While the January international amateurs draws the crowds and the other reporters, your humble award-winning farm reporter never fails to keep an eye on the players that your favorite team, the Yellow Springs Nine, bring to the complex over the course of the year.
Most of them are there to provide extra arms and bodies to field competitive squad games here in Cuba, such as Chris Walsh, an Israeli kid signed back in 2059 who likely will be heading back to his homeland after maybe a tryout game in Alamogordo.
But then there's players like the newest signee, Bemus Pangalos, who just scribbled on the dotted line and has a few interesting characteristics that made me decide to fly down here and see him for myself.
Pangalos, 16, is from Glifada, Greece, which I definitely couldn't find on a globe or an atlas (remember those, kids? Probably not.) I was, however, able to get ahold of some of the people who knew him there and they had mostly positive things to say about him.
"Bemus works his pisinos off," said his high school track coach. "He was always here early practicing. Sometimes skipping school to do it. After we'd be done training, he would go and try to find a way to do, what is it called, 'punching the cage?' I'm not sure. Baseball stuff. Not my thing, but he loved it."
"Pangalos can handle almost any situation," said his debate squad teammate. "I never saw him flinch no matter what the other debater might say. It was simply amazing sometimes."
"That kid likes money," said one of his neighbors, who asked not to be named. "Always hustling, trying to make a buck. Told me he's going to be an American baseball star because just making to the big leagues means big bucks. Big bucks! Ha! He'd be better studying to be an accountant."
From the scouts I talked to, Pangalos hasn't had a lot of time to play defense, which making predicting his future rather hard because he has almost no power. He possesses an above-average infield arm, so they have him playing first and third right now, but what I saw of him was really rough. Like Walsh career path rough.
But then there's the bat. It's still raw, of course, but Bemus is well ahead of the curve on his potential to make contact. He's very good, in both film and in my personal observations, at getting the bat on pitches designed to be strikeouts. His eye is pretty good and could get better. The trouble is he's a slap hitter. A lot of that contact is going to go for 6-3 and 5-3 outs until he can better develop a way to get them over the infield. He's just not fast enough to leg them out, even with track team experience.
All in all, Bemus is a guy to keep an eye on. He's probably not going to make it past AA, but if he keeps working hard and gets his defense up, he might have a shot. It's rough to imagine a slap hitting third baseman, but they exist. Or perhaps he shifts to second base, once his skills improve. We'll have to see.
Either way, if he hits big, remember Nes told you about him first. That's why I'm an award-winning reporter, after all. Finding people like him is a Panglos-t art.
