A few random amateur observations from three days haunting the back fields:
1. These guys really seem to like each other. On Sunday, they were doing a drill where the catchers, starting from a squat, had to find and catch a pop-up fired straight up out of a pitching machine. Then they started having the catchers do a somersault first, to further disorient themselves. The whole team was gathered around watching and cheering. Ortiz in particular was very excited when Vazquez finally missed one. Just a lot of good vibes.
2. Similarly, Anderson Espinoza threw a bullpen one day, and it seemed like most of the Salem guys stopped what they were doing to check that out. There is, by the way, no way the kid is six feet tall. But he did seem a little more filled out (in a good way) than what I'd seen on video. He's definitely slight, but he's not a beanpole, at least not to the extent I'd imagined.
3. In other body-image news, Andrew Benintendi is TINY. The "B" and "I" on his jersey disappeared into his armpits.
4. It was only a drill, but Rafael Devers looked fantastic taking infield at 3B. Very smooth, good range of motion, great hands. You can definitely see why some scouts think he'll end up at 1B -- he's already kind of husky and clearly has more growing to do -- but based on those reports I would have expected him to be less fluid. And holy cow did he hit a few hard in BP.
5. Watched Sam Travis take BP for a while. Very, very balanced stance and swing. One roped line drive after another. Seemed totally in control of his weight and his hands. He's definitely not a prototypical slugger in waiting -- if he adds power, it'll be from those line drives clearing the fence instead of hitting it.
6. One really nice moment was watching Koji pitch a simulated game against minor leaguers (Chris Marrero, Dubon, Moncada, and one other guy). Everybody sort of stopped to watch when Moncada got up, at which point Koji whiffed him on three pitches. When he was done, he made sure to thank everybody from the minor league camp for taking part.
7. I think my favorite part was watching the coaches work on extremely fine points. They spent about an hour drilling the Portland pitchers on pickoff moves, for example. And they did a lot of work with Josh Ockimey while I was watching on making sure he follows through on throwing to second when starting 3-6-3 double plays (instead of half-assing the throw while retreating to the bag). You could see him getting better over the course of the drill.