Minor Notes: Playoffs, Otani, and winter leagues

Here are Thursday's minor league notes:

• The minor league seasons are winding down, but SoxProspects.com's coverage is not. Director of Scouting Ian Cundall was busy with two new editions of Scouting Scratch. The first covered some quick hitters from Lowell. His write-up featured four 2017 draft picks including two hitters in third baseman Michael Osinski and outfielder Marino Campana and two pitchers with lefty Dominic LoBrutto and righty Taylor Ahearn.
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  Continuing the trend of 2017 picks, Ian's second Scouting Scratch covered the Red Sox's first round pick, Lowell right hander Tanner Houck (pictured, right). Ian has now had the chance to see Houck three times, and his update after his penultimate start of the season was promising.
• The podcast team took to the air earlier this week to discuss the minor league playoff teams, September rankings, and major and minor league call-ups. Within the episode, Chris gets fired up about outfielder Bryce Brentz. Listen to find out why.
• The Greenville Drive are still alive in the best-of-five South Atlantic League Championship Series against the Kannapolis Intimidators. After Monday was rained out, they won both Tuesday (in 13 innings!) and Wednesday on the road to lead the series 2-0. Today's 7:05 pm home game features the fifth ranked player on the SoxProspects.com rankings, 18-year-old righty Bryan Mata.
• Baseball America announced their 2017 All-Star teams. In short-season ball, one Red Sox prospect made the team, Lowell reliever Denyi Reyes. Ther was also one Red Sox All-Star at High-A, third baseman Michael Chavis. Finally, it is no surprise that third baseman Rafael Devers made their Double-A All-Star team.
• The Red Sox were expected to announce their Fall Instructional League rosters any day now. However, Executive Editor Chris Hatfield reported that Instructs will not start this Saturday as originally planned as the team assesses the damage from Hurricane Irma. However, according to News-Press.com, the damaged sustained by Jet Blue Park was fairly minor and therefore there should not be too much of a delay.
• If you check out Chris' Twitter account, he also spent several tweets explaining why the Red Sox might not be the best positioned to sign highly touted Japanese pitcher Shohei Otani when he is posted later this year. To summarize, many articles have speculated that the Red Sox have traded up to the maximum $8 million in international signing money in order to sign Otani. However, that ignores the fact the Red Sox have already committed $7 million to sign other players, leaving them only $1 million to sign Otani. The international signing rules changed in the last CBA, and one change was to ban teams from going over their pool number. Ben Badler of Baseball America has more detail on that here from earlier this year.
• According to Christopher Smith of MassLive.com, first baseman Sam Travis will play winter ball in the Dominican Republic. He also mentions in that same tweet, that while the Red Sox have not set up a winter ball team for catcher Blake Swihart to play for, they plan on doing so.

Photo Credit: Tanner Houck by Kelly O'Connor.

Will Woodward is a Senior Staff Writer for SoxProspects.com. Follow him on Twitter @SPWill.

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