A truck was backed up to the doors of the Carpenter Complex. Bags were being loaded even as the last intrasquad was being played. This afternoon the truck will head for the airport to begin the long trip to Williamsport.
They only played 5.5 innings today. Six pitchers made brief appearances. The most notable was Brody Colvin. The former member of the “baby aces” was hit around in 1.1 innings, giving up 5 hits and 4 runs, 3 earned. Continue reading Final Practice; June 10, 2014
Leandro Castro is trying hard to haul his OPS up over .700 for the year. He was 1-3 with his 18th walk of the year last night. Remarkable for a guy who hasn’t walked that many times in a full season since 2010. He’s added .42 OBP points over last year and he has the exact same AVG. Nice to see.
Aaron Altherr was 3-5 plus a walk – he’s on a bit of a tear, OPSing over 1.000 this month after an abysmal May which saw him OPS .505. Ryan Demmin and the CLR bullpen shutout a pretty bad Daytona Cubs team.
Andrew Pullin had three hits and Dylan Cozens launched his eighth home run of the year, leaving him tied with a handful of guys for sixth in the league. Yacksel Rios struck out five in four innings of scoreless work. He’s been pretty solid out of Lakewood’s pen this year.
Bryan Martelo made his pro debut in the DSL. The 2013 signee ($230k), went 0-4 with a strikeout. Hugo Arrocha, who you may recall was seriously injured in a collision at 1B during spring training, is also back in the DSL after a long look at XST. And it took 17 innings for the VSL squad to take down Seattle, on a walk-off wild pitch. Three men logged seven offical ABs, two men took nine (!) and Jesus Alastre was 2-6 and was hit by a pitch twice. Only one offensive substitution was made the entire game – not showing a lot of confidence in the bench, there, skip.
Since I knew there was just no chance in hell I was getting a report up before that crack of dawn 9:35 AM game Monday morning at FirstEnergy Stadium, I figured we would include that in this week’s report.
It was a busy week for the Fightins roster-move wise, probably the busiest week of the season in that sense. It was also a tough week on the field for the team, as there was a five-game losing streak with just two wins sprinkled in.
I received a text from a friend this morning alerting me to an intrasquad game at the Carpenter Complex. The same friend picked me up and we went to the fields. We were immediately rewarded when Zach Green came out of the clubhouse in uniform spikes. It got better when Cody Asche came out in uniform, too. Jackpot! Continue reading Intrasquad Game in Clearwater; June 9, 2014
Vance Worley homered against Lehigh Valley. That’s probably a metaphor or a parable or something. Jeb Stefan sturck out five and allowed just three hits in six scoreless innings for CLR – Roman Quinn homered there, and Jim did a great write-up of the game earlier.
Pullin, Hiciano and Grullon with multi-hit games for Lakewood, but Drew Anderson left after just one 15-pitch inning. Ominous. And Jesus Alastre was 2-4 with a triple and three runs scored for the VSL squad. We’re getting closer to the New York Penn League season – Williamsport’s media day is Wednesday.
We’ve all heard the term “a heartbreaking loss”. Well, if there is such a thing as a “heartbreaking win”, the Threshers put their fans through one this afternoon. Actually, heart wrenching or gut wrenching are probably better descriptive terms
The Threshers hitters were facing a young hurler making his Florida State League debut for the Daytona Cubs. Right hander, Justin Amlung, was 4-0 with an ERA of 1.54 with Kane County in A ball. It seems that most of the games I cover, the Threshers run into guys with sub 3.00 ERAs who shut them down, or plus 4.00 ERAs who pitch their game of the season. Not today. Continue reading Threshers; June 8, 2014
There ultimately may not be a valuable, long-term big league starting pitcher among the four, but all four full-season starters pitched well on Saturday.
Severino Gonzalez – 3R, 2ER, 7H, 2BB, 5K in 6IP for Reading.
Colin Kleven – 4R, 2ER, 7H, 1BB, 8K in 7IP for Clearwater.
Jon Prosinski – 2R, 1ER, 4H, 2BB, 8K in 7IP for Lakewood.
And Brad Lincoln again pitched well for Lehigh Valley, allowing just one hit and one walk while striking out seven over six scoreless innings. He’s had success as a starter at AAA before, so I will reserve my excitement for the day when he has big league success, I think. But if he figures it out in the rotation at AAA, maybe he can still be useful in the big league bullpen this year. He had a good 2012 out of Pittsburgh’s pen, so it wouldn’t be the craziest thing to ever happen for him to recapture his optimal mechanics and form after getting reps in the rotation.
With the draft over, I thought it was a good time to make this decision. I will no longer be writing for Phuture Phillies going forward, and will be moving on to other projects. I have thought a lot about this, and I have enjoyed writing here, but in the end I think it is a good change going forward. Gregg will continue to run this site, and there will still be great content by the writers here.
I want to thank Gregg for the opportunity to write here over the past year and a half. I have enjoyed my time here. And I would like to thank everyone who has read my stuff and interacted both in the comments and on twitter, it has been awesome being a part of this community here.
I will continue to write about prospects, the location of that writing will come together at some point soon, and I am excited about the future. You can always find me on twitter @Matt_Winkelman
-Matt
This is the place to keep track of all signings, bonus information, pool spending, and media regarding all 40 2014 Draftees. I’d love your help here, finding me articles from local media and social media and the like. Please post any links you have, or if it’s a tweet, just post the text or however you like. I would ask only that you post any new information as a new comment so it appears at the bottom and makes it easier to find amongst what’s likely to be a pretty large post with possibly hundreds of comments. If you have something super urgent that you want to draw my attention to and you don’t think it can wait until I get back on and check this page, you can always tweet at me @bxe1234. Good chance I’ll see that within an hour or two most times.
Notes on when I update what will be kept in a running timeline after the jump. Continue reading 2014 Draft Tracker
Mike Adams to the DL, which means Ken Giles is coming up. Giles has been a darling of fans so far because of his minor league numbers and triple digit fastball. However, you might want hold off before anointing him a dominant closer.
What you’ll See Now:
Giles will sit with the fastball mostly 96-98 but you will see 99s and 100s. He has had enough control to get it in the zone for the most part (walks were up in AAA), but he still lacks command of the pitch. When he misses he will miss up, and major leaguers will be able to time that pitch. He pairs that with a short slider around 90 mph. It is more of a quick cutting pitch that a wipeout pitch. There is potential for it to be a plus plus pitch in the long term, but right now it lacks consistency. He might mix a splitter in at times, but it is far behind his other pitches. Continue reading What to Expect from Ken Giles
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