Happy 4th of July, everyone! The system had a successful holiday going 4-and-2. Quad Cities’ put on an explosive display of offense that included Stephen Piscotty‘s first professional home run. Palm Beach’s 9th inning rally wasn’t enough, but Batavia won in walk-off fashion and Johnson City outlasted its opponent after 11 innings. And as if his .382 wOBA wasn’t enough already, Kolten Wong gave Cards fans another reason to love him:
Wong did back flip coming out of the dugout
— Kary Booher (@karybooherNL) July 4, 2012
- Mark Hamilton was 1-for-4 with a double.
- Pete Kozma singled and stole his 2nd base.
- Steven Hill, Eugenio Velez, and Lou Montanez singled.
- Ryan Jackson walked once.
- Brandon Dickson was battered for 6 runs (4 earned) on 8 hits (1 HR), 1 walk, and 3 strikeouts in 5.2 innings.
- Sam Freeman struck out 1 and walked 1 in 1.1 innings.
- John Gaub and Adam Reifer each struck out a batter in their respective innings.
- Chris Swauger was 2-for-4.
- Greg Garcia had the only extra base hit, a double.
- Jermaine Curtis singled and walked.
- Kolten Wong, Jake Shaffer, and Audry Perez singled.
- Adam Melker walked once. Jamie Romak walked twice.
- Seth Maness had a great game. Despite walked his 6th batter of the YEAR, he only allowed 2 hits in 7 scoreless innings and struck out 5. Maness’ ERA is creeping ever closer to 2 in 50+ double-A innings, and he entered today’s game with a 3.01 FIP.
- Michael Blazek kept Midland scoreless over the final 2 innings; he struck out 1 batter and allowed 2 hits.
- Mike O’Neill was 2-for-3 with a triple and walk. No, he didn’t strike out.
- Starlin Rodriguez was 3-for-5.
- Ronny Gil was 3-for-4.
- Tyler Rahmatulla singled and walked.
- Geoffrey Klein doubled.
- Chris Edmonson singled.
- Chris Corrigan couldn’t escape the 5th inning. He allowed 4 runs on 7 hits, 3 walks, and 5 strikeouts over 4.1 innings.
- Iden Nazario walked (2) more batters than he struck out (1) but didn’t allow anyone to score in 1.2 innings.
- Chase Reid went 3 innings. He allowed 4 hits (1 HR) and 3 runs though none of them were earned.
- Stephen Piscotty was 2-for-5 with a HR (first professional) and walk.
- Juan Castillo was 3-for-5 and connected on his 6th HR.
- Neal Pritchard also homered for the 1st time this year.
- Roberto De La Cruz was 2-for-5 with a double.
- Nick Martini was 2-for-5 with a double and walk.
- Matt Williams had a double and 2 walks.
- Anthony Garcia was 2-for-6 with a double.
- David Medina was 2-for-5 with a walk.
- Roberto Reyes was 1-for-5 with a walk.
- Sam Gaviglio had a really strange outing. He allowed 6 runs (2 earned) on 7 hits (1 HR) and 1 walk but racked up 11 strikeouts.
- Travis Miller pitched 1.2 scoreless innings. He struck out 1, walked 1, and allowed 2 hits.
- Ricky Martinez allowed 1 run (unearned) on 2 hits and 1 strikeout in 2 innings.
- Breyvic Valera had 2 singles and nabbed his 4th stolen base.
- Jonathan Keener had 2 doubles.
- Anthony Melchionda doubled.
- Patrick Wisdom was 1-for-3 with a walk.
- Jacob Wilson had a pinch-hit single to seal the walk-off win.
- David Washington and Jordan Walton each walked.
- Kyle Barraclough pitched capably for 6 innings: 2 runs on 4 hits (1 HR), 0 walks, and 2 strikeouts.
- Jose Almarante struck out 3 in 2 innings and only allowed 1 hit and 1 walk.
- Joseph Scanio allowed 2 hits but kept the game scoreless in his inning.
Johnson City 6, Greeneville 4 (11 innings)
- C.J. McElroy was 2-for-5 and stole his fifth base.
- Jeremy Schaffer doubled and walked once.
- Ronard Castillo tripled.
- Steve Bean singled and stole his first base.
- Bruce Caldwell and Carson Kelly singled.
- Ildemaro Vargas walked.
- Nicholas Gillung struck out 4 and walked 2 but allowed 4 runs (2 earned) on 8 hits in 4.1 innings.
- Thomas Lee pitched for 2.2 scoreless innings that included 4 strikeouts and 2 hits.
- Mariano Llorens struck out 3 and walked 1 in 2 innings.
- Zachary Petrick struck out 4 in 2 innings.
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maness is really extraordinary. over 151 professional innings, he has a 0.6 BB/9 rate, and a SO/BB rate of 10.3. at 23, he is not particularly old for the texas league.
and in looking at leaders in the texas league, i find almost no qualified leaders with a walk rate that low over a whole season. getting ~60% of balls in play on the ground and walking virtually no one is not a terrible skill set. i’m not claiming that he’ll be a success in the majors, but what he’s doing doesn’t have a lot of precedent.
