To whet appetites and get folks to buy his book, John Sickels has
published some of his player writeups. One was on Ritchie:
Jamie Ritchie, C, Houston Astros
Bats: R Throws: R HT: 6-2 WT: 190 DOB: April 9, 1993
The Astros drafted Ritchie in the 13th round in 2014 from Belmont University in Tennessee. He is a line drive hitter with exceptional strike zone judgment. He basically never swings at a bad pitch but he’s not passive and will make good solid contact on anything in the zone. On the negative side, his swing is level and he may never hit for much home run power. On defense he is a very good receiver in terms of blocking and general reliability, with low passed ball and error rates. However, his arm is just so-so and he threw out only 22% of runners last year. He spent time at first base and is a competent defender, but without more home run power he doesn’t ideally fit there. We need to see how Ritchie transitions to the higher levels. The throwing difficulties and lack of home run power make it unlikely for him to be a future regular, but he could have value as a pinch-hitter/platoon bat/backup catcher/backup first baseman. Grade C.
Also if you look in the comments section of the
Sickels Top 20 list that I linked to the other day, you'll see full writeups as well on Derek Fisher, Franklin Perez, Albert Abreu, Jon Kemmer, Miguelangel Sierra, Alfredo Gonzalez, David Paulino, Tommy Shirley, Tony Kemp, Jonathan Arauz, Andy Aplin and Michael Feliz.
Along with the Ritchie one above, I especially liked reading the ones on Gonzalez and Arauz.
