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2015 Season In Review: Modesto Nuts

By BobDeMuro |
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Modesto Nuts logo [Image via Twitter/Colorado Rockies]

All of the Colorado Rockies’ minor league affiliates have wrapped up their seasons. Today, let’s review 2015 for the A-Advanced affiliate Modesto Nuts.

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The Modesto Nuts missed the California League playoffs despite a relatively strong start to 2015, fading at the end of the year and ending up in the middle of the pack in the league’s overall and second-half standings at 67-73, including a 2-8 mark in their final 10 to end the year.

Certainly, that’s a disappointment for a group of players who made up the 2014 South Atlantic League Champions when most of them played together for the Asheville Tourists a year ago.

However, this is affiliated minor league baseball, so while winning is nice, prospect development is the top priority, and in Modesto this year prospect development was a resounding success, both with pitchers and hitters.

The Nuts were equally mediocre at home (34-36) and on the road (33-37), and in the first half (33-37) and the second half (34-36). They hit .262 as a team, and tossed up a 3.75 ERA — both numbers were middle of the pack in the California League, as well.

[ Related: Modesto’s 2015 top prospect is outfielder Raimel Tapia ]

And while they stood out at points during the season and appeared to be making a move on their division, they ended up far off the pace and sent home at the end of the regular season in early September.

Let’s dive in to what the club did specifically this season…

Next: The 2015 Nuts' Offense

May 10, 2015; Denver, CO, USA; General view of a Colorado Rockies glove and hat during the seventh inning of the game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Coors Field. Mandatory Credit: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports

2015 Nuts: Offense

The good: Raimel Tapia, Ryan McMahon, and Jordan Patterson were all brilliant in Modesto this year, each hitting over .300 in starter’s roles (and that earned Patterson a midseason call-up to AA New Britain, too). The Nuts had five players in double figures in homers; those three, plus Michael Benjamin and Correlle Prime.

McMahon led the club in homers (18), as well as virtually everything else: slugging percentage, on-base percentage, errors (unfortunately), runs scored, doubles, total bases, strikeouts… he was a one-man wrecking crew and/or a one-man weak spot, depending on the stat, situation, and game.

The bad: The Modesto Nuts got very little out of their catchers, Ashley Graeter, Troy Stein and Wilfredo Rodriguez.

Graeter slashed just .242/.285/.310 with 64 strikeouts in 304 at-bats, hitting just one home run and walking only 15 times in 82 games. Stein, in 77 games (266 at-bats), hit just .241, and while he did have a .321 on-base percentage (25 walks), he also struck out 81 times and had just a .346 slugging percentage.

Similarly, Rodriguez slashed a meager .224/.250/.298 in 64 games (228 at-bats), while walking only eight times and getting just 10 extra-base hits. With Dom Nunez, a catching prospect who played in Asheville in 2014, coming quickly through the system, it seems Modesto may have a productive backstop come 2016, though.

[ Related: 2015 AAA Albuquerque Player of the Year: Cristhian Adames ]

Noteworthy: The Nuts were steal-happy in 2015, getting caught the most times (85) in the California League while successfully swiping the second-most bags (136) this year, as well. It makes sense for a team that hit the second-fewest homers in the California League, and yet the second-most triples; to succeed on offense, the Modesto Nuts had to rely on speed a good bit more than your average professional ball club in 2015.

Tapia (26), Dillon Thomas (17) and Wilson Soriano (17) paced the Nuts’ offense in stolen bases, but everybody on the team who had more than 10 plate appearances in 2015 had at least one stolen base, so it was clearly a feature of their offense this year.

Big league ready: Obviously no one is truly big-league ready at the Class-A Advanced level, but Tapia, McMahon and Patterson have certainly all shown enough to be taken very seriously as possible big league prospects moving forward. It depends on how they do in AA next year (Patterson made the jump this summer and was good enough), but all three of those guys specifically bear watching next year.

Next: The 2015 Nuts' Pitching And Defense

May 10, 2015; Denver, CO, USA; General view of the starting line up of the Colorado Rockies before the game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Coors Field. Mandatory Credit: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports

2015 Nuts: Defense

The good: Surprisingly, the Nuts were pretty good on the mound this season, seeing five different starters have very solid years, including Harrison Musgrave, who was promoted to AA New Britain during the season. Trent Daniel, Sam Moll, Carlos Estevez, and Matt Carasiti paced the bullpen, too, combining on 34 saves and 14 more wins among themselves.

As a team, the Nuts walked the fewest batters in the league, and had the league’s third-best WHIP and third-best ERA. All told, that’s not terrible for a California League team (especially the 3.75 team ERA), so there’s not much here to complain about.

The bad: Grahamm Wiest came up from Asheville for ten starts and was hit around pretty hard, allowing ten home runs in those games while striking out just 22 batters. Back in Asheville later in the year, he had far better results with the Tourists, and he’ll likely get another shot at Modesto in 2016 as he tries to succeed one rung higher in the minor league food chain.

[ Related: Making Nolan Arenado’s case for National League MVP ]

Noteworthy: Harrison Musgrave and Carlos Estevez both deserve special notes for their midseason promotions to AA New Britain after dominant work early on with the Modesto Nuts. Both players ended up doing fine at New Britain, too; Musgrave figured things out very quickly and ended up with an incredible overall season on the mound, while Estevez struggled in the first few AA weeks of his career, only to settle down and eventually settle in to the Rock Cats’ closer’s role.

Big league ready: He’s not big league ready yet, but Matt Carasiti will be spending this fall in the Arizona Fall League after earning 22 saves with the Nuts this summer. Carasiti struck out 57 in 56.2 innings and finished 42 games this summer, so obviously the Rockies believe he has some kind of late-inning power arm potential that they’d like to explore more in the best fall situation in which a prospect can find themselves.

Next: Looking ahead to 2016

Aug 19, 2014; Denver, CO, USA; General view of Coors Field before the start of the game between the Kansas City Royals against the Colorado Rockies. Mandatory Credit: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports

2016 Nuts: Looking Ahead

Keys to success: The 2016 Nuts are going to receive most if not all of the 2015 Asheville Tourists — a team that went to the South Atlantic Championship Series before losing in a clean sweep in the finals this summer. So it stands to reason that there are quite a few pretty decent prospects and strong players coming quickly from Asheville.

Obviously, higher levels of the minor leagues may not agree with some of those players as they keep moving up — and others may be promoted quickly (like we saw this season with guys like Jordan Patterson, Carlos Estevez, and Harrison Musgrave) — so Modesto, like all minor league affiliates, will be a crap shoot next year.

Biggest challenges: The biggest challenge for any California League team is typically always identical to the biggest challenge year in and year out for the Colorado Rockies: pitching. Pitching is tough to come by in the Cal League, with very few exceptions, and this level is where most Rockies’ fringe prospects from lower levels may make or break their careers playing on razor-thin margins of error.

[ Related: Time’s up for Colorado Rockies’ outfielder Kyle Parker ]

That being said, plenty of pitchers have succeeded here (again, Estevez and Musgrave, plus Senzatela and others in just this last season), so it’s not a death sentence by any means — despite the fact that some organizations seek to skip the California League altogether with their best pitching prospects.

What to expect in 2016: Much of the same in the California League! The Modesto Nuts have been an affiliate of the Colorado Rockies for over a decade now, and while other changes have happened all across the organization, this is one steady point in the chain. It’ll be fun to see the Tourists’ of 2015 trying to repeat their winning ways in Modesto next summer.

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