Reading with a win in game one of their 5 game series versus Trenton. Fox, Joseph and Castro all went deep, and Hyatt, Knigge and Friend held Trenton to 2 runs on 7 hits.
Last game of the for Williamsport. Cutters finish with a nice start from Jeb Stefan, 1ER, on 3H, 0BB and 6K over 5IP.
Just one game – Williamsport. Roman Quinn on base twice, scored twice.
Here’s your weekly general discussion. Allow me to suggest a topic: professional baseball.
Justin Friend’s ERA comes in at 0.23. What a year. Reading clinched a playoff spot. Playoffs start Wednesday in Baseballtown. Good stuff.
In Lakewood, Kelly Dugan went 3 for 3, raising his BA to .300. Listen, I don’t value BA all that much, especially as a predictive tool, but if you think that’s not a good thing for that guy’s confidence, I don’t know what to tell ya. So good for him, and really, a good year all around for him. Mostly healthy and generally raking. Nothing wrong with that.
Put another year in the books for the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs who finished the year in 3rd place of the Northern Division of the International League at 75-68, 9 games back of division leading Scranton. The season was a challenging one for Lehigh Valley. From the get go they were faced with a myriad of call ups and injuries that left the team in a state of total flux, literally all year. With the Phillies bullpen decimated by both injury and ineffectiveness, just about every pitcher in the bullpen on the IronPigs opening day roster received a shot with the big club. My perspective is that even with a record that stood well below the level of success of the 2011 team, the job done by Manager Ryne Sandberg was far better, getting alot more with less talent. On paper, this was no more than a .500 team that Sandberg took into the final weekend of the wild card hunt. Continue reading Lehigh Valley Report–End of Season Edition
I’m going to go ahead and start calling Kenny Giles “KG”. Has a nice ring to it, right? KG struck out the side in his 1 IP today. Ethan “EM” Martin with a big game today, 2H/0BB/8K in 7 scoreless. Larry “LG2” Greene Jr. finished with a 14.3% BB rate and a 26.0% K rate. If he’s going to hit a mess of homers, (he only managed 2 this year but 23 doubles), that K rate is totally fine by me, and that BB rate is awesome. Maikel Franco finished with a .775 OPS, .925 after the ASB. You can make up a clever 2 letter nickname for him all on your own.
Roman Quinn with his first professional (regular season/over the fence) homerun. Franco and Dugan with three hits each.
None of the three teams in playoff contention helped their cause. May and Pettibone both with less than stellar outings, and Frank Gailey, (of all people), struck out 12 Clearwater Threshers in six innings. I kid you not. Frank Gailey. Yes, the same one. Burn.
Ok, the Mike Piazza line always gets me. The notion is this – Piazza was passed on by every team 61 times before the Dodgers took him at the end of the 62nd round. Scouts failed to get it right on Piazza and only by “friend of his dad Tommy Lasorda” did he even get a chance. And from that, proof that scouts don’t always recognize talent, and that, in this case, Darin Ruf, (or really anyone else), might just be better than scouts think. Let’s look at the story, from what I know of it. Continue reading Mike and Tommy and Darin
I am going to to make things more exciting during this off season, putting up polls fairly often to keep the conversation going…
Feel free to respond in the comment section about ideas for polls you would like to see.
Have fun, and PLEASE be respectful. First poll is in the post below. Sometime in January, I will put up a post with cumulative poll results.
Phuture Phillies 