Future Redbirds

Derrick Goold has a community selected all Cardinal prospect team out at Bird Land, hop on over there an check it out. He also put up his own lineup, a listing I can get on board with other then his pick of Brendan Ryan over Tyler Greene, but that’s another post. Being a beat writer has it’s privileges with things like having contacts within the organization, so I’ll if he likes Ryan more then Greene then there’s probably a good reason for it. One big surprise that I didn’t see was his selection of Gary Daley Jr. into his all prospect rotation. (I personally picked Blake King and McCormick.) I found the selection of Daley this past draft to be somewhat of an odd one, with his near 5.00 career ERA at Cal Poly looking rather uninspiring. So I decided to do some digging on Daley and found some of the reasoning behind Goold’s logic.

Ignored by scouts in high school with a fastball that topped out in the mid-eighties, Daley’s stock soared after an impressive showing in the ‘05 Alaska Summer League, making scouts rave by flashing a 93-96 sinking fastball and a plus slider. He was the best pitcher in the league with a 1.69 ERA, striking out 51 in 53 innings pitched. Experts touted him as a possible 1st round draft pick, and the Boras Posse got word. Cal Poly coaches (and Boras) hoped that the impressive performance would serve as springboard for success in ‘06, but it didn’t materialize. Daley finished the season with a 5.48 ERA and a 1.68 WHIP and saw his stock drop. However, Daley did strike out a batter an inning and his defense independent ERA was 4.49, nearly a full run lower then his actual ERA due to all the k’s and the fact that he did a good job keeping the ball in the park.

Coming to the State College Spikes, Daley pitched decently, allowing 76 hits in 74 innings while striking out 64 to 32 walks, finishing with a 3.28 ERA. He also had a very nice 57% ground-ball rate and did not allow a home run. At 20 years old, Gary is young for a college draftee and has better stuff then the other and more accomplished college pitchers of the draft, save Ottavino. With good arm action, his fastball appears to explode out of his hand. Not only does he hit 92-93 with the ability to dial it up even higher, he gets good sink on his fastball making it a pretty nice pitch overall. He also has a plus curve ball. Command obviously is a big issue with 93 walks over 184 total inning between college and rookie ball. Also, you would think a player with that sort of arsenal would miss more bats, but Daley only struck out 7.75 per nine at State College. For rookie ball you would like to see a little better. State College park factors in play, the k rate actually comes out to be 8.53 per 9 considering the PF’s, which of course looks nicer.

Daley could start the season as high as Palm Beach if things break right for him in camp, but he’ll be more likely to be seen at Quad Cities. He has pretty high expectations placed on him given his stuff, but he seriously needs to hone his command. I would also like to see him boost that K rate some. With 2 solid offerings, Daley will work on developing a change, which could make the difference between him being a middle of the rotation starter or a set-up reliever.