Article: The Florida Instuctional League

[Bob Sacamento]

It's that time of year again, where the minor league season is winding down but new life and a new season are just around the corner. Just like adolescence, the Instructional League is often an awkward yet still pivotal period in a player's development process.The bulk of the players who are in the FIL are new to the organization; they were taken in the 2015 draft and just got their feet wet in the GCL and short season Elizabethon. Pretty much they were coached on the fly. Now in the FIL the coaching staff gets to work in depth with the players and their deficiencies. Of the 44 players in camp, 16 of them were drafted this year.

 

The new draftees aren't the only ones in camp. The rest of the roster is comprised of players who missed time due to injuries, players getting ready for AFL/winterball, players working on new position and pitchers working on new pitches. Then there are the headscratchers. A player who had a great season, reached career highs, has been to Instructs before and seemingly doesn't have much to work on.

 

Over the past four seasons of watching Instructs, I've seen the light bulb go on in quite a few players and make amazing strides in their game. I've seen Jose Berrios further develop his changeup, I've seen "roving coach" Paul Molitor show off his abilities to inspire, I've seen Derek Rodriguez the hitter and Derek Rodriguez the pitcher, I've seen Adam Brett Walker work on his bunting, and it goes on and on.

 

During the past week, I was fortunate enough to see a Camp Day in addition to two games against the Red Sox. Camp Days are often various offensive, defensive, baserunning and pitching drill sessions broken up into groups sets. When I showed up the offensive players in camp (minus a few playoff-bound players) were participating in various slide drills. Instructor Joel Lepel was in charge and had Jermaine Palacios as his lead example for every technique. Lepel always picks a few players out and razzes them more than others. The day's pick was Kolten Kendrick or as Joel referred to him as "Cottontop", the meaning could be several different choices but we'll just go with Kolten's hair looks like a red cottonball.

 

The slide difficulty slowly progressed from straight hands up, to sliding past the bag with extended arm, to barrel-rolling, and finally breaking up a double play. Visually, it was appealing as the player's starting points were staggered off in domino fashion, starting to run as the other descended for his slide.Catcher Robert Molina took the sliding serious enough that he split his pants, literally. Afterwards, the players took to the batting cages.

Later on, Twins took on the Red Sox at JetBlue Park where the game was highly attended by nearly 20 scouts, everyone from Twins' front office members, Scouting Director Deron Johnson, lead scout Mike Radcliff, as well as scouts from the Rays, Astros, MLB.com and Yankees. Fernando Romero started the game going two innings before being relieved by Brandon Poulson for two and then flamethrower Johan Quezada. Of the bunch, Romero looked the sharpest, locating his fastball while Poulson and Quezada were both erratic yet also popping 98 mph. I swear I've seen Poulson throw every weekend this summer, he shows off a high octane fastball but he doesn't know where it's going most of the time and his slider's even worse. It got bad enough at times that he was strictly throwing fastballs. Still the organization sees enough raw talent that they've kept him around despite his numbers.

 

Johan Quezada is another strong arm in camp who is still growing into his body and frame, yet still throws up big velocity numbers. On several outings in the GCL, Quezada showed a fastball that hit 100mph and a slider in the upper 80's. As one would expect, with all the moving parts to a 6'6 and still-growing physique, repeating his delivery has been a problem.

 

The hitting side was lackluster for the most part, but Nick Gordon collected a couple of hits, and Zander Weil took a charge into the deepest part of the park for a fly out. In the field, Flash Jr. displayed extremely quick hands and a strong accurate arm while covering plus lateral ground. Gordon has a first step in the field that allows him to have plus range. Jorge Fernandez was behind the plate and threw out a couple of baserunners with his strong, accurate arm. The lineup consisted of CF Christian Caverness, SS Nick Gordon, DH Jermaine Palacios, 1B Zander Weil, C Jorge Fernandez, DH Brian Navarreto, LF Lamonte Wade, RF Daniel Kihle, 2B Sean Miller, 3B Luis Arraez. Rafael Valera was the warmup catcher for the weekend, just trying to reps as he put it.

 

On Saturday, the small crowd was treated to a special matchup of Twins top pitching prospect Stephan Gonsalves and Red Sox phenom Anderson Espinoza. Both held the opponents scoreless for two innings and looked good. Deron Johnson came away saying he was impressed with what he saw from Gonsalves in his brief stint where he walked one and as he put it "picked off his first baseman". Stephan has a good move to first and Kolten Kendrick was not expecting it.

 

After the game and the trainer got to stretch him out , I talked to the big lefty about his year and what he's doing for Instructs. According to the Catholic Cathedral HS grad, the key to his season was his changeup. Going into this year, Gonsalves threw his change maybe 10% of the time. After working with coaches last year in Instructionals, he started to feel more comfortable with the offering and threw it 27% of the time this year. That impressed me, not only seeing his change take a step forward but also that he knew exactly how often he threw it this year which tells me they stressed it in his exit interview at the end of the regular season. The biggest question I think both of us had was, what is he doing in instructionals. He's not working on a new pitch, he hit career highs in innings pitched already; the consensus that the two of us drew was that he's just getting further stretched out for next year.

 

All in all, I'll be back next weekend as the Twins and Red Sox will once again take on each other!

 

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[Shane Wahl]

Great stuff. Thank you!

[twinssouth]

Awesome report, really appreciate you taking the time to keeping us informed, thanks again

[David HK]

Wow, thanks for the great report-  It's nice to get some light shed on this area, and get to know some names to look out for in the future.