This week’s edition of “Diamonds in the Rough” will be uploaded in a little while. But for now, I wanted to re-run the lede to my column from just over two months ago, when I happy-danced all over my house celebrating the debut of one of my favorite prospects … enough so that for the first time I actually name-checked him in the “title.”

Words cannot express how much love, how many prayers, and how much concern I am trying to send through the airwaves in hopes that Colorado Rockies pitcher Juan Nicasio will recover fully from the devastating injury he suffered Friday night. I hope he can return to a baseball career that had such promise, but moreso I hope that he can live a full and vital life. I know that the Rockies will take care of him. And I hope that the “greater being,” whatever/whoever that may be, will do the same.

DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH: DEBUTS THRU 5/29, special JUAN NICASIO edition!

We knew it would be a busy week here at “Diamonds in the Rough” when, by 10 a.m. on Tuesday morning, we already had SEVEN players on our watch list.

By the end of the night on Sunday, 11 players had made their major league debuts, and there were three more on tap for this coming week already in the bigs.

I admit I get especially excited when I get to see the arrival of players I saw so early in their careers, and even more so when they’re guys I had the opportunity to semi-officially “scout” during my time at MLSB’s Scout School in 2009.

So if you heard a few hoots of glee coming from somewhere in Maryland, just over the Washington D.C. border, it was probably when big right-hander Juan Nicasio got the call from the Colorado Rockies to come up and start this past Saturday against St. Louis (I didn’t get to watch it because since it was a Saturday, blackout mode was in effect on MLB Extra Innings. Grrrrrrr.).

During the remarkable and educational two weeks that I spent at Scout School that fall, one of the most memorable afternoons was spent at Chase Field where the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies were kind enough to bring a slew of their top prospects to play a nine-inning game on the big league field, with three sets of fielders/hitters for three innings each and an array of pitching prospects (yeah, it was probably just as exciting if not more so for the players involved.)

At the end of the game, we were charged with the assignment of picking one player and one pitcher from each team and writing up a “pro scouting report” on them.

The pitcher I picked from the Rockies was Nicasio. And here was what I said:

“Big, strong, hard-throwing RHS with power FB with late run and occ bore. Commands both sides of plate with FB. Quick arm. Limited viewing of potential avg secondary pitches which he’ll need to use more regularly to succeed in top of rotation or back end of bullpen role.”

(By the way, in “scout speak” “avg” means “major league average” which is very good.)

Off of that experience, I picked Nicasio as my choice for Colorado’s Minor League Pitcher of the Year in our MLB.com 2009 Organization Preview package, about a year before most got onto the Nicasio train.



JUAN NICASIO
RHP, Colorado Rockies
B/T: R/R H/W: 6-3/200 BORN: Aug. 31, 1986
ACQUIRED: Signed as a free agent out of the Dominican Republic in August 2006.
PROMOTED: Recalled from Double-A Tulsa May 28 when P Bruce Billings was sent down.
DEBUT: May 28 in a 15-4 win against the St. Louis Cardinals: The starting pitcher, he got the win with seven innings of six-hit ball, allowing one unearned run and walking two while striking out two. Nicasio allowed five of those hits in his first two innings before settling in as his offense exploded behind him early and often.
NOTES: Some have called Nicasio a “late bloomer” after it took him a few seasons to move up to full-season Class A Asheville, but that summer his 2.41 ERA in 18 starts ranked among the tops in the Minors, as he struck out 115 in 112 innings while walking just 23. At Advanced A Modesto the next summer, he posted a 3.91 ERA, struck out 171 batters and began drawing comparisons to another young pitcher in the Rockies organization — All-Star Ubaldo Jimenez (who also served as his post-game interpreter after Nicasio’s debut). Big and strong, with a powerful lower body and a fastball in the mid 90s, he’s been developing and refining his off-speed pitches to give him a full arsenal. At Double-A Tulsa prior to his callup he was 5-1 with a 2.22 ERA and had walked just 10 batters while fanning 63 in 56 2/3 innings over nine starts. MLB.com uncovered the tidbit that with his stellar outing, Nicasio became the first Colorado pitcher since Jason Jennings in August 2001 to pitch at least seven innings and allow no more than one run in his big league debut.