyler Clippard and Phil Hughes take their turn every fifth day. They got to see Justin Christian and Brett Gardner combine for nearly 100 stolen bases, and they got to see J.B. Cox pitch critical innings late in the game. They saw some of Ramiro Pena’s slick moves and Eric Duncan’s power. What about this year?

The starting rotation isn’t completely formed yet, but we know that Chase Wright and Alan Horne will be there. Wright was the top pitcher in the Florida State League last year, pitching 119 innings in both relief and the starting role with a 1.88 ERA. He’s a craft lefty who kills same side batters. He should be a decent little starter, but could find himself quickly moved to the bullpen. Alan Horne throws hard, 93-95 mph, and has a nasty strikeout curveball. He struggled at Tampa in 2007, posting a 4.84 ERA in 122 innings, but he was aggressively promoted in his first full season of professional baseball. His stuff is there, but his control is not (61 walks last year).

Steve Jackson is very likely to repeat a year at AA. Jackson was very good last year, pitching 149.2 innings of 2.65 ERA, 125 strikeout, 45 walk work last year. His sinker was deadly last year, doing most of the work for him and helping him to allow just 6 home runs. However, he is in the danger zone because he sits behind the “Big 5″ of the Yankee AAA rotation, so Jackson does not have a clear path to the majors. He’s first in line for a call up to AAA once the MLB Yankees begin to break down.

The best pitcher of the bunch in Trenton will likely be Jeff Marquez. Fabian at RLYW made the bold prediction that Marquez will have a Brandon Webb type career. He has consistently gotten GO/FO ratios of 2.00 per better, and his amazing changeup is starting to create strikeouts. If he stays healthy (he only managed 19 starts last year), Fabian might just be right. Webb is the rare player who actually saw his ERA fall when he entered the major leagues, because he has good defenders behind him to field his many ground balls.

In the bullpen, the hard throwing Kevin Whelan, whom I mentioned yesterday, will be the most exciting player for Trenton fans.

The positions should stack up to look something like this:

• 1b Cody Ehlers
• 2b Mario Holmann
• SS Ramiro Pena
• 3b Kevin Howard
• C P.J. Piliterre
• LF Matt Carson
• CF Brett Gardner
• RF Vince Faison
• DH Jared Greenwood

The lineup isn’t nearly as good as last year. Justin Christian, Randy Ruiz, Mitch Jones, Shelly Duncan, and Eric Duncan will clearly be missed. Holmann, Howard, and Pena would be better off swinging wiffle ball bats. Gardner and Ehlers should be pretty good, with Hall and Greenwood chipping in as platooners. P.J. will be merely adequete at catcher. Luckily, besides Howard you are looking at an elite group of gloves, especially up the middle and at 1st. Jeff Marquez is going to love these guys.

Next Up: I move up the ladder to Columbus.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 11:52 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.