Hoover, Spruill, Rohm, And Simmons Highlight Sunday's Atlanta Braves Minor League Action
by yondaime4 on Apr 10, 2011 6:30 PM EDT
in Braves Minor League Recaps
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PrintDurham 4, Gwinnett 5 - 11 Inning
- J. Constanza 2-5 BB, K, SB(3)
- D. Hernandez 2-5 2B, K
- M. Gomez 2-5 2B, 2 K
- M. Kennelly 2-4 2B, RBI
- J. Asencio 2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 2 K
Gwinnett breaks even in the series with a walk off win in the bottom of the 11th thanks to a sacrifice fly from Willi Cabrera. The big blow came from Dan Nelson who tied the game up in the bottom of the ninth with a solo homer. Jacob Thompson put together a solid start and was the recipient of some solid bullpen help with Yohan Flande, Jairo Asencio and Scott Proctor allowing just two hits and one run in seven innings. Also, I had no idea that Matt Kennelly was on this team. He is just 22 years old and completely skipped AA after a well below average season at the plate in Myrtle Beach last season. He is in Gwinnett filling in for Boscan, who is in the Majors for a week. His presence speaks more to the Braves lack of depth at the catching position than anything else.
Jair Jurrjens starts tomorrow for Gwinnett, in what should be his last rehab start. The game will be televised on CSS. Since it's an off-day for Atlanta, we'll have a minor league open thread to discuss as we watch.
Jackson 2, Mississippi 1 - 10 Innings
- T. Pastornicky 2-4 SB(3)
- C. Harrilchak 1-3 BB, SB(2)
- E. Mejia 1-3 HR(2), BB
- J. J. Hoover 4 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 4 K
- R. Sullivan 3 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 2 K
- T. Bullock 2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 3 K
Jackson and Mississippi have played a great series. Two games have gone into extras and another was decided by a walk-off in the bottom of the ninth. J. J. Hoover made his first start of the year and he pitched almost as well as the rest of our starting pitchers. The depth in this system is something else. Ernesto Mejia has gotten off to a hot start this season and has struck out just once in his first five games. This is a small sample size but man I would love for him to get his Ks under control. Tyler Pastornicky is hitting a smooth .533 so far this year. His average actually dropped today.
Tomorrow for the Mississippi Braves, KK will face KK ... Kenshin Kawakami will face Kenn Kasparek.
Lynchburg 6, Potomac 7 - 10 Innings
- A. Simmons 3-4 2B, RBI, SB
- P. Gosselin 1-5 HR, 3 RBI
- A. Milligan 1-5 3B, K
- J. Leonard 1-4 BB, E
- C. Brownsten 2-3 2B, BB
- Z. Spruill 5 IP, 7 H, 2 R, 0 BB, 2 K
- D. Delgado 0.1 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 2 BB, 1 K
Free baseball is the order of the day! Unfortunately only one of them went our way. Zeke Spruill turned in a solid start getting a lot of groundballs. Dimaster Delgado came into relieve him and did not fair well recording just one out after facing just five batters. Andrelton Simmons bounced back after a rough season debut and will do his best to prove that he belongs in the field and not on the mound. Adam Milligan also made his debut today after missing a big portion of last season.
Hagerstown 7, Rome 6
- M. Lipka 1-5 K
- E. Reyes 1-5 2B, 2K
- E. Salcedo 1-4 2B, BB, 3 K, SB(2)
- D. Rohm 3-4 2B, 3 RBI
- R. Pacheco 5 IP, 5 H, 2 R (0 ER), BB, 2 K
Another game spoiled by the bullpen. The Braves were up 6-3 going into the ninth inning but Wesley Alsup gave up four runs in the top of the inning and the Braves failed to get the lead back in the bottom of the frame. Edward Salcedo continues his good hitting by collecting his first extra base hit of the season. David Rohm had a big day driving in three runs. Ronan Pacheco is a guy that hasn't been talked about much but could be a surprise guy this year. He is a lefty with good K ratios over the past three seasons but he has been too hittable. If the hits come down he could take off.
