Farm Futures — Live From Surprise (3/22)

Carlos Melo (courtesy of Scott Lucas)

Surprise, AZ – The farmhands played intrasquad games this morning before getting Sunday afternoon off. I’ve got a few notes on 16-year-old right-hander Richard Alvarez, and some good, some bad and some ugly from the human toolchest, outfielder Engel Beltre.

But we’ll start off with the guy you are looking at right now. Righty Carlos Melo, who turned 18 last month, is one of the two pitchers acquired in the Gerald Laird trade and he can really, really bring the heat.

Make the jump for the rest of today’s only installment of Live From Surprise.

By the way, Our Leader stranded me at the ballpark. If anyone happens to be here taking in the Royals – Angels tilt and wants to give a part-time sportswriter a ride back to one of Surprise’s many luxury hotels after the game, please shoot me an e-mail at mjhindman@sbcglobal.net. My lumbar spine and I would be eternally grateful.

Remember how the Rangers demanded that the Red Sox throw a 17-year-old oufielder — some Dominican kid named Engel Beltre who was hitting .208 — on the end of the Eric Gagne deal and then he turned out to be one of the top outfield prospects in baseball? And remember how they insisted that the Braves add a generally unknown 18-year-old pitcher from short-season Danville onto the back end of the Mark Teixeira trade and he turned out to be Neftali Feliz, one of the three or four best right-handed pitching prospects in the game?

The Rangers’ commitment to becoming a scouting and development powerhouse in the Caribbean doesn’t just help them sign kids like Martin Perez or Richard Alvarez. It also allows them to know which low-level, high-upside guys to target in trades. So while you might not be terribly excited about the fact that the Rangers got the Tigers to throw a then-17-year-old who posted a 5.14 ERA in the Dominican Summer League last year into the Gerald Laird trade, maybe you should be.

The Tigers inked the Dominican Melo to a $165,000 contract and assigned him to their DSL club last summer where his numbers weren’t good. Except one: his 11.20 K/9. And it doesn’t take long to see how he did it.

I haven’t been able to see radar gun readings for anybody on the minor league fields over the past three days, but there’s no doubt that Melo had the best velocity of anybody I’ve seen since I’ve been here. Mid-90′s with a ton of life that breaks bats. Today, he generally did a very good job of keeping his heat down in the zone, but his lateral control was lacking.

Melo also showed off a very promising change with excellent fading action. He began his inning facing of against Mitch Moreland who simply could not catch up to the first-pitch fastball that Melo blew by him for strike one. Melo sawed off Moreland’s bat at the handle with the next pitch before missing with a change away. Moreland then fouled off a fastball and a change before reaching on an infield single.

The next hitter Melo faced was another plus-power bat. Ian Gac went down on three pitches, unable to catch up to Melo’s cheese. Tim Rodriquez failed to connect with a 1-2 fastball in the next at-bat for Melo’s second strikeout before 2008 15th rounder Joey Butler (and by the way…not too bad) made the only solid contact of the day against Melo, connecting for a screaming line-drive double to the left-center gap.

Melo followed the Rangers’ top international signee from 2008, 16-year-old righty Richard Alvarez who is getting a ton of buzz on the back fields.

Alvarez isn’t a big kid, but isn’t tiny either. Probably 6’0″, 170 lbs and looks like he’ll grow into an athletic 6’1″, 6’2″ 210 pounder. His velocity isn’t tremendous — high 80s right now — but he gets tremendous armside movement on a riding fastball that makes it very difficult for hitters to make solid contact. He flashed an encouraging curve with solid 11-5 shape and his change appears to be an advanced offering with diving action. He repeated his delivery well and — I can’t really overstate this — the life on his fastball was special. If he gains some velocity as he grows physically, as he should, this kid appears to have enormous potential.

Finally, I want to share a note on Engel Beltre, who probably possesses more physical ability than any position player in the Rangers farm system. I saw two Beltre at-bats this morning. In the first one, he fanned on three pitches from crafty lefty Richard Bleier, who set up Beltre to swing at a breaking ball a good foot outside for strike three.

I know that Beltre needs to improve his plate discipline and pitch recognition skills, but seeing that sequence reminded me just how wide the gap remains between what he might be and what he is.

Meanwhile, Beltre ran down two balls in center field — one in the right field gap and one in the left field gap — that Josh Hamilton couldn’t possibly have gotten to. On both occasions, he read and reacted quickly and managed to comfortably glide to the ball.

In his final at-bat, Beltre swung at the first pitch (the fourth straight pitched at which he had hacked), popping it up betwen the mound and third base. Pitcher Jorge Quintero and third baseman Manny Solis miscommunicated and the ball fell to the ground. By the time it did, Beltre was standing on second. His speed is phenomenal.