Tonight was my first night of what will end up being rather sporadic duty at Elfstrom Stadium in Geneva, IL covering the Kane County Cougars for ChicagoSporting.com. I figured I'd give some impressions I got from a first-hand look at a few A's prospects. As I type this the game report isn't up on the site, but you should go there to check it out.

Tonight Craig Italiano took his 6-0 record and 0.80 ERA (including 26 innings at home this season without giving up an earned run) to the mound against the Cardinals A-ball affiliate, the Quad Cities River Bandits. It was my first time seeing Italiano and here are some thoughts on him:

* His fastball was pretty much unhittable. The in-stadium gun registered every pitch at 39 mph, so I have no idea how hard he was throwing, but he struck out 6 in 5 innings of work.

* 5 innings = A PROBLEM. I have a feeling the reason he's still pitching at Kane County is that he can't seem to go more than 5 innings. This was his 10th start, and he's only pitched more than 5 innings twice. He hasn't pitched more than 6 innings at all. He throws a ton of pitches. I didn't keep a pitch count, but it seemed like every hitter was seeing 5 or 6 pitches. A ton of 2-2, 3-2 counts. He walked 3 guys tonight, but from my viewpoint it could easily have been just 1. In the first inning a hitter walked on a really close pitch. Then in the third inning he threw a curveball to River Bandits right fielder D'Marcus Ingram (who was involved in a number of odd, controversial plays tonight) that was just disgusting. It fooled the umpire, too, because it was definitely a strike.

* He threw almost all fastballs, a few curveballs, and a couple changeups that were fairly ugly looking. He seems like a 2-pitch pitcher right now. He might do some different things with the fastball. Not sure on that.

*I wonder if he's going to end up a relief pitcher. If he is basically a 2-pitch pitcher, and with his inability to go deep into games, he might be the kind of guy who ends up working long relief. The guy has good stuff though.

Alright, some other things:

Corey Brown needs work. He did have a couple singles tonight. One was a ball he caught off the end of the bat and just muscled on a line into right field. He's definitely got some strength. The other was a seeing-eye single up the middle. The problem is that he takes some ugly swings and misses some pitches. Though I tend to ignore strike out totals, Brown has 58 in 165 ABs this year. And it's not just that he's patient and getting into a lot of 2-strike counts like Jack Cust. He seems to have some trouble with pitch recognition or something. He's clearly got some talent, but I think he's probably a few years away right now. One game is not enough to make that judgment, but in talking to a beat reporter who is at all the home games he seemed to feel the same way.

Shane Keough looked good tonight. Made a tremendous sliding catch that was ruled not a catch and had two singles. Two singles were pretty much the highlight tonight, so maybe he looked better than he is.

In general, Kane County has a lot of pitching (best ERA in the Midwest League) and not much offensive anything. Brad Hertzler pitched the final 4 innings, gave up 4 runs, but actually looked a lot better than his line would indicate. I'm not very familiar with him, but he's left-handed and he just turned 22 a month or so ago. He seems like one of those guys who could progress through the organization and become a decent lefty reliever at some point.

I'll be covering more games over the summer, and next game I'll try to get one of the players to agree to an interview for AN.