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“Edward Salcedo continues his good hitting”
Considering he had 3 Ks in 4 ABs I’d hesitate to call it good hitting, but he did at least hit a double and collect another steal.
Swing still obviously needs work, but he seems to be outweighing the negatives with positives so far.
Nathan Richard - Please come home. We all miss you.
Wasn’t trying to criticize your choice of words, just stating 3Ks is never good. But, as you two have stated, getting on base is never a bad thing either. For the record I’m extremely high on the kid.
If everything clicks for him at once, I could see him pulling a Starlin Castro and shooting through the system pretty quickly. He’s so raw now that anything before 2014 seems exceedingly hopeful, but he could start changing minds real quickly if he starts using all his tools together.
Nathan Richard - Please come home. We all miss you.
Yeah I was honestly surprised by the level of negativity surrounding him in the offseason from BA and other sources. Granted he struggled at Rome but everyone saw that he was promoted too quickly by Atlanta. Either way his start to the season is encouraging considering he never had this many hits in a short amount of time in Rome last year.
I was at the Lynchburg game today. Simmons is ridiculously good on defense. He could go head to head with any shortstop in baseball right now. He had several great plays, including one where he went into the third base hole and did a Jeter hop and rifled it over to first, getting the guy easily. I still wonder if he’ll be able to hit at the higher levels, but he looked good with the bat, really locked in and sprayed the ball around.
Matt Weaver is a fantastic bunter. He laid down two that were just perfect. He should be teaching everyone else in the system how to do it.
Adam Milligan can’t catch a break. Yesterday he got hit in the eye by a BP pitch, which gave him a black eye. Bobby Moore, the coach who hit him, said the ball was wet and it just got away from him. He felt bad, but felt even worse when he realized they were taking pictures for baseball cards today.
Leonard looks like a first baseman playing third base. He’s a monster, really big and strong. I’m not going to say he can’t play third, he looked fine over there aside from the error, which was an easy routine ball, which happens to everyone, but I just think eventually he ends up across the diamond.
Delgado looked uncomfortable and shaky, you could definitely tell it was his first in-season appearance in a year and a half. I’m not a huge fan of his delivery, he lets go of the ball really far back in the delivery, like he hasn’t started forward yet by the time he lets it go. I don’t think this will lead to an injury, and if it works for him then he should stick with it, but man it looks awkward.
Eilecer Cardenas was the most impressive pitcher. He had life on his fastball and his offspeed stuff was effective. He’s got a live arm and the Braves got him for nothing, in the Minor League phase of the Rule 5 draft, so hopefully they can work some magic with him.
I wrote a novel, it's about baseball, you should buy it:
http://www.amazon.com/Four-C-B-Wilkins/dp/1449578454/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257720610&sr=1-1
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A player like Simmons...
sounds really exciting, I wonder how much he’d need to hit to stay a SS. I doubt this would ever happen, but what if he made it to the bigs as a reliever/defensive sub?
by TBuzz on Apr 10, 2011 10:45 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
.221/.270/.259
Raffy Belliard’s career line as a defensive whiz and nothing more for 17 seasons (!!!). Everything I’ve heard about Simmons puts him on a similar development track as Omar Vizquel, who is in year 23 of his career but has only had two seasons over 100 OPS+. There’s value in a good bunter with speed and decent contact that plays extremely good defense, which is Simmons’ profile. The interesting thing with Omar is that he never really hit in the minors, either, posting his best statistical minor league season at class A at 20 years old when he went .263/.350/.332. His MLB career is under .700 OPS, but he was a .273 hitter who basically had a 1/1 bb/k ratio in his career (and 2,801 career hits to date). Another guy who fits a similar profile (but gets a LOT more attention) is Julio Iglesias of Boston.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
by biggentleben on Apr 11, 2011 4:26 AM EDT up reply actions
Little trivia
Omar’s first baseball card was an error card. Can you name the outfielder who appeared instead of Vizquel as the picture on the card? It’s a VERY obvious mistake if you look at the two side by side.
