Mystery pitcher hits 101 for Frisco!

So, when the full season rosters came out, I noticed some guy named Jose Diaz on the Frisco roster. Ok made sense, I just assumes it was one of the Jose/Joselo Diazes in the system last year. Then I checked out his profile to verify what I already knew. This Jose Diaz was a giant at 6-4 300 lbs. Wrong Jose. WTF?! I tried to cross-ref his stats with various databases but got conflicting info, including the profile on the cube that said he was a svuelt 175. So, I dropped it. The cube has been wrong before; I think they still have the wrong profile for Jose Felix.

So today, reports started coming in about this guy during a minor league gameday thread for Lonestarball.com that he was throwing 101! Oh my. The reports were that he was hitting 99 and hit 101 at least once in addition to a 90mph slider. Wow. So it turns out that this was a Dodgers prospect from 2001 named Jose "Jumbo" Diaz sidelined by TJ surgery in the fall of 2004. He was highly ranked as a closer back then but was out of the league in 07 and 08 after having a mediocre season in A+/AA in 06. Here are some career highlights that I got from minorleaguebaseball.com:

’01 (17) short season, 8wins, 28 games
’02 (18) (3 affiliates), BA #5 prospect GCL, 61ip, 16g, 2.82, .174baa
’03 (19) Low A, only 7 games (injured?)
’04 (20) Low A, BA Best FB/Best reliever SAL, missed final 6wks elbow strain
20saves, .172baa, 14.8so/9, 2.00 era. 47ip/74so, SAL all-star
’04-05 (21) TJ surgery
’05 (21) appeared in final 14g (16ip/12bb/16so) for the season, low A
’06 (22) A+/AA, 18g 4.40 era
’07 (23) out of league
’08 (24) out of league


Intriguing right? Well, that is all I know kids. Hopefully we will find out more in the coming weeks.


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