Minor Lines, April 15, 2015

It was getaway day in the bus leagues yesterday, which often means ungodly early start times that the players universally loathe. Flying Squirrels play by play man Jon Laaser had an armload of puns to describe the situation: "Squirrels hit the snooze button," "Squirrels slept through the alarm," "Squirrels failed to answer the bell" which was a twofer, since Altoona 1b Josh Bell knocked in all three runs. There was TOOTBLANNING. There was nincompoopery. Suffice it to say, don't anticipate a lot of highlights from those games. Let's watch Jarrett Parker hit a wind aided HR instead.

HIGHLIGHTS: Ryan Lollis went 4 for 4 with a HR and SB. Mike Broadway struck out 3 in 2 perfect innings.

Sacramento defeated Las Vegas, 4-3

	Name	AB	R	H	RBI	2B	3B	HR	BB	SO	Other
SS	Ehire Adrianza	4	0	2	0	0	0	0	0	1
C	Andrew Susac	3	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	1	HBP, PB
1b	John Bowker	4	1	2	0	0	0	0	0	0
RF	Jarrett Parker	3	1	1	2	0	0	1	1	1

Name	IP	H	R	ER	BB	K	HR	HB	WP	ERA
Braulio Lara	4.2	9	2	2	1	8	0	0	0	3.27
Steven Okert	1.1	2	1	1	0	3	0	0	0	2.08
Mike Broadway	2.0	0	0	0	0	3	0	0	0	0.00
Hunter Strickland, S, 2	1.0	0	0	0	1	1	0	0	0	0.00

Jarrett Parker broke a scoreless tie with his 3rd HR of the season, and the RiverCats later scratched together a winning two run rally fueled by a HBP and 2 walks.

Braulio Lara's lopsided line with lots of Ks and lots of Hits was in some ways an example of how box scores can lie in minor league settings.  The 51s three best hitters, Dilson Herrera, Matt Reynolds, and Kevin Pawlecki were a combined 6 for 7 off Lara with 2 XBH, while he racked up 4 Ks vs the 8 and 9 (pitcher) spots in the order. Following Lara, Okert, Broadway and Strickland then came in and announced their presence with authority, throwing 4.1 two-hit innings with 7K and 1BB. Broadway's stuff received some rave reviews from groug and kdl and with good reason. He's always been a high octane arm, and after going through some injury time in his career, that stuff is definitely back on display.

Richmond lost to Altoona (Pirates), 3-0, splitting their two game series

	Name	AB	R	H	RBI	2B	3B	HR	BB	SO	SB	CS	Other
LF	Daniel Carbonell	4	0	2	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	0
	Richmond Totals	28	0	6	0	0	0	0	0	3	0	1	2 GIDP

Name	IP	H	R	ER	BB	K	HR	HB	WP	ERA
Chris Stratton	6.0	2	2	2	3	5	0	0	0	3.27
Joan Gregorio	1.1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.00
Josh Osich	1.0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.00

The Squirrels managed to send just one batter more than the minimum to the plate in a somnambulant offensive performance.  They did have 6 hits but managed to erase most of that meagre output with double plays and outs on the base paths.  I'm feeling the strong need to use the word "stupefying" in this graph. Daniel Carbonell was the only Squirrel with two hits, though he also had two of the team's three Ks and ran into an out trying to stretch a double.  He did however, also make one fantastic play in the OF and showed his speed defensively on a couple of other plays. All three Curve runs were knocked in by Josh Bell, BA's #64 prospect in this year's 100.

On the pitching side, Chris Stratton had what is by now a very familiar line score, mixing a decent amount of Ks with an equal amount of baserunners. He was mostly effective throughout, with the only real damage against him coming on Bell's booming 2 run 2b. Gregorio pitched a very effective 1.1 IP, dispatching 4 outs on only 14 pitches (9 strikes). If you look down a bit in the link in this tweet, there some footage of Gregorio from the Bowie series:

Footage of @SFGiants top prospect Joan Gregorio pitching for the @GoSquirrels for all your @SFGiantsFans out there: http://t.co/ktqe78DOMH

— Josh Mathews (@SquirrelsRVA) April 12, 2015

San Jose lost at Visalia (Diamondbacks), 15-5 ending a 3 game sweep for the Rawhide

Name	AB	R	H	RBI	2B	3B	HR	BB	SO	SB	CS	Other
Christian Arroyo	4	1	1	1	0	0	1	0	1	0	0	2E
Ryder Jones	4	0	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2
Ryan Lollis	4	1	4	2	0	0	1	0	0	1	0

Name	IP	H	R	ER	BB	K	HR	HB	WP	ERA
Tyler Beede	4.1	6	5	4	2	3	1	0	1	3.86
Christian Jones	1.1	4	6	3	1	4	0	0	0	8.31