Also, Omar is one of few who has ever played in 4 different decades with all of the playing time coming consecutively.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
by biggentleben on Apr 11, 2011 4:30 AM EDT up reply actions
I thought Leonard...
was supposed to be a top notch defender, or at least said to be so when drafted.
And good stuff on Simmons. If he can continue to simply make contact and limit Ks, I think that’s enough to let his glove carry him up to where he never becomes a pitcher. Raffy Belliard seems to be his worst case scenario as a SS.
http://sportsandgrits.blogspot.com/
by Mr. Sanchez on Apr 11, 2011 12:40 AM EDT up reply actions
Maybe Leonard is, I only saw a little bit of him in ST and this game, and like I said, the error was bad but it happens to everyone. He just looks to big to me, so I’m curious to see how he turns out.
I forgot to say that Simmons did something that worried me. He went into foul territory chasing after a ball and ran up onto the tarp, which was incredibly athletic, but also completely useless since at that point it was obvious the ball was uncatchable. To me, that wasn’t smart because he could have slipped on the tarp, it had been used in rain the previous two days, and maybe blown his knee out, or even fallen over the other side and injured himself in the stands, all on a play that wasn’t going to happen. It sort of smacked of showing off to me. In pregame warmups he showed off his arm by throwing a ball over the centerfield wall from the foul line, which Rick Albert, the interim manager, quickly made sure to tell him not to do anymore.
Obviously it’s the Minors and pretty much everyone needs to mature, but those were a couple of things in one day that made me wonder. Of course, he was also ridiculous in the field.
I wrote a novel, it's about baseball, you should buy it:
http://www.amazon.com/Four-C-B-Wilkins/dp/1449578454/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257720610&sr=1-1
www.dropoutproductions.com
Simmons
I’ve been on the Simmons bandwagon pretty much since the draft. An elite defender at short who hit well in college despite not focusing on the position full-time now that he has a chance to hit full-time I think his bat WILL be much better than most people think.
I agree
I have been on his bandwagon since day one also. I think he will be WAY WAY better with the bat then most think. I believe he is ATL’s future at SS.
Admired as a saint. Defined by my rank. Combined with my strength. My time and my length.
Pastornicky’s hot start doesn’t mean anything, really, since it’s a tiny sample. But if there’s one guy that we most need to prove he can handle the upper minors this year, it’s Tyler. If he could prove himself ready to make the jump to MLB in 2012, that would make the post-Alex Gonzalez shortstop situation much more comfortable. So if he can play well enough at AA to get promoted by midseason to AAA, that’d be ideal.
"Yeah, and I have an enchanted jock strap." -- Karl Karlson
I now twitter as @junkstats and blog about made-up stats and general baseball stuff at JunkStats.
by Jacob Peterson on Apr 10, 2011 10:13 PM EDT reply actions
I'm wondering if Simmons would get promoted to replace him...
with cb’s comments on his D, if he can prove to hit decently in Lynchburg for the first half, say .250/.350 ba/obp, I could see an argument for rushing him to AA to see if he can continue to make contact on the way up, and potentially have at least an all glove/weak bat option for the post-Sea Bass SS competition. Doubtful, but maybe there’s a chance?
http://sportsandgrits.blogspot.com/
by Mr. Sanchez on Apr 11, 2011 12:43 AM EDT up reply actions
Too soon. You have to show some consistency first before you get called up…
by TBuzz on Apr 11, 2011 8:44 AM EDT via mobile up reply actions
I'm interested to see where everyone will fall in our MiLB pecking order
After watching the AAA game last FRI, I’ve got to think we’ll see some early than expected promotions from AA ball to help fill the lineup. Pastornicky definitely has the early lead for a quick call-up from a statistical standpoint, but without having seen the games, I don’t know who’s throwing up good ABs but just not getting the hits to show for them. It’ll be interesting to see what the Braves’ FO decides to do…
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