An uneven night for the system, which lacked a standout offensive performance. It looks like it’s time to pay closer attention to Tyler Lyons moving forward who is succeeding in AAA a year after being drafted.
- Mark Hamilton was 2-for-4.
- Eugenio Velez was 2-for-4.
- Memphis only tallied 6 hits and walked twice against former major leaguer Claudio Vargas.
- Tyler Lyons was excellent striking out 8 in 7 innings of work. He allowed 2 runs (both solo home runs) on 5 hits and 1 walk. Lyons is striking out better than a batter an inning in Memphis with a 4:1 K:BB rate. If there’s a blemish since his promotion to AAA it’s that he’s been bit by the home run ball. That’s a small quibble among what has been a surprisingly excellent performance.
- Chuckie Fick and Eduardo Sanchez both pitched a scoreless inning allowing 1 hit and striking out 1.
- Kolten Wong was 0-for-5.
- Oscar Taveras was 2-for-4 with a double.
- Xavier Scruggs was 2-for-4 with a double.
- Kevin Siegrist struggled through 4.2 innings allowing 6 hits and 3 walks for 5 runs. He struck out 4.
- Kevin Thomas pitched 2 innings allowing 1 hit and striking out 2. Thomas, since moving to the bullpen, has shown signs of being better pitcher this season with an increased strikeout rate. Eric Fornataro has gotten more recognition for gaudy ERA numbers and high groundball rates but Thomas is arguably pitching better.
- Mike O’Neill was 4-for-4 with a double.
- Starlin Rodriguez was 2-for-4.
- James Ramsey was 1-for-3.
- Drew Benes struck out 4 in 6 scoreless innings. He walked 1 and allowed 6 hits.
- Dean Kiekhefer allowed 1 hit and struck out 2 in a scoreless 9th inning.
- Anthony Garcia was 1-for-4 with a home run. Garcia is cause celebre for some on this blog and the 20 year old outfielder is making it easy on you. He’s now hitting .300/.379/.545 as a 20 year old. The power output seems especially noteworthy though Garcia’s power is augmented by his speed leading to some extra doubles.
- David Medina was 2-for-4.
- Anthony Melchionda was 1-for-4 with a home run.
- Kyle Hald struck out 7 in 7 innings. He walked 1 and allowed 5 hits for 1 earned run.
- Travis Miller allowed 2 hits while pitching 2 scoreless innings to complete the game.
- Jacob Wilson (2B) was 2-for-4 with a double.
- Gary Apelian (LF) was 1-for-3 with a home run.
- Matthew Young (CF) went 1-for-3 with a double and a walk.
- Ben Freeman allowed 7 hits in 5.1 innings. He was tagged for 3 runs walking 1 and striking out 2.
- Lee Stoppelman (2012 draftee) struck out 4 in 2 innings of work while allowing 2 hits.
Johnson City 1, Greeneville 0 (Game 1)
- Ronard Castillo (LF) was the only position player with a multi hit game or an extra base hit. He was 2-for-4 with a double.
- Steve Bean (C) was 0-for-2 with a pair of walks.
- Johnson City tallied 7 hits and 3 walks.
- Stalyn Lopez was wild over 5.2 innings walking 4. He allowed 5 hits but managed to keep Greeneville of the board striking out 4.
Johnson City 2, Greeneville 4 (Game 2 – 7 innings)
- Johnson City had just 1 hit in the game coming from Jeremy Shaffer (1B). Shaffer’s hit, a home run, accounted for both runs driving in C.J. McElroy after he was hit by a pitch.
- Cory Jones struck out 5 in 5 innings of work. He walked 2 and allowed 6 hits for 2 earned runs.
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I would like to point out that Kevin Siegrist did strike Jurickson Profar out twice last night.
Mathew Young’s size and production are impressive for a CF. What’s his story?
Young has me intrigued as well.
Isn’t lyons a soft tosser?
The division they are in is pretty pathetic, the only measure might be against better competition?
Just wondering what everyone else thought
.@22
Nashville’s lineup was not particularly strong, no. However, those are exactly the kind of lineups you’d hope he’d dominate.
Good point but I wish sometimes we knew what the pitcher was throwing to achieve his results.
His last start in Springfield he topped out at 88-89 (on the Springfield gun).
Sorry about that @22.
I am just not sure what constitutes good pitching against some of the teams they face. The division seems to be void of prospects.
