I was at the Round Rock game last night with the intention of watching Manzella play. Sure enough, he got the night off. But lo and behold, there was Chris Johnson making his AAA debut at third and so this was going to be fun. Before I move on, one guy who was impressive with the bat was Val Majewski (sp?). He has an absolutely beautiful left handed swing and looks like the type of guy who can produce good average and good gap power. Now back to Johnson.
Honestly, he looked a tad tentative playing out there but that is to be expected. He did lay out nicely to catch a ball headed down the left field line. It is the type of play a major league ready third baseman makes and good for the kid, he did it. But when he got up, he airmailed the ball to first for what I thought should've been an error on the throw (perhaps they felt he never had a chance to get the guy running hard down the line). So for the rest of the night, I watched to see if maybe he had a mechanical flaw in his throws and the answer was "no, he doesn't". So I chalked up his throw as Johnson trying to rush his throws. I did notice though that when he needed accuracy on his throws, he would pop the ball in his glove (take it out, put it back in, then take it out) as a sort of mechanism to control his body movement just before he squared up and threw. On a very close play at first, he got the guy but I suspect they're going to work on his release being more fluid along the way. His arm strength though cannot be denied. In yet another fine play, this time to his left cutting in front of the shortstop, Johnson caught the ball in plenty of time, squared up and then realized that the runner was humping it down the line, so he threw the ball hard, once again air-mailing it over House's head for a two base error.
So if Johnson can learn to square up just a tad better, set his feet much quicker, control his accuracy there after, he has the arm strength to get major leaguers out on a consistent basis. He's no Scott Rolen in terms of arm strenght or accuracy (the benchmark of a really great third baseman throwing to me), but I think he can be good enough and that is all you need sometimes. If you ever watch Geoff Blum throw from third, you see what is a good accurate throw with plenty on it that should be what to expect from your third sacker.
Looks like Johnson needs some seasoning to get to that point with his throwing, everything else seemed good to me.
