Maikel Franco went 2-5 with his third home run of the year. Justin De Fratus and Cesar Jimenez worked clean innings of relief, before Ken Giles made his AAA debut – he walked one, allowed a hit and a run and struck out one. Some guy named “Derrick Mitchell” hit three home runs off of Lehigh Valley pitching. Never heard of him.
Jesse Biddle with another poor showing – 5R, 4ER, on 8H, 3BB and 6K over 5.1IP. He only threw about 57% of his pitches for strikes. Cesar Hernandez was back in the lineup after a groin tweak made him a late scratch Thursday. Tommy Joseph left the game early. Jay Floyd (@PhoulBallz) reporting it as a left wrist issue, which is better than a head/concussion issue.
And for CLR, Kuis Paulino pitched pretty well – 1R on 2H, 3BB and 5K. Ethan Martin loaded the bases in the sixth before being pulled – he was bailed out by Jeb Stefan. Our friend @BaseballBetsy said Martin appeared to be laboring through the inning. Darin Ruf had two hits in his second rehab appearance.
Here’s the affiliate Scoreboard from MiLB. http://www.milb.com/scoreboard/index.jsp?sid=milb&org=143&ymd=20140509
Phuture Phillies 
So Biddle has consistency issues? I hadn’t paid too much attention to him before last year, but he had the pertussis and/or plantar fasciitis (can’t remember if it was both), so he wasn’t exactly 100% last year. Bad starts happen occasionally, but since that doesn’t appear to be the case: Wonderful. At least he’s throwing more strikes?
Joseph…ugh. At least it’s only his wrist, but how often is the poor guy gonna get injured?
FRANCO! It’s nice that his bat is finally heating up. (Unfortunately, so is the weather. I hope he likes air conditioning.)
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I haven’t been the biggest Biddle fan up till now anyway, but we may have to consider that his issues last year were more his own doing than an effect of his foot/illness. Hopefully he gets back on track soon and stops giving out so many free passes.
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Franco becoming a tough strike out means one thing – they will need to throw him strikes. You can almost feel power surge soon.
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Was at the game last night, and I won’t get into specifics on Giles cause I’m not a pitching expert by any means. Pretty much was consistent at 99 on the Pigs gun, which I’m pretty sure is a MPH slow. Whatever offspeed stuff he was offering was sitting at 86-87, but he relied mostly on the FB. Control was all over the place, but watching him up close warming up in the bullpen, he is fasstttt.
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Did you notice in the pen movement on his ball or was it more or less straight?
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I’m really happy to see Franco getting his power stroke. His BB%/K% isn’t horrible. If you told me in spring training that after 130 AB’s @ AAA that he’d have a 7.3% walk rate, I would have been static, and said something along the lines of “Well obviously he’s not having any difficulty with pitch recognition like everyone thought he would!”
The K rate is a little higher then I’d like @ 17.5 but certainly nothing to be worried about, I’d expect as his bat heats up, that will come down to between 13-15%. The primary worry at this point is obviously the lack of power being shown in games. It’s not a question of bat speed as we all know, it could be a couple of things, adjusting to “finesse” pitchers, being a little more tentative overall (he’s not getting a ton of fastballs I would imagine) and possibly just a small sample size at a significantly higher level then he started the year last year. Some encouraging signs though and while he’s not knocking the cover off the ball, I’m pretty confident by mid-year he’ll be back above an .850 OPS (how far above is still an open question).
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F’ing spell check… static -> ecstatic!!!!!!!!!
🙂
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Felt the same way prior to the season with his BB% and K%.
And have been pleasantly surprised.
Like you say, the power was a concern however his last ten games have been impressive and looks like he is steaming up.
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JP Crawford with walk, single and double tonight so far. He’s phenomenal.
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And another hit. Unreal.
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Was at the game Friday night in Trenton. First I walked in behind a guy with a Steve Jeltz jersey on???????
Biddle-The trenton gun had him 90-91 on his FB. CB 77. He looked better than his line but seemed to me to rely to heavily on his CB to get himself out of trouble. Appears to me he needs to work on incorporating a 3rd pitch. It got to the point where they were starting to sit on his curve. No doubt the curve is a pretty nasty pitch it seemed all of his strikeouts were from the CB.
Gary Sanchez 4-5th time I’ve seem him now is the real deal. Not sure if he is the Yankees #1 or not but he should be. Jesse could not get anything by him almost as if our catcher was telling him what was coming.
Cesar at 3B-yeah he can do it but the arm isn’t going to play. One example was the a double play opportunity. His throw from 3B to the 2B took forever to get to Cartwright. Seems pointless to me to be playing him there. At the plate Cesar had or seemed to have great command of the strike zone and what I mean by that he seemed to not be off balance at all or swing at any pitches up or down.
Joseph really struggles with dirty balls. If I was Biddle I probably wanted to bury a few more 0-2 pitches in the dirt but would lack confidence in his ability to block them. He did make a nice play at the plate on a Perkins to Duran Relay that got a guy at the plate. That is probably where he hurt his wrist. The runner definitely arrived at the same time as the ball and there was a collision but Tommy held on. At the plate Tommy hits the ball hard and uses the whole field.
Speaking of Duran the kid can play a little SS. Not spectacular range wise but he appears to have a cannon for an arm. His throws from the hole were on a line with tremendous carry from a compact throwing motion. At the plate he seemed capable but average.
Perkins-Is kind of goofy big. Swings bare handed. First three PA’s he seemed too aggressive. Facing Banuelos who went backwards on Cam. Got ahead of him with CB’s then went upstairs with FB’s. Dropped a pretty nice bunt on the last AB I saw and got a hit out of it.
Altherr-I have my doubts that he can hit at the next level. Very similiar in build to Mayberry. I will say for a big long guy his stroke is pretty short and he hit a few rockets to right field. The ball has a really nice sound coming off his bat. My guess is if he learns to recognize pitches he could be a nice player. The one strike out he had was looking and the ball looked a little outside.
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