Am I missing something here. The ERA for Lyons is 6.18 even after last night. He has had more bad games than good and was mediocre in double A as well.
ERA isn’t an especially good way to determine whether a prospect is pitching well. K%, BB%, K/BB, and SIERA are all more informative in that regard. Lyons’ splits against LHB are also very encouraging given the ML bullpen’s need there (I think Lyons is probably a bullpen piece longterm).
For minor league pitchers, the peripheral stuff (like K/BB ratio and K per inning) has more predictive value than ERA, *usually*. And Lyons is whiffing more guys in AAA, and walking fewer, than he did in AA — so the ugly ERA could be an unlucky one, too.
Anthony Garcia. Well, well. Gunned down another runner yesterday; that’s 7 in just 60 games in the outfield…against only one error. Looks like a potential prototypical RFer. Fun fact: Garcia, in the 15 second-half games, has slugged .700+ while striking out just 10% of the time.
I’ll say it again, Anthony Garcia is definitely maybe possibly a top-50 overall prospect. ;)
Garcia is a good one to keep an eye on. It’s only his first year above JC so hard to get excited yet. Anxious to see what happens when he gets to PB.
To be fair, SIERA is more of a predictor of future performance, rather than a measure of past performance. FIP, FIP-, XFIP- are probably all better indicators of past performance, though if a player has been bitten by a high HR rate, the XFIP will improve his standing by normalizing the HR rate and I do not believe all pitchers give up HR’s at the same rate.
His FIP is currently 3.97, which is ok in his league, but at 24 all season, he’s really not anyone to get excited about other than possibly a LOOGY.
His LOB rate of 48% is far below his normal rate of 65-70%; some of that is likely due to giving up homers with runners on. Curious to see if the rise in HR% is a temporary blip or because he’s overmatched. Likely the former since his other peripheral stats look good. Here’s hoping!
Well, good luck getting xFIP for minor leaguers. Also SIERA is an ERA estimator, not a projection. But whatever, it doesn’t really matter. His FIP is clearly affected by HR rate in a small sample, so not much to be gleaned there.
An ERA estimator that is better for predicting a pitchers true talent level. I. E. projecting what he is moving forward.
FIP does a fine job of this as well, so it’s fine to just use that.
FIP does a better job of predicting the future than measuring the present, as there can be a lot of fluctuation in small samples. It is less effective in describing a pitcher’s single game performance and is more appropriate in a season’s worth of innings.
I calculated his FIP if he had given up 3 HR’s rather than 5 (his rate thus far in career), and used the current run environment in the PCL of approximately 3.9. His FIP would be 4.05 given that change.
I should know better than to discuss any sort of advanced stat on this site, so rather than disagree with your points, I digress.
No, please show me where I’m wrong from a pretty straight forward stat that is easily calculated.
That FIP does a better job of predicting part is a quote from Fangraphs’ library, or are you going to make condescending remarks that allude to the fact they don’t know what they’re doing as well?
Alex Mejia debuted for Batavia last night, starting at SS. Not a real toolsy guy, but I liked what I saw from him in college.
I saw Lyons several times at OSU, so went to the game he pitched in OKC last week. In that game Cox cost him a couple of earned runs in the first with a mental error. On a routine sac bunt (not even a great one), for some reason Cox looked at second and then even third and didn’t even make any throw. No one could figure out why he turned to second much less third. You pitch it a little different with guys on 1 and 2 and no outs than with 1 out and a runner on second. Anyway the three hole batter hits a three hop triple over the first base bag and scores on a sac fly with one out when there should have been two. Over the next 4.1 he allowed a single and struck out 9. And OKC has a very good lineup. He was lifted after 5 with a modest pitch count for a pinch hitter with two on and two outs.
In that game he sat at 89-90 and touched 92. He struck guys out on four different pitches.
This is only Lyons second year in the system, so I don’t know that I would downgrade him because he is 24. He has moved through the system as quickly as anyone could expect. Not thinking future star here, but does seem like somebody that could make it to the major leagues, which is a great accomplishment in itself for a lot of these players.
You downgrade everyone based on age. You downgrade Ramsey based on age. You downgrade Lyons based on age.
Age is age, regardless of time in a system.
Uoflx3 – the LOB rate attracted my attention too. It is interesting though, that Lyons has never had an LOB rate over 70 where you’d usually see it. He’s been very homer prone throughout his brief MIL career. Maybe it’s just a sample size issue, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.