SF Giants Minor Lines 6/13/17: Ouch

It wasn’t a great day for some of the system’s best pitching prospects, but at least one guy is headed in the right direction:

Congratulations to Andrew! And condolences to Dan Slania, who is a corresponding move was demoted back down to Richmond.

And don’t look now, but it’s almost time for short season ball:

Hi Kevin Rivera! Hello Manuel Geraldo and Nick Deeg. Hiya Ryan Kirby.

HIGHLIGHTS: Aramis Garcia and Jonah Arenado each had three hits and a double; Cristian Paulino had three hits, including a HR.

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Sacramento lost at Las Vegas 51s (Mets), 13-2

Ah, it’s time for one of our favorite bits here at Minor Lines: how can you tell when your team has had a bad day?

Here’s a good one: more errors (5) than hits (4).

And another: more HRs allowed (5) than hits.

Without any doubt, Las Vegas is a tough place to pitch. But 5 HRs in a start? You just have to better than that Tyler. Beede was touched up for three two-run HRs from former big leaguers Desmond Jennings and Kevin Pawlecki and Mets #1 prospect Ahmed Rosario, and two more solo jobs from Matt Reynolds and Pawlecki again in what can only be described as a “Bombs Away” outing.

Beede’s not the first pitcher to find out that balls fly further in the PCL. That’s now 12 HRs allowed in 74 IP, more than doubling his career HR rate. His HR/FB rate (12.3% before yesterday) has taken a huge jump as well. We can assume there’s some PCL-itis at work here, but it’s also worth noting that these are dangerous days in the major leagues for fly ball pitchers who are prone to the HR ball. And at the same time, Beede’s K/BB peripherals have taken a fairly significant back step from 2016 as he now has just 55 Ks to 28 BBs in 74 IP. Add it all up and FIP says his PCL ERA (4.86) is a pretty accurate reflection of how he’s done so far this year.

He’s still a super nice guy, though!

As for the rest of the team’s effort? My mother would have counceled me to say nothing at all in this circumstance, but duty bounds me to make a few notes. They had four hits: three singles and a Justin Ruggiano HR (Justin Ruggiano re-signed with the org after declaring FA btw). They had errors from Jae-Gyun Hwang at 1b, Mac Williamson, and a big three-error game from Ryder Jones playing the hot corner. Ouch. That gives Ryder six for the year.

As he did in making the move to AA, Chris Shaw is going through a slow adjustment to promotion to AAA. He’s currently 2 for his last 19 with 7 Ks over that period. His OPS in the PCL has dropped down to .633 in ~80 PA.

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Richmond lost at New Hampshire Fisher Cats (Blue Jays), 5-0

Tough day #2 comes from Sam Coonrod, who had the team in a 5-0 hole before the 3rd inning was through. Coonrod’s hit a huge bump in the road, with his EL ERA up over 5.00 now as he’s allowed 24 Runs in his past 6 starts, covering just 29.2 IP. His peripherals, which were strong at the beginning of the year have taken a decided down turn as well with this game’s 2 K /5 BB stinker unfortunately not that out of line with his past few turns. In his last five starts he’s had 18 Ks and 16 BBs in 25.1 IP. For a guy repeating a level, this is decidedly not the kind of trends you’d like to see.

If there’s anything good to say about Coonrod’s performance, in which he really struggled for command throughout, I suppose it’s that, like Beede, he managed to power through and save the bullpen some innings. Even after nearly hitting the 70 pitch mark in the 3rd inning, he someone got through 6 when it was all said and done. But this was a rough day.

In the end, his line would have looked almost reasonable were it not for today’s edition of: “Baseball’s a game of inches”:

As for the bats? As with Sacramento, they weren’t much in evidence. Richmond managed just three hits, including MIguel Gomez’ 15th double of the year in going down meekly to the shutout. Gomez is now 5th in the EL in average and 16th in OPS (.829). He did commit his 10th error of the season though.

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San Jose won at Modesto Nuts (Mariners), 8-3

Hey, check this out! What do you call these things again? I think I’ve heard of them before. Oh yes, it’s a WIN!

San Jose is playing spoiler as back to back victories against the Nuts have knocked Modesto into a tie for 1st place in the Northern division with just five games left in the first half. The victory gave San Jose its first three-game win streak since the season’s opening week. For whatever reason, they seem to play much better on the road this year than at home. They’re now 10-4 in their last 14 road games.

As has been the case lately, it was the offense leading the charge. For the third time in the last week, they collected 15 hits, including three each from Arenado and Aramis Garcia. It was a pleasant break through night for Garcia, who’s been scuffling lately. Since returning from his concussion in early May, he’s hit just .250/.293/.426 after a very hot April. Scary stuff, concussions.

Ronnie Jebavy and Ryan Howard both kept up their hot hitting ways at the top of the order as well, combining for four hits. Howard, the league leader in hits, will be one of five Giants representing San Jose at the Cal League All star game next Tuesday in Visalia.