Brandon Webb always seemed like the perfect embodiment of this skill set. Lots of ground balls, underwhelming K rate, no home runs and no walks (although looking at his B-R page he yielded far more walks than I would’ve imagined).
It is silly to count on almost any young pitcher to turn into a perennial top of the ballot Cy Young candidate, but it is an interesting comparison. As a 23 year old in the Texas League Webb walked and struck out a few more hitters, and had an even lower home run rate (.2 HR/9, 14! over 359 MiLB innings) and allowed hits at a similar clip.
I’m not sure of the velocity of either pitcher and I don’t know where to find the batted ball data, but Webb was the first guy that popped in head as a pitch to contact low HR high ground ball guy.
In case anyone is interested here are the links to the B-R pages of Webb and Maness respectively:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=webb–001bra
http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=maness001mic&mobile=true
webb’s minor league numbers don’t seem that close to the numbers that make maness’s remarkable (3.2 BB/9 for webb’s MiL career, 3.5 in AA). i don’t even know who to compare maness to.
Brandon Webb and not Dontrelle Willis should have been ROY. His numbers were all better across the board. It was all about hype.
Not more back-flips Kolten, that comes with some undue expectations. LOL!!!
Someone asked a while back why Anthony Garcia wasn’t being talked about as a prospect. Well I think he was ahead of the rest of us. Garcia has slowly but surely put himself on the map.
Unbeknownst to most people, Seth Maness throws a new pitch called the GPS fastball and it never ever gets lost.
The Two-Bag Roadblock isn’t a line dance, it’s a fact of life on the Cardinal farm: Kolten Wong, Starlin Rodriguez, Luis Mateo, Colin Walsh, Breyvic Valera, Ildemaro Vargas and Tyler Rahmatulla had to be moved to 3b. Might be time to move Pete Kozma before he gets crushed under the push to the front.
Speaking of Breyvic Valera he is now leading the New York-Penn League in hits with 27. 27-for-77 sample this kid has been a consistent hit machine/plus speed. Really fitting that sleeper title well I also like that he is a switch hitter too.
Juan Castillo has been an offensive force for QC this season .312 AVG solid .374 OBP .477 Slugging .851 OPS. Has always hit for a High AVG in his 6 season in the system but now he’s starting to hit for more power than you would like to see out of a catcher. I’ve seen him play personally behind the plate he impressed me with his quick release has good arm strength good foot work looked solid with the glove. Any more scouting information on Castillo?
Gaviglio isn’t the same type of control pitcher as Maness is but he is averaging 1.96 BB/9, 4.4 Walk Rate coming into this start tonight. Gaviglio has a better K rate at 18.0% than Maness. Both maintain a 60% groundball rate. Another control pitcher to watch is Kyle Barraclough has not walked a batter in 14 innings for JC seems like he is another sinkerballer or pitch to contact pitcher.
Six of Piscotty’s first 8 hits have gone for extra bases.
Must’ve been a tough night for Gaviglio to stay focused. His teammates had 6 total errors, at least a few of which came when he was pitching.
I went to the QC and KC game this evening to see Piscotty, Garcia, and the rest of the River Bandits. Piscotty was very shaky on defense this evening, but appears to have a good stroke. As a disclaimer, his first professional HR may have been the worst call I’ve seen in my entire life. The ball hit off of the base of the wall but was inexplicably called a HR. KC’s manager argued this, to no avail, got tossed, then rifled the “HR” ball at the QC dugout.
I too was at the QC/KC game right against the third base side and the ball MAY have hit the TOP of the wall, but my entire section thought the ball hit the metal railing over the wall before bouncing back onto the field.
I was sitting up near the top behind third base and had a pretty good line of sight. I followed the entire trajectory of the ball and saw it hit no more than 4 feet up on the left field wall. I’d like it to be a legit HR as much as the next person, but it looked pretty clear that it was a line drive double. Piscotty looked shocked himself to get waived around.
Also, I thought Gaviglio did a nice job of keeping the hitters off balance with the exception of the two different runs theu got on where they pounded the ball. I’ve been to a lot of KC games this year, though, and their team is pretty awful.
I was sitting up near the top behind third base and had a pretty good line of sight. I followed the entire trajectory of the ball and saw it hit no more than 4 feet up on the left field wall. I’d like it to be a legit HR as much as the next person, but it looked pretty clear that it was a line drive double. Piscotty looked shocked himself to get waived around.
Also, I thought Gaviglio did a nice job of keeping the hitters off balance with the exception of the two different runs they got on where they pounded the ball. I’ve been to a lot of KC games this year, though, and their team is pretty awful.
What was Gaviglio sitting and topping out at on his Fastball also what secondary pitch work for him?
So has Maness put himself in a position to be the next pitcher we call up if the big league club needs another starter this year?
I realize that doesn’t necessarily mean he is going to be successful as a major league pitcher but at this point is there anybody else you would try before him?
I think Dickson and Gast would both be ahead of him and probably Miller and Rosenthal as well.
Outstanding start to Piscotty’s carrer
The sky is falling! Oscar went 0 fer