(25-27) Pawtucket PawSox 6, (25-28) Gwinnett Braves 4
- Brandon Snyder, RF: 1-3 2RBI, .325/.363/.412
- Jim Johnson, RP: 1.0 IP, 1H, 0R, 0BB, 0K, 0.00 ERA
- Lucas Sims, SP: 4.0 IP, 3H, 6R, 4BB, 5K, 3HR, 6.05 ERA
A promising start for Lucas Sims, 3 strikeouts in the first, quickly came to an end as he struggled with his mechanics mightily yesterday. It began to come apart in the 3rd with Gwinnett leading 1-0 and following a Mike Miller walk to lead the inning. With Miller taking a decent sized lead everything about Sims' game fell apart - he started with a throwing error to first that allowed Miller to get to 3rd and then a wild pitch allowed Miller to score. He recorded two more outs until giving up a 2 run homer to Chris Marrero. The Gwinnett bats responded by loading the bases on walks before Snyder scored one with a sacrifice fly, Ronnier Mustelier singled to score Ozzie Albies, and Anthony Recker followed that with a single to score Matt Tuiasosopo who had walked earlier in the inning to regain the lead for Gwinnett.
With the lead 4-3 for Gwinnett in the 4th, Sims completely fell apart walking two, and throwing two wild pitches allowing Pawtucket to score the tying run. Sims came out to try and get one more inning but the problems were evident, he was repeating his mechanics and was struggling with almost every pitch, he gave up back-to-back homers to start the 5th and they were the deciding runs in a very difficult start for Sims where he threw nearly as many balls (41) as strikes (52).
Albies extended his hit streak to six games and is hitting .271/.329/.400 over his last 18 games. Brandon Snyder, easily the hottest bat in the lineup, extended his hitting streak to 3 games. The 1B/3B/P/C finished the month of May (15 games) hitting .438/.491/.646.
Next Game: 6/1 vs Pawtucket PawSox @ 7:05 PM ET
Probables
GWI: TBD, 0-0 0.00 ERA
PAW: Cuevas, 4-2 3.14 ERA
(22-29) Mississippi Braves 1, (30-21) Biloxi Shuckers 7
- Dustin Peterson, LF: 1-4 R, .250/.419/.406
- Mauricio Cabrera, RP: 1.0 IP, 0H, 0R, 0BB, 1K 3.74 ERA
Dustin Peterson, and Carlos Franco both singled to start off the 2nd inning for Mississippi and that's all the offense they could muster. Peterson went on to score a run after Willians Astudillo, and Jake Schrader both grounded out to move the runners over and in. That was all of the offense last night.
Much like Sims, Andrew Thurman struggled with his mechanics last night and got shelled for it allowing 5 earned runs in 3 innings. Also like Sims - Thurman finished with a strike to ball ratio of 38:27 which helped drop him to 0-5 on the season. He has struggled a lot since the bus crash in Carolina last year, with a brilliant start sprinkled in here and there, allowing opponents to hit .295 off of him, and his 5.49BB/9 rate isn't doing him any favors either.
I suppose I should say something nice about this game and that's about the bullpen. After Danny Burawa allowed 2 runs to score despite giving up no hits (4 walks) the rest of the pen was great. Mauricio Cabrera needed just 11 pitches to finish his inning, Bradley Roney had a spotless inning of relief needing just 13 pitches, and Stephen Janas struck out the side to close the game that everyone wants to forget happened. Also of note this was the third scoreless outing for Mauricio in a row helped a lot by the fact that he's only walked 1. If any of you have watched him pitch the past few outings I would love to get some feedback from you on how he looks in the comments. Cabrera finished the month of May allowing hitters to accumulate a measly .483 OPS mostly all from OBP (allowed 9 walks in 10 innings).
Next Game: 6/1 @ Biloxi Shuckers @ 7:10 PM CT
Probables
MIS: Ellis, 6-2 3.00 ERA
BIL: Houser, 2-5 6.65 ERA
(27-25) Columbia Fireflies 4, (20-32) Rome Braves 3
- Luke Dykstra, 2B: 3-5 R, .315/.359/.376
- Austin Riley, 3B: 3-5, .246/.291/.372
- Touki Toussaint, SP: 5.0IP 2H, 4R, 4BB, 1K, 6.28 ERA
While it doesn't look like it based on the box score yesterday was a huge rebound game for Touki Toussaint who last time out got through 0.1 IP allowing 3 runs on 5 walks. While the walks came back again today he was able to spread them out and go 5 this time. He continues to miss bats allowing just 2 hits and for the most part has done a good job of that with a 7.9H/9 but he gets undone by his 5.86BB/9 rate. Perhaps more encouraging is that Toussaint was back to working in the mid 90s after a brief scare earlier in the season when his velocity dipped down to 87-89 mph. Since coming back from the DL Chad Sobotka has yet to allow a run (6 games), and has just allowed 2 walks in that span as well.
Offensively the game was maddening as the team hit .375 with runners in scoring position but scored just 3 runs. The table setters (Didder, Dykstra, and Riley) did their job going a collective 8-for-15 on the game, however all were singles. The suddenly slumping Morales went 0-for-4 hitting behind those 3. Carlos Castro hit a booming HR to straight center and if you have been to State Mutual Stadium you will know that's a tough thing to do.
Now that you're really sad reading this recap I feel like I need to give you something positive and that I guess would be the emergence of Luke Dykstra, singles hitting machine. Luke finished May hitting .318/.361/.373 with 29 singles. He now has 46 singles on the season (11 doubles, 0 triples, 0 homers). I'm now going to watch this over this entire season because that's just a lot of singles.
Next Game: 6/1 vs Columbia Fireflies @ 1:00 PM ET
Probables
COL: Badamo, 2-3 3.47 ERA
ROM: Soroka, 1-5 2