Giants played a tremendously sloppy series against Visalia.  They made 11 errors over the three games. Ryder Jones erased himself twice on CS last night, which somewhat undermined the fact that he and Lollis were the only players to reach base twice. They gave up extra bases by airmailing cutoff men. And in general, they gave their best impression of the big league club, only with more hits. In the middle of the 7th inning of this dismal affair, Christian Arroyo was taken out of the game under somewhat puzzling circumstances. Following a play on which he took a relay throw from the OF and held on to it, the manager leaped out of the dugout and removed him from the game. There was no apparent injury, and though his defense had been ragged throughout the game (as had his teammates) play by play man Joe Ritzo didn't seem to think there was any play for him to make on that particular play. So I guess we'll wait and see what we hear on this one.

Tyler Beede picked up right where he left off in his debut, retiring the first 6 batters. Even after surrendering his first hit to lead off the third, he got a ground ball double play and was sitting pretty with 8 outs in 8 batters.  From there, well... things happened. Much was not his fault (as noted above), some was.  On the bright side he picked up 7 more ground ball outs as his two seam sinker is definitely showing effect. And he showed the ability to reach back for extra and blow balls by batters. He did lose the strike zone at one point when the 3rd inning began to get away from him and came close to a disaster inning but got out of it when Kevin Cron's smash was fielded on a nice pick up by Ryder Jones. Beede then came back with what should have been a very clean and effective 4th if the defense had helped at all. In the end he threw 75 pitches over 4.1 and was touched up for five runs including his first pro HR. Christian Jones saved Beede's line somewhat by coming in and striking out two to leave two runners stranded. But in the following inning Jones and everybody else's line got smashed to hell.

The Rawhide were in such a celebratory mood following the sweep that the manager took to the PA to make this announcement:

...and JR House announced over the PA that Glaesmann's been promoted to AA Mobile.

— Donny Baarns (@DonnyBaarns) April 16, 2015

Parenthetically, RF Todd Glaesman had wreaked havoc during the series hitting for a cycle on Tuesday night and going 3 for 6 with 2 doubles and a HR on Wednesday with an OF assist thrown in somewhere for good measure. Sheesh. Glad we wont have to see him anymore.

In happier SJ news, the team announced that Bryan Stow will throw out the first pitch for their Home Opener tomorrow which promises to be a special and emotional moment.

And finally, get to know San Jose starter DJ Snelten, by listening to his pre-game interview with Joe Ritzo. Snelten, a soon to be 23 yr old LHP, was the 9th rd pick in the 2013 draft.

Augusta lost at Charleston (Yankees), 8-0, losing their 3 game series 1-2

	Name	AB	R	H	RBI	2B	3B	HR	BB	SO	SB	CS
LF	Andrew Cain	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	1	0	0
	Augusta totals	31	0	4	0	0	0	0	3	11	1	0

Name	IP	H	R	ER	BB	K	HR	HB	WP	ERA
Matt Gage	5.1	7	5	5	0	3	1	0	0	4.22
Carlos Diaz	0.2	4	3	3	1	1	0	1	0	6.75

As with Richmond, the Augusta hitters seemed totally unprepared to deal with the early start time. Andrew Cain was the lone batter to reach base twice, with his two walks. The Jackets racked up Ks vs. the 27th and 38th round picks of the Yankees 2011 draft. This one was a pretty ugly effort unfortunately, coming at the end of what has been a very successful opening road trip on the offense's side of things.

The wheels came off for the Greenjacket pitching staff in the 6th inning when a sleepy 1-0 game was broken up by the following sequence:

Double, single, single, HR, Pitching change, single, HBP, double, single, line out, walk, single.

Runs were scored. Anyway, they were all probably pretty excited about getting home and meeting the Mayor!

Augusta's Mayor @hardiedavis joins us today for opening night countdown! One day left until 4.16.15! #CatchTheBuzz https://t.co/2RqH0MY4kH

— Augusta GreenJackets (@GreenJackets) April 15, 2015

Today's listed starters are Ty Blach, Chase Johnson, and in more good news, Michael Santos in Augusta. Richmond has an off day as they head off for their first road trip of the season.

As always, the video is courtesy of MiLBTV which I recommend anyone who likes to follow minor league ball to invest in. And even if you don't want to pay for the subscription rate, the MiLB First Pitch App is I believe free and includes a ton of really cool stuff that you all should enjoy. You can set your favorite teams, get notices of game starts, score changes, or whatever you'd like. And for those of you who have enjoyed the video posts here, at the simple touch of a link you get a all the videos MiLB has cut for each team right on one page. It's pretty cool.

All the Johneshwy you could want