Red Sox sign 1st-round pick Trey Ball (UPDATED)

The Red Sox announced today that they have reached an agreement with their first-round pick, left-handed pitcher Trey Ball. Terms of the deal were not announced, although Ball will reportedly sign for below the $3.246-million slot value for the seventh overall pick, as first reported by WEEI.com's Alex Speier.

UPDATE (4:47 PM): Speier is now reporting that Ball signed for $2.75 million, nearly $500,000 under slot. The Red Sox are now $648,600 under their allotted draft cap for signings that have been reported, and $990,110 under the cap plus five percent, the threshold the team may go to without forfeiting future draft picks.

Widely considered the top two-way player in the draft, Ball played both outfield and pitched for New Castle (Ind.) Chrysler High School, but will pitch full time upon turning pro. He had been committed to the University of Texas, but will opt to begin his professional career.

Standing 6-foot-6, Ball has tremendous upside featuring a low to mid-90s fastball, a changeup with good arm speed and fade, and a developing curveball. Ball is only listed at 190 pounds and has lots of room to fill out, and potentially add velocity as he develops. He was ranked ninth on Baseball America's draft rankings, eighth on Keith Law's ESPN.com draft rankings, and 12th on Perfect Game's draft rankings.

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Cup of Coffee: Shaw, Haeger help Sea Dogs earn split

6/19 Cup of Coffee: Pawtucket took advantage of some defensive miscues in a late victory, Portland split a doubleheader, and the GCL Red Sox rolled back into the win column. Lowell was postponed by rain, while a quintet of Salem and Greenville players saw All-Star action.

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A crazy ninth inning allowed Pawtucket to come away with a 3-2 win over the Columbus Clippers (CLE). Knotted at two going into the top of the inning, the PawSox were able to score the go-ahead run despite going 0 for 6 in the frame. With one away, Drew Sutton reached on an error by the third baseman and was forced out on a Mitch Maier grounder to second. Columbus then followed with two more errors, one fielding error on a grounder to second by Bryce Brentz, the next on a throwing miscue on a ball off the bat of Brandon Snyder. This series of mistakes allowed Maier to come around to score, giving Pawtucket the lead.

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Players of the Week, June 10-16: Keury De La Cruz and Anthony Ranaudo

This week's SoxProspects.com Player and Pitcher of the Week polls featured a pair of winners with wide margins of victory in Salem's Keury De La Cruz (73 percent) and Portland's Anthony Ranaudo (82 percent).

 

De La Cruz batted .462/.500/.692 (12-for-26) with one home run and three doubles, scoring four runs and batting in eight. His best night of the period came against Lynchburg (Braves) June 14 when he went two-for-three with a home run. Through 68 games in 2013 De La Cruz, ranked twenty-third in the system by SoxProspects.com, is hitting .288/.317/.447 (76-for-264) with four home runs, 24 doubles, and three triples.

 

Ranaudo worked 7.2 innings of two-hit, shutout baseball against Erie (Tigers) June 13, striking out 13 opposing batters while walking only two and earning the win. The resurgent Ranaudo owns a 7-1 record and 2.15 ERA, having allowed 16 earned runs on 41 hits, striking out 76 and walking 21 in 67 innings over 12 starts, and holding opposing batters to an .174 batting average. He is currently the sixth-ranked prospect in the organization by SoxProspects.com.

Honorable mentions, batting:

Luis Alexander Basabe (DSL)
Kevin Heller (GRE)
Henry Ramos (SAL)
Stefan Welch (SAL)

Honorable mentions, pitching:

Drake Britton (POR)
Jeremy Khert (POR)
Allen Webster (PAW)
Jeffrey Wendelken (GRE)
 

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Red Sox reportedly sign 12th-rounder Jake Drehoff

The Red Sox have come to terms on an above-slot deal for left-handed pitcher Jake Drehoff, reports Jim Callis of Baseball America. The deal is for $175,000, and will count for $75,000 against the draft cap. As always, the deal is contingent upon the passage of a physical exam.

Drehoff, a 12th-round choice out of Southern Mississippi, tossed a 3.54 ERA in 81 1/3 innings across 15 starts. He consideres his changeup his best pitch, according to Michael Periatt of MLB.com. Per Callis, he throws his fastball in the 87 to 91 range, and supplements that with a slider. 

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Wendelken added to South Atlantic League All-Stars

Right-handed reliever J.B. Wendelken has been added to the South Atlantic League All-Star roster, reports Frank Sulkowski of WJCL, the Georgia coast's ABC affiliate. Wendelken joins Greenville Drive teammates Mookie Betts and David Chester on the Southern Division squad. 

Wendelken, a 13th-round draft choice in 2012, has been one of the bright spots on the Greenville pitching staff. The 20-year-old has compiled a 2.94 ERA in 49 innings across 16 appearances, all in relief. Wendelken has struck out 39 while walking 19, and leads the Drive with four saves.

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Red Sox reportedly sign Bryan Hudson, Jantzen Witte

Add Bryan Hudson and Jantzen Witte to the list of players who are making their professional baseball dreams come true.

