Kelly Dugan with another multi-hit game. He’s got six of those in his last ten games. OPSing .835 on the year. If only he hadn’t gotten hurt again this year. Injuries are dumb and bad and we should get rid of them. A pretty good night for Severino Gonzalez – 2R on 4H 3BB and 10K in 7IP. He seems to have benefited from skipping a start and resting. We’ll see how he holds up through the rest of the year. Also, depending when he throws, maybe I can slip out to see him next week in Bowie as well. Probably not. Also for Reading, a nice night from KC Serna, just a triple short of the cycle. He remains an interesting pick-up from the Indy leagues. We’ll see if they think enough of him to bring him back and give him regular time next year again. I would think they would.

Roman Quinn’s not been on base as much lately, and so he’s not been stealing as much. He’s right around the number of PAs he had in each of his last two years, and his steal total is just a couple shy of those other years (30, 32, 26, all at similarly good rates, though this year is the lowest). Still, with as well as he was doing the last month, I’m very satisfied about his return from injury. Brian Pointer drew three walks – half way through this month and he’s OPSing .926. He remains intriguing.

Aaron Brown was 2-4 with a double in his Low-A debut, and Andrew Pullin matched that line. Malquin Canelo hit his first home run of the year. Nice start from Ricardo Pinto – he’s been pretty good in his stateside debut, with a pretty good K Rate and a reasonable BB rate. The Phillies did sign another UDFA, Jason Zgardowski from Angelo State. Here’s the article from his school announcing the signing. He threw a scoreless inning for GCL in his debut. Sounds like he found some velo after the college season (up to 94-95) and pitched well in summer league.

Continue reading Box Score Recap – 8/14/2014 →

Maikel Franco was 2-5 with his 11th home run – he’s cooled off a little bit in July, OPSing just .723 even aided by the spike from last night. If he finishes in that neighborhood for the month, he’ll likely not quite make it to .700 for the year, but after the two horrific months he had earlier, even an average August after that monster of a July would be a good sign in my book. Aaron Nola put up easily his worst start since his debut – 3R on 6 H 3HR 1BB 2K in 4IP. Kelly Dugan was 4-8 with a triple and Aaron Altherr was 3-6 with a home run (13) plus a walk and his tenth steal. Altherr’s got four homers in his last six games, and Dugan’s OPSing 1.038 in August. Dugan especially should be an Arizona Fall League candidate. Colt Murray got roughed up in his inning – he gave up two inherited runs and four of his own – they were his first earned runs since July 4, so credit where it’s due, that was a heck of a streak – around 17 IP.

Roman Quinn hit his fifth home run of the year, and Brian Pointer was 2-5. JPC did not play. Hopefully he’s back in action tonight, as Jim Peyton doesn’t indicate it was more than a night off in his game report, (which includes GCL notes as well – so don’t miss it). For Lakewood, Pullin, Astudillo (back in left field again) and Walding all had multi-hit games. Walding hit his sixth home run. Cozens and Knapp were also both on base twice with a single and a walk a piece. Jia Tromp had three hits as WIL was swept in their double header. Austin Davis allowed three hits and struck out three in 2.1 scoreless IP for GCL. He’s got 22:6 K:BB in 23.1 IP. Pretty good. Would be better if he were doing it against reasonable competition for a college junior, but I’m not going to complain too much about nice numbers. We’ll see where they place him in the spring. LKW would be the easy guess, but CLR would not be out of the question if he performs well in camp.

Continue reading Box Score Recap – 8/13/2014 →

Freddy Galvis went deep for Lehigh Valley. He’s stroking it right now, with three homers and five doubles and an OPS of 1.102 over the last ten days. Wish they had regular playing time for him in the bigs right now. Willians Astudillo played both games of Lakewood’s double header in left field, while Larry Greene didn’t see the field at all. He hasn’t played since Saturday. Haven’t heard about him nursing an injury, but perhaps he is.

Reading was rained out, which means Aaron Nola’s start was delayed until tonight, which means I’ll get a look at him next week in Bowie. Solid. Too bad it likely won’t be against anyone good, unless the O’s decide to jump Dylan Bundy up to AA for his next start and it happens to line up. That could happen. Bundy’s in line to start tonight for Frederick, (he was supposed to go last night but they also had rain), and he was good last time, so if they’re happy with his progress and want to see him at AA next, we may get a real interesting match-up in Bowie. I’ll cross my fingers.

On another note, MiLB player pages have been updated, and while they look great and modern, they have gotten rid of the unique to MiLB.com full “Last Ten” stat pack, truncating it to exclude doubles and triples, CS, OBP, SLG and OPS. Anyone who agrees with me that this is dumb should send an email to, I guess, webmaster@milb.com. I suggested they add Last Ten as a function of the Game Log menu and told them they’re going to lose traffic from people who can get the same statistical info and more at places like FanGraphs or MLBFarm.com (which FYI – does have a game log and a Last Ten Days (not games) subtotal, which includes BABIP and a couple other useful things, and spray charts and stuff, but the page is very plain looking and less user friendly).

Continue reading Box Score Recap – 8/12/2014 →

Jesse Biddle was back on the hill for CLR – he walked five in five innings, though he allowed just three hits and one run and struck out four. Not nearly as hopeful as last time with those five walks. We’ll see what they do with him now. REA has a DH Saturday, so if they wanted to, they could push him into that spot and hopefully save the bullpen some innings. Looks like a good chance of rain tonight in Harrisburg , so they very well might need the extra bullets Saturday. Whether they rush Biddle for that…doubt it. But if they like what they saw last night, then why not? We shall see. Also, if it rains out tonight in Harrisburg, I will be quite happy. Looks like my only chance to see Nola in DC next week. I know you’re all very concerned with my plight.

Nice job from the LV bullpen – Manship, Martin and Garcia threw a shutout, striking out nine. Wonder if they’re going to stretch out Manship. Kinda seems like a necessity, even with O’Sullivan coming back. Maybe they’ll rob AA of Adam Loewen instead. After a good outing turned bad in his last inning last time out, Brandon Leibrandt dominated Lowell on Monday night, striking out ten, allowing just two hits, one of them a home run, two walks and one earned run in seven innings. His second straight double-digit K performance. You’d have to think there’s a spot for him in CLR next spring if he earns it. Whether they’d move him up to LKW for a couple weeks right now remains to be seen. I kinda doubt it, but just kinda.

GCL has been on a tear lately, winning nine straight and now sitting a half game out of first place in the division behind Yankees1. Only the division winner makes the playoffs. Jose Pujols, Gus Martinez and Luis Encarnacion had three hits a piece from the bottom half of the lineup. And for those of you following him, Julsan Kamara hasn’t played in the last ten days in the DSL, but he is not currently on the DL. The rosters in DSL have a large limit of 35, so stashing someone who’s hurt up is not necessarily an issue if there’s no one worth putting in his spot. Continue reading Box Score Recap – 8/11/2014 →