Minor League Level Review (Low-A): Buxton, Starling, Toles, Allie, De Paula and More

Every other Wednedsay, I will be taking a quick look at some of the top prospects at the Low-A level, including their stats for for the season, and if anything stands out about the performance. The season stats may not always tell us the whole story, but there are usually also some updates on how they are doing these things as opposed to just the numbers themselves. All statistics are courtesy of Baseball Reference.com, and are through the games of Monday, 5/6/13.

• As a part of the weekly minor league review over at Athletics Nation, Athletics Farm spoke with A's director of player personnel Billy Owens about a number of the top prospects in the A's system, including low-A players Renato Nunez, Bruce Maxwell and Daniel Robertson.
• Carlos Correa was placed on the 7-day DL with a hand injury on the 3^rd, which I will be interested to see how he performs when he returns to the lineup.
• Rangers' OF Nick Williams was placed on the 7-day DL as well on April 26^th, and Craig Goldstein profiled Williams last week.
• I took a look at Pirates' IF prospect Stetson Allie two weeks ago, and whether the production is real or not.
• Lewis Brinson continues to strikeout at a poor rate (nearly half of his at bats in the past two weeks), and I wonder at what point it starts to improve. I would have to imagine that the book starts getting out on Brinson, and it gets worse before it gets better.
• Leading candidate for minor league name of the year so far: Rock Shoulders of the Cubs. He's not just a name at this point though, as he's crushing the Midwest League to the tune of a .346 batting average with 6 home runs so far.
• After spending a few weeks back at extended spring training, David Dahl has returned to full season ball, although he pulled his hamstring in Tuesday night's game, according to David Lee of the Augusta Chronicle

• Lance McCullers had his best outing of the season on Sunday, pitching five shutout and striking out 9 while walking just 1 and allowing 2 hits. He did well, throwing just 68 pitches over the span of the game as well.
• De Paula is leading the level in strikeouts with 46, and I'm kind of wondering at this point if he is moved to High-A before the end of the month.
• Roberto Osuna has posted an excellent 31:5 K/BB ratio this year, but was placed on the disabled list on 5/1/13.
• Joan Gregorio threw just 2 innings in his last start before being removed due to a strained oblique muscle, and has since been placed on the disabled list.
• Jose Berrios has had back-to-back starts with 8 strikeouts, 6+ innings pitched, and less than 2 earned runs. Definitely a name worth watching, and one that I was surprised at how good he has been so far.