SF Giants Minor Lines 4/12

Guess who leads all of AA* in HRs? RICKY OROPESA DOES! That's who!

Get that man to AAA. Stat!

*Stupid Travis Demeritte and his stupid High Desert screwing up my "leads all the minors in HR" lede.

HIGHLIGHTS: Ty Blach pitched 6 one-run innings with 7 Ks. Austin Slater reached base 4x including double, HR. Dillon Dobson reached base 5x with double and 2 HRs over course of suspended DH.

Sacramento won at La Vegas 51s (Mets), 5-4

Things you might not have known about Ty Blach: 1) he won the Gold Glove last year as the best fielding pitcher in the minor leagues! Ty's an excellent overall athlete, as was on display in last night's game in which he went 6 strong one-run innings, picked up two hits, and picked a runner off 1st. 2) in 27 starts last year, Blach had just one game with more strikeouts than innings pitched. And that game, June 27, 6 Ks in 5 IP, came in this very same park against these (more or less) same Las Vegas 51s. Kismet!

Blach was backed by a strong overall offensive effort as the RiverCats banged out 12 hits and added 5 walks. Mac Williamson picked up his first single of the year, and he liked it so much he did it twice more. Blach's battery mate, Miguel Olivo put Sacramento out front to stay with a solo HR in the 6th, among his 3 times reaching base.

The game was a cozy 5-1 victory in the making until Michael Broadway suffered a bit of a meltdown in a 3 run 9th inning.  To illustrate just how unusual this was: Broadway pitched in 40 games in Sacramento last year and gave up a TOTAL of 5 earned runs. From May 19, to the end of the AAA season, he gave up just 2 runs in 2015.

Derek Law is back to being a strike throwing so and so. So far on the year he's thrown 45 pitches and 30 strikes. Somewhat amazingly, he has allowed a walk.

* * *

Richmond won at the Reading Fighting Phils, 7-5

Reading's starting pitcher last night, Alec Asher, made 7 starts last year in MLB for the Phillies. Now I don't want to oversell him or anything. Dude had a 10 ERA. Still this was a major league pitcher Richmond went up against last night. And up against him, the middle of the order did some mashing. The 2-3-4 hitters Arroyo, Slater, and Oropesa were on base 8 times with 6 hits including 2 doubles and 2 HRs. The trio accounted for nearly all of the scoring last night with 5 runs scored and 6 RBIs amongst them. Seriously. Check out the expression on Ricky Oropesa's face in that clip above when he lays into the pitch. The disdainful bat drop. The "yeah, I did that" smirk. That's the face of a man thinking: "I am too good for this league."

The big hitter of the night was once again Austin Slater, who reached base in 4 of his 5 PAs, and had two XBH. In his first AB, he crushed a 2b to the wall in RF and later in the game he once again went the opposite way for his 2nd HR of the year.

I love the thumbnail for this clip, btw. Great reaction shot from the Pitcher. Just need him to mouth the word "Wow" to complete it. Instead he's giving a sort of: "hrrrrrm?"

Kyle Crick's to the rotation was successful....ly confusing? He cut down on the walks, although the strikeouts went missing with them. He induced a lot of groundball outs but he also gave up the more ER than any start last year. His greatest trouble came with power hitting Dylan Cozens (Phillies #16 prospect), who touched him up for a HR and a deep double. The best thing about the outing though, was that Crick did a good job of mixing in his secondary offerings, even from the stretch, which is a very good sign for his future. There have been some stretches for Crick in AA were it looks like he's forgotten he has another pitch. His threw both his breaking ball and changeup with some regularity in last night's start, which is probably good enough success for tonight.

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned here or not, but Jake Smith began the season on the DL. Not entirely sure what's going on with Jake but that's certainly a disappointment. With Gardeck out for the year, that reduces the heart of the ferocious 2015 SJ bullpen core to just Ray Black.

