Scouting Reports on Southlake Carroll and LD Bell High Schools

On Friday March 2nd of 2012, I went and watched Southlake Carroll and LD Bell, two 5A high school teams in the Dallas/Fort Worth Area.


LD Bell's starting pitcher was Blake Henderson, who you can see pitching here:

He wasn't throwing real hard, but he had nice speed differential with an okay off-speed pitch. He tended to put it in the strike zone, and it is not a pitch you want in the zone. He really got away with a lot of pitches that were middle height. He struck out the first two batters swinging, but overall he gave up quite a bit of contact, and didn't get any help from a poor defense (both squads had major infield problems with unimpressive outfields). He got hit pretty hard in the 3rd inning, but got a lot of ground-balls early.

For Southlake Carroll, the starter was Greg Miasto (I apologize if I misspell any Southlake Carroll players, as there was no roster on-line, and Perfect Game thought it would be funny to send me a roster of Carroll high school in Corpus Christi Texas), who you can see throwing here:

The lefty had a weak breaking ball that was all over the place. However, when it went further than 59 feet, it is effective and tempting to hitters. He had a turn in his delivery in an attempt to hide the ball, but it really let runners get a bunch of easy steal. For the most part he didn't give up hard contact, but he really had no idea where the ball was going. He had some velocity, and a nice low fastball. He got 4 walks and 4 K's (one on a breaking ball, and one where he blew a heater by a batter). In the middle of the 2nd time in the order he had a pitch driven to the wall, and was done in just 1 and 2/3rd innings and gave up 5 runs (although he got absolutely no help from his defense). Offensively, he had a reasonably big cut but he had slow bat speed and had a major hole in his swing.

The first reliever (I don't have a write-up on every pitcher that pitched in this game) for Southlake was William Shudd. He was a reasonably tall lefty with an extremely weak breaking pitch. He struggled to throw strikes and most everything was up in the zone.

Preston LeBrone was the next reliever, and he wasn't throwing hard. He had bold locations in the strike-zone and was actually throwing strikes for the most part. He had the ball absolutely crushed out of the ballpark and was really getting knocked around. He had an ugly wild pitch, but was getting strikeouts despite unimpressive stuff.

Notes from the lineups:

The most impressive player for Soutlake Carroll by far was Darien Mclemore, the son of former Ranger and Mariner Mark Mclemore. He was relatively small in size (he wasn't skinny but he wasn't pudgy), but on defense he had nice hands on defense, with a nice arm (even though he was a little slow getting the throw off). Offensively, he had a nice swing with some pop, but I don't think he projects to have much power. He was ahead of a breaking ball but he scorched a line drive and grounded out in two at-bats that didn't count this video:

To go with the pretty quick Mclemore, the catcher for Southlake Hayden Zier also ran okay. He had a mediocre swing and was pretty small for a catcher. He had a nice arm but has some problems throwing back to the pitcher. Kenny Hill had good size but swung at a horrible pitch for a ground-ball and just had a bad swing overall. The left fielder Chris Allamon struck out once, but had 2 line drive singles (one was rather weak though). He didn't run very well. Austin Tyrone was the first-baseman and he was a similar story with a good size but bad swing. He also was atrocious defensively.

LD Bell's best hitter was their catcher Taylor Empkey. Defensively, he had a nice stop behind the plate and gunned down a runner. Offensively he had a 5 pitch walk, a long at-bat with decent contact, and a home run on a weak breaking pitch that went maybe 380-390 feet so would be just a deep fly-ball normally. I never got to see him run because of silly high school courtesy runner rules. Here is a video of one of his plate appearances:

Gavin Gregory played centerfield, and he was small and struck out. Devin Bural was the pinch runner for Empkey and was also small, and he stole 2 bases. Toby Brown played 2nd base, and he was short. He had a slow swing with not a lot of patience. Trevor Podsednik played shortstop and was terrible at it. He had a walk on offense. Sydney Daley is someone who impressed me with his size (especially his height, I figure he will fill out more). However, he wasn't very good at baseball. He was awful in the field at third base, and was eventually taken out. Offensively, he had an open stance on the right side and made weak contact and had an ugly strikeout. Cullen Gassaway was the first baseman and had okay size. He had a not very good late swing with holes in it. However, he had a good take indicating a good eye and drove a ball to the wall. Joe Dean Shipp was the small left-fielder, and he was pretty slow.