Rough night for Lehigh Valley – the lineup managed just five singles off of Syracuse pitching, while the pitchers, Jeremy Horst excluded, were, not to be hyperbolic, a giant pile of flaming medical waste. You’ll get ’em next time, boys.

Brock Stassi and Pete Lavin each went deep for Reading, while Aaron Altherr and Kelly Dugan notched doubles. MAG tallied his third save, with reports from Mike Drago (@mldrago) saying his FB was regularly touching 97 on the stadium gun, and he was using his change-up as an out pitch. Conjures up memories of Ryan Madson, (and no, that’s not a comp).

Nice line from Colin Kleven in a losing effort – 5R, 1ER, 4H, 1BB, 5K in 5IP, as the Threshers were shut down by Bucs stud Tyler Glasnow, whose ERA now matches his BAA, 1.77 and .177. Impressive on both counts. And in the night cap, (and yes, I said this on Twitter, but I thought it was pretty good so I’ll just plagiarize myself here), Roman Quinn was just  a Carlos Tocci away from hitting for the cycle. RT please? Oh wait…

Elsewhere, Dylan Cozens with two hits, a walk and a steal (his 17th). Willians Astudillo went deep (4). 2014 19th rounder Joey Denato stranded two Yacksel Rios runners, then pitched three more scoreless innings of his own with a total of four strikeouts. He’s tallied 20K and 6BB in 16.2IP across two levels thus far. The bottom of the WIL lineup tried to carry the club to victory, led by a bomb from Rhys Hoskins, a 3-3 from Emmanuel Marrero and two hits from Drew Stankiewicz, but to no avail Brandon Liebrandt put up a great line that included seven Ks, but Nathan Thornhill let it slip away. In the GCL, Denton Keys gave up just 1H, 2BB, 4K in 4 scoreless IP, while Jose Pujols bashed two solo home runs.

Continue reading Box Score Recap – 7/17/2014 →

Add the name Angelo Leclerc to the list of ancillary characters in the history of the Phillies. He gave up what’s sure to be one of several, maybe even one of dozens of, Carlos Tocci professional home runs. Yes, it cleared the fence. By how much, I don’t know. In the DSL, Julsan Kamara was 2-3 to pull his average above the Mendoza line. Good to see.

For WIL, Jan Hernandez was 0-4 with 3Ks. He’s really struggling, with just four hits in his last ten games. He’s struck out 13 times in that span. Mitch Gueller did not have his best stuff, the way it sounds:

He wound up allowing 4R, 7H, 3BB and 4K in 4IP. Another report from Brett Hershey, this one on Manny (nee Manaure) Martinez:

Also, my latest Crashburn Alley piece just went up. It’s on the scorching hot Brian Pointer.   Give it a whirl, if you like.

Continue reading Box Score Recap – 7/16/2014 →

A light night on the schedule, as GCL was rained out and all the other stateside leagues were on scheduled off-days or All-Star Breaks. What a comeback to the SAL for Yoel Mecias – three walks, two hits and seven strikeouts in five scoreless innings, plus he got five outs on the ground. Dylan Cozens hit two home runs, (12, 13) to make a pretty good night of it himself – he was 4-5. And I guess I’ll recognize that Mitch Walding had three doubles, giving him 10 in this last 10 games. The man’s got it going on right now. Maybe time to push him to CLR and let Zach green get back to playing third every day.

And speaking of Green – this one falls in the “hmm…really” category – Zach Green stole his seventh base, and so did Carlos Tocci. Tocci’s played in almost twice as many games, and been caught nine times. Green’s been caught once.

Hmm…really? Hmm…

Continue reading Box Score Recap – 7/15/2014 →

Can you all confirm for me that you don’t really care about Adam Loewen? Nothing against him, I just can’t get excited about a 30-year-old guy who, yesterday aside, doesn’t strike many guys out. It’s a nice story, going from big league pitcher to cup-of-coffee big league hitter, and back to minor league pitcher and winning some games. But really, I’m not feeling it.

How long can Brian Pointer stay this hot? Mercy. He was 2-4 with his ninth home run of the year. JPC was 3-3 plus a walk the day after he played in the Futures Game. Cliff Lee got hit around a bit in his last rehab start before a scheduled return to the bigs this Saturday. Jim wrote that up here. Check it out.

WIL managed just four hits, two from Deivi Grullon, and David Whitehead pitched pretty well again, though he’s still not ringing guys up – just 3k in 6IP. The three rehabbers, Galvis, Thomas and Joseph each had a hit for the GCL. Jesus Alastre stole his tenth base, and he’s finally at 50% on the year. Not bad after he started 2-9 or something like that. And Ranger Suarez continues to dominate opposing VSL lineups – 4H, 0BB, 5K in 7 scoreless. His K:BB ratio sits at 61:1 for the year. Silly.

Continue reading Box Score Recap – 7/14/2014 →

The Futures Game was today. J.P. Crawford was 1-2 with a stolen base and Maikel Franco was 0-2. Franco didn’t take any chances in the field, and Crawford handled a routine grounder and also made a strong throw to finish off a ground ball double play.

Back in the real world, Aaron Altherr was 2-4 with his seventh home run of the year. Miguel Alfredo Gonzalez with his second save in as many tries for Reading. He’s given up four hits and three walks in seven innings, and struck out 12. Not bad. Aaron Nola allowed three runs and seven hits, two of them home runs, and struck out just two. Reports on Twitter have him throwing around 2/3 of his pitches for strikes. Good to see Sam Hiciano with a hit in three straight after a couple days off. He could use a hot streak right about now.

A five inning affair in WIL, as Matt Imhof shut out Tri-City – 3H 1BB 3K in those 5IP before the rain had its way. Aaron Brown hit his second home run in as many days, and Drew Stankiewicz hit his first as a pro.

Continue reading Box Score Recap – 7/13/2014 →