Alex Speier of WEEI.com reports that the Red Sox have signed both Hudson, a 15th-round outfielder out of Mill Creek HS (Ga.), and Witte (pictured), a third baseman selected in the 24th round out of Texas Christian University, bringing the total number of Sox draftees signed to 14.

Hudson was the third outfielder drafted by the Red Sox this season, behind Jordon Austin (sixth round) and Forrestt Allday (eighth round). At 6-foot-1, 185 pounds, Hudson has a projectable body, but his biggest weapon is his speed, which grades as a 70 on the 20-80 scale, according to Speier.

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Cup of Coffee: Spinners open season with 15-strikeout gem

6/18 Cup of Coffee: While there were only three games on the schedule, Monday saw plenty of action down on the farm. The Spinners kicked off their season with a thrilling ninth-inning victory, as a trio of arms combined for a 15-strikeout shutout. Not to be outdone, a trio of PawSox hurlers delivered a three-hit shutout. The lone loss on the night came from the DSL squad, only the team's third defeat on the season.

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Pawtucket notched just six hits, but it was more than enough offense in a 4-0 victory over the Columbus Clippers (CLE). Making his first appearance since his short re-call to the major-league club, Rubby De La Rosa struggled some with his control, but Clipper bats struggled even more to make contact. The right-hander allowed only two hits in 5 1/3 shutout frames, walking and striking out five apiece. Alex Wilson, also making his first appearance since a short Boston stint, followed De La Rosa. Wilson allowed just one hit in his 1 2/3 innings, striking out three of the six batters he faced and firing 19 of his 25 pitches for strikes. Brock Huntzinger finished with two perfect innings, striking out one.

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SoxProspects Video of the Week: A-Ball hitters

Every Monday during the season we will feature a video here from the SoxProspects YouTube page. Today's video is of seven young hitters who have yet to make their Double-A debuts, from spring training this year. In it, you can see Sean Coyle, Brandon Jacobs, Henry Ramos, Keury De La Cruz, Williams Jerez, Cody Koback, and Kendrick Perkins take turns batting in game action against Baltimore, Tampa Bay, and Minnesota affiliates. Follow the link to the YouTube page to view many other prospect videos.

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SoxProspects.com Podcast #39.1: Mellen's Excellent Adventure

With Chris Mellen back from his yearly southern swing, the two unofficial members of SoxProspects South, Chris Hatfield and Jon Meoli, hit him with some questions about the players he saw at the two full-season A-ball affiliates. The guys also talked about Xander Bogaerts's promotion to Pawtucket, Jon Denney signing for way less than we thought he would, and the rest of the news.

Links after the jump.

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2013 Annual Drive - Help Keep SoxProspects Free!

Dear readers,

We’re asking for your help to help raise $3,000 to help keep SoxProspects.com free for another year.  We've kept the site 100% free to the public for just shy of ten years now, and we hope to do so for the foreseeable future. As you may have also noticed, we continue to expand and improve our content, including new features, everyday coverage, first-hand analysis, improved layouts, and a new forum host. Unfortunately, costs continue to pile up with these expanded features.  As we've done over the past five seasons, we're reaching out to the community for donations to help keep the site free for everyone. Donations help cover site costs in two primary areas: (1) first-hand coverage costs for scouting and player columns; and (2) web hosting fees (including forum hosting costs).

Your donations help us travel to Ft. Myers in the spring to cover spring training and in the fall to cover the Instructional League. They also help cover the costs of travelling to Pawtucket, Portland, Salem, Greenville, and Lowell games for scouting and first-hand coverage.  In terms of web hosting costs, the site resides on four servers, each with their own set of annual fees. We anticipate that our costs in these two areas will exceed $10,000 in 2013.  While we make limited funds from online advertising revenue, we simply don’t make enough to cover all of our costs. 

In each of the last four years, several readers made donations ranging from $5 to $200 to help defray these costs. Thanks so much to everyone who chipped in!

One thing I’d like to note is that while we've remained free, other similar baseball sites charge for content. For example, Scout.com costs $90 per year, Baseball America charges $66 per year, and Baseball Prospectus costs $39.95 per year. I think those sites are great in their own right, and are absolutely worthy of subscriptions. I’d also like to think we’d be worthy of comparable rates if we ever decide to go that route, but we've decided that we want to keep the site free for as long as we can. Donations from regular readers go a long way towards making that happen.

Ultimately, through draft signing season, we are asking our readers to donate what they can to help keep SoxProspects.com free to the public. If you want to donate, first, we would like to thank you profusely – it’s truly appreciated. To donate, visit our DONATIONS PAGE. All payments are secured through PayPal, although you don’t need a PayPal account to contribute. All of the donations will go directly to our costs – none of the owners have taken out a dollar of profit out of the site's tills over the last six years (obviously we’re not doing this to get rich!).

Last, to any of our regular readers that are not members of the SoxProspects Forum, please sign up! We’d love to get some new members in on the discussion and some new ideas floated around during our peak season! And to all of our current forum members out there, don’t be afraid to start new discussion threads – especially threads on specific players. It would be great to get more player-centric discussion going on the board in addition to the other topics already being discussed.

As always, thanks to all of our readers for visiting the site and all of our forum members for posting!

Sincerely,

SoxProspects.com

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