Black got his first save of the year last night, striking out the side around a couple of hits. He threw 15 of 21 pitches for strikes, which is good to see, though two of the balls he did throw went all the way to the backstop. The Reading announcer had him at 97-98 last night in the chilly spring air, so he's not entirely cranked up yet. It'll be interesting to see when the Giants try him on back to back nights. I do know that Director of Player Development Shane Turner was on hand to watch last night's game (incredibly annoying, the Reading TV crew did an in-house interview with Turner but the MiLBtv feed had the radio broadcast audio feed instead, so we got to watch Turner talking Giants development, but not actually hear him). Anyway, let's watch Black finish last night's game off with some country hardball.

* * *

San Jose defeated the Visalia Rawhide (D'backs), 8-5

Johneshwy Fargas is now on pace to hit 140 triples! That should be a record somewhere.

Fargas filled up the stat sheet like nobody's business with his 1st SB of the year, his 1st CS (also a pickoff), his 2nd error, and his 2nd OF assist.  That's an active night!

San Jose got production up and down its lineup, with 12 hits and 3 walks leading to their 8 runs, but the two big bats in the middle of the order did much of the damage, with Chris Shaw and Aramis Garcia accounting for half the team's hits. For Shaw, it broke him off the .000 schneid on the year.  He started the night off right by cracking a run scoring double in his first AB.

On the hill, Jordan Johnson made his eagerly anticipated debut. Johnson was solid, if not spectacular, K'ing 5 in 5 innings of work against 0 walks, while allowing 3 runs on 5 hits including a HR.

San Jose finishes off the series with an afternoon game today.

* * *

Augusta lost at the Lexington Legends (Royals), 9-8
in the completion of Monday's suspended game

Augusta lost at Lexington Legends, 4-3 in Gm. 2 (7 inn)

So. Remember that whole 7-0 in the 2nd inning suspended game the other night? Yeah, funny thing, that. Bullpen go kaboom! The greatest of the damage was done by Matthew Pope and Heath Slatton, though Connor Kaden needed an excellent play by Tyler Brown to get out of his final inning as well. Pope, the 13th round pick last year out of a Tennesee JC, could hardly throw strikes and couldn't much keep them from getting hi thard when he did throw them. Slatton, another Tennessean, selected last year out of Middle Tennessee St with the 18th round pick completed the debacle. Let us never speak of this again.

Mac Marshall's reputation coming into the draft last year was of a fairly polished young lefty. Indeed, Baseball America's draft report for him last year included this tidbit: "He has an excellent feel for pitching and fills up the strikezone with his whole arsenal." Yet, Marshall showed some worrisome control issues in his very short stint in the NWL last summer with 10 walks in 13 IP, and his 2016 full season debut was more of the same.  Not only did he issue 5 walks last night, he was behind hitters all night long and struggled to throw half his pitches for strikes.  Something to keep an eye on.

Something else to keep an eye on is Dillon Dobson at the plate. The powerful left-hander doubled and HRd twice over the course of the DH (not all on the same day though) and has taken an early lead in HRs for the Sally. Listen to the crack of this thing.

And lest you think that Dobson's just some brain-dead, dinger-loving slugger, check him out flashing the D as well! Sweet catch and throw!

Augusta is actually back at it this morning, with an "education day" in Lexington, and right on schedule Dobson has cracked another 1st inning double (Dobson's done a lot of his damage in 1st innings thus far).

* * *

So there you have it. On a night when Jeff Samardzija, Kyle Crick, Jordan Johnson, and Mac Marshall were scheduled to start, Ty Blach led the organization in Ks. Who saw that one coming? As Grant likes to say: this sport sure can drink.

Pitcher David Graybill, whom the #sfgiants took in the ninth round last year, got popped for drug of abuse. 50 games.

— Henry Schulman (@hankschulman) April 12, 2016

Early starts today for both Augusta and San Jose, and all four games are on MiLBtv. All at different times. You could spend the whole day watching the system if you wanted. The Richmond and Augusta games both feature terrific pitching matchups.

Matchups:

Sacramento: Clayton Blackburn vs. Stolmy Pimental
Richmond: Tyler Beede vs. Ben Lively
SJ: Mark Reyes vs TBD
Augusta: Michael Santos vs. Foster Griffin