3 Good Things So Far (Minor League Edition)

Under the heading, “Yeah, it’s early, but it’s still nice:”

1. Paul McAnulty is ‘en fuego.’ He has 8 hits and a 4/5 BB/SO ratio in 16 AB. Yes it’s early, but as many have said, “All he does is hit.”

2. Travis Chick was impressive in his one outing so far this year (Double-A):

5.1 IP, 3 H, 1 R (earned), 2 BB, 5 SO, 0 HR

3. The highly regarded and disappointing Jared Wells struck out a batter per inning in his High-A 2005 debut:

6.1 IP, 5 H, 1 R (earned), 0 BB, 6 SO, 1 HR

According to Kevin Goldstein (from my interview with him), “The Padres think there's a good chance that things could just 'click' for [Wells] and he'll take off.”

Last year, despite his supposedly electric arm, Wells struck out only 38 batters in 72 Cal League innings.

Was that the “click” we were waiting for, ever since we heard about Wells as the “top JuCo arm in Texas?”

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I mentioned in Sunday evening’s post about projecting win totals based on expected wins from run differential. Baseball Prospectus has a “power ranking” based solely on that exercise so far this season. Encouragingly San Diego is ranked #6! …right behind the Dodgers…