Apparently Francisco Samuel‘s hurt finger led to the wild outing yesterday in which he walked three batters. No word yet on what caused the 53 BBs in 63 IP last year. I think he must have been missing a limb or something.
The annual “Blake Hawksworth is ready” article is out for the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Quoting Hawksworth:
A lot of people have written me off in a sense. Looking at my numbers, they don’t really know what’s going on between the lines. It kind of fuels my fire a little bit. It makes me more hungry to try and go out and have the best season I can.
That’s really the best attitude you can hope for him to have at this point. He’s had some injuries and he has had some pretty awful outings over the last couple years. It’s not just the stat lines since his stuff still hadn’t really returned to it’s non-bionic shoulder days. Which Hawk seems to also recognize:
All I can do is go out and try to get this ball club wins, which I haven’t been able to do that the last two years. If I can switch my record around, we’ll be in good shape.
At 26 the clock is ticking and although Hawksworth was placed on the 40-man roster again this year, I’d be somewhat surprised if he was the first starting pitcher called up from Memphis. Best of luck to him though.
It’s an abbreviated DFR with Memphis rained out and PB/QC having the night off.
Springfield 7, Midland 8 (10 innings)
- Donovan Solano was 2-for-6 with a double.
- Brett Wallace was 1-for-4 with a pair of walks.
- Tony Cruz was 3-for-5 with a walk.
- Daryl Jones went 0-for-2 but was HBP and walked.
- Daniel Descalso was 1-for-4 with a double and a walk.
- Brad Furnish was effectively wild . . . I guess. After a 30 pitch first, Furnish managed to last 5 innings and give up 0 ER despite walking 5 batters. He struck out 4 but he’s got to limit the walks because he won’t allow just 1 hit on a normal basis.
- Trey Hearne allowed 4 runs (2 earned) recording 5 outs. There were three errors in the game (DeJesus, Rapoport and Wallace) while Midland recorded 4 errors. Sloppy night fielding.
- Elvis Hernandez followed Hearne and allowed 2 ER while walking 3 in 1 IP.
Entries (RSS)
When Daryl Jones was hit by the pitch, they took him out of the game because of an injury. I only saw that on Gameday and haven’t been able to find out what happened or if he’s okay since.
Good to see Tony Cruz start hitting a little bit. Springfield should get plenty of offense from the Cruz/Hill catching combo, but their development defensively is crucial to the success of the club. Midland ran on Cruz 6 times today, with 4 SB. I’m sure that sort of thing will continue all year. Hopefully, they both continue to improve defensively as they gain experience behind the plate.
Per http://www.news-leader.com/article/20090413/SPORTS02/904130369/-1/BLOGS01
Jones was hit in the head by a pitch. It sounds like he is going to be ok. He’ll get a couple days off for precautionary reasons.
Thanks Josh — that hadn’t been posted when I was doing the DFR but I should have mentioned that Jones left the game.
Looks like midland found the only way to stop the toolshed…they suck
I never had a chance to watch Cruz the catcher, but for a new level he still pegged 33% of his runners last night. Statistically that was slightly detrimental to Midlands scoring chances. I need to watch him because I can’t really say how much potential he has to imporve. That aside his stick is where he is going to make it. If he hits for power he will make it to the show as a regular no matter what his D is like. If he just hits for average he will be a back-up because his D is probably going to be detrimental to the consideration of him as an overall player.