Traditionally, the Cal league has fielded a single team to go up against the A+ Carolina League All Stars. However, the move of two Cal League teams to Carolina at the end of last year also put an end to this tradition, so now the Cal League is playing a traditional intra-league All Star game. So instead of spreading its roster amongst 10 teams, the Giants are now one of just four teams making up the Northern Division All Star team. Thus, we’re going to see an awful lot of SJ All Stars from now on. Ryan Halstead, of course, won’t be attending the game as he’s now in AA Richmond.

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Augusta lost at Rome Braves, 17-3

Ok, I know this looks pretty bad, but I’m actually going to give Adon something of a mulligan here, because not only did he get BABIPd pretty hard, but the big guy was out there on an island yesterday. It’s hard to see who was battling him more, the Rome hitters or his own fielders. I’m not going to give the full long play version here, but here’s just the first three Rome hitters of the game:

Awful. Just awful. And it didn’t get any better after that either. Kelvin Beltre had a particularly rough inning. He made the third error of the inning on a candy hop right to him and then he allowed two infield hits on balls that could have been called errors. He simply fell down fielding the first one and wasn’t able to get to his feet in time to the get the runner and on the second he went into a dive and then got up and threw the ball away. In between all that madness there was a run scoring when Adam Sonabend couldn’t catch up to Adon’s velocity (very improperly ruled a WP IMO). It was bad. It was awful. Adon quite literally served up four very easy outs in the first inning before an out was ever actually recorded.

And then down 5-0, he righted the ship for a few innings of quality work. Here, let’s watch Adon doing good Adon things:

In the 5th, things got out of hand, but again, he didn’t pitch all that bad. Two ground balls found holes, a perfect bunt found the right part of the infield. And there was another run scoring PB thrown into the mix. Adon’s night ended on a HB that loaded the bases and reliever Jeff Burke would cash in all three of them by serving up a bases loaded double.

It was a rough night, but it was as much a night of rough circumstances as it was rough pitching for Melvin.

The only guy really out there working last night was Augusta vet Cristian Paulino, who had three hits and a walk, knocked in two of the team’s three runs, and even made a fine defensive play amongst all the craziness. Here’s to you Cristian!

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Because the major league draft was pushed back a week, I wasn’t prepared for Salem-Keizer to get their season going. And then they went and played their traditional exhibition game a day early to increase my befuddlement! Anyway, for the first time in 2017 the Volcanoes did take the field last night, and here’s what they look like to open the year:

The Byron Murray to 3b experiment is interesting. Manuel Geraldo is the only SS on the roster. Veteran flame thrower Vic Black is here too.

Juan Rodriguez you may recall was probably the best and most consistent offensive performer on the DSL championship team a couple of years ago. He missed last year with a PED suspension.

The Volcanoes start their year tomorrow night, at home as usual, vs. Tri-City.

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DSL Giants lost to DSL Orioles, 13-12

Wow. Quite an outburst in the DR yesterday. The Giants had scored 13 runs in their previous 4 games combined before exploding for 12 runs on 16 hits yesterday. They got a huge game out of 17 year old Venezuelan Andrew Caraballo, who had 5 hits, 4 RBIs, and a SB. Prior to the outburst, Caraballo was 0 for 6 on the young season. Have we met Andrew yet? No? To the eminent authority Ben Badler then:

Andrew Caraballo, a Venezuelan shortstop signed for $170,000, has an aggressive, gamer mentality with good all-around instincts for the game. Still 16, Caraballo is an offensive-oriented player with quick hands to buggy-whip the barrel through the hitting zone to produce hard line drives. At 6 feet, 175 pounds, Caraballo is a 55 runner with an average arm, with some scouts believing his future is at second base.

Luis Alvarado had a big game as well, collecting a double and a triple. Samuel Jorge, the young 3b that the Giants are quite excited about, reached base in all three of his PA, including a double. But Ghordy Santos had himself a rough game, going 0 for 5 with 2 Ks and making 3 errors (6 for the year).

Man was this a day of errors!

One guy who we’re still waiting to see much of at all is Ismael Alcantara, the 16 year old power hitter who received one of their maximum $300,000 bonuses last year.

On the mound, well.... everyone had a bad day to complete a theme that ran throughout the org. Kings of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days were Jerson Severin and Willian Suarez who combined to allow 7 ER in consecutive 0.1 IP appearances over the 6th and 7th innings. Better luck next time, guys!

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Today’s Scheduled Starters:
Sacramento: Chris Stratton vs. RIcky Knapp
Richmond: Cory Taylor vs. Conner Greene
San Jose: Matt Krook vs. Pablo Lopez
Augusta: Garrett Williams vs. Ian Anderson
DSL: Francis Pena

Two straight days in which the slate of starting pitchers is pretty danged interesting, top to bottom. Nice! Hopefully it works out better today! The Augusta/Rome matchup is the star combo of the day with Garrett Williams going up against Atlanta’s #5 prospect Ian Anderson.

Let’s pick up some wins folks! Oh, and a few more lottery picks in the draft’s third day would be nice too.