SF Giants Minor Lines, 5/30/17

Congrats to Orlando Calixte, for his San Francisco debut and his first two major league hits and RBI! One more prospect up from the farm system and helping the team! On the other hand, yet another player brought up to help the outfield, which only needs to be described as “another player” to understand what’s happening.

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Sacramento was defeated by Reno (Diamondbacks), 10-5

Sacramento jumped out to a first inning 4-run lead, and it was gone by just a few outs later.

Sacramento’s first-inning-rally started with an Austin Slater double. Ryder Jones walked, and Jae-Gyun Hwang was hit by a pitch to load the bases. That set things up for Chris Shaw to clear the bases with a double, and a Tim Federowicz double scored Shaw to put the ‘Cats up 4-0.

From there, the pitching and defense took over, and not in a good way. Starter Michael Roth gave up back-to-back singles, and a Juan Ciriaco error loaded the bases. That let the Aces have their own bases-clearing double, making the score 4-3. Within only three innings, the score was 7-5. For Roth, he went 5 innings, giving up a season-high-tying 10 hits. With only four earned runs on his record, his ERA didn’t get shattered, but it did break a string of solid starts for him.

In the bullpen, Dusten Knight gave up a run, and continued a string of games where he has been allowing hits. He’s allowed at least one in each of the last five games, but at least he stopped giving up walks. He’s also gotten at least one strikeout in each game he’s pitched. Between San Jose and Sacramento, his got 38 strikeouts and 9 walks in 32.1 innings. Meanwhile Steven Okert continued to do well in Sacramento. He’s only managed to get four appearances in for the ‘Cats around his time in San Francisco.

Offensivly, it never got much better than that first inning. The Reno-masher, Austin Slater, was limited to just that one double. That was nearly the same with Chris Shaw, though he did add a sacrifice fly to give him 4 of the team’s 5 RBI. Ryder Jones got on base three times, with a double, single and walk. Jones has a nice 6-game streak going with his hitting, going 8-for-24 with four walks and 7 strikeouts. He has raised his OBP from .342 to .358. Meanwhile, catcher Tim Federowicz is 5-for-9 over his last two games, raising his batting average to .333.

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Richmond was defeated by Hartford (Rockies), 12-2

Just an ugly, ugly game for Sam Coonrod, who seemed to get a wild hair up his wherever and just looked bad.

Coonrod had a season-worst 5 walks (1 intentional) in 3 innings, his shortest non-weather afflicted game. He walked one batter in each of the first two innings, but the third was where things fell apart. He walked the first two batters of the inning, and then threw the ball away on a sacrifice bunt attempt. He gave up a single and a double to the next two hitters, and four runs were in the board before there was an out. Though he got out of the inning by allowing just one more run (and that intentional walk), that would be all for him. He did get his final out by way of a pickoff, though.

The bullpen wasnt much better, as Luis Pino gave up 3 runs in the 4th, and the Squirrels were down 8-0. So, we got two positives. One, Reyes Moronta looked good, striking out the side in his inning. Two, we had position players pitching! Ryan Lollis walked two, but didn't allow a hit. Then Rando Moreno came in, and, well, he didn't do well.

There wasn't much to talk about for the offense. The Squirrels only got on the board in the 9th inning, on a Dylan Davis RBI single with the bases loaded. The second came in on an Ali Castillo double play. Davis got the three hits to get right on the Mendoza line, though. At least Gomez extended his hitting streak to 13 games, though!

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San Jose had a scheduled day off

San Jose sit at 22-30, a solid last place in the four-team North Division, 8 games back. They’re 11 games away from elimination. They get to stay at home, with two southern division visitors coming to finish off May and start June, against Lake Elsinore and Lancaster, respectively last place and first place in the South Division, a difference of four games.

San Jose certainly has some of the most interesting offensive prospects in the system right now, particularly the outfield. Heath Quinn has only played 14 games, but his .922 OPS is the best among team regulars. Shortstop Ryan Howard has the team’s best batting average .315. Meanwhile, Conner Menez is the team’s leading starter, with a 3.24 ERA.

But what do these guys do on their off-day from baseball? Well, we have photographic evidence of videographic evidence of what some of them were doing.

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Augusta was defeated by Columbia (Mets), 8-2

Sometimes, it’s the bullpen that costs the team, but sometimes, it’s the starting pitching.

Today, it’s Stephen Woods we’ll be talking about. Woods had his shortest start of the season, by far. He previous shortest was 4.1 innings. However, he’d never quite gotten hit like this. He gave up a run in the first inning. But in the second, it was a walk, back-to-back doubles, a wild pitch, a single, and a passed ball before he even got an out, there were 3 more runs on the board. That’s just the kind of game it was. For instance, after Woods was replaced, this happened:

Yeah...someone didn’t catch the throw back from the catcher after a pitch...

Between Woods and Nolan Riggs (who, at 24, is not yet too old for this…stuff), the GreenJackets were down 8-0 after only 3 innings. For Woods, it was his third rough start in a row, and without the strikeouts to be optimistic amount. He’s given up 15 runs in his last three starts, though in one, four of five runs were unearned. That said, he’d struck out 17 in the first two of those games, but today, it was just 2. Woods now has 45 strikeouts against 24 walks in 40.2 IP. However, his ERA jumped up from 2.51 to 4.20 in these three games.

Offensively, three GreenJackets each notched two hits, and Ashford Fulmer notched a walk. Most notably, Michael Bernal got two of those hits, including a triple. Since being sent down from San Jose, Bernal is 5-for-14 with 2 doubles and a triple. Heyward also collected a pair of hits, including his fifth double of the year. Heyward still has more home runs (6) than doubles on the season.

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Today’s Scheduled Starters

Sacramento: TBD vs. Harrison Musgrave

Richmond: Cory Taylor vs. Sam Howard

San Jose: Matt Solter vs. TBD

Augusta: Melvin Adon vs. Merandy Gonzalez

That TBD up there is Chris Stratton’s spot in the rotation, but he got blasted with 8 earned runs in 5 innings in his last start. That said, the last Sacramento TBD was Dan Slania’s spot during his struggles, but he came through with that spot. Meanwhile, Hartford is lying to us, because Sam Howard was placed on their 7-Day DL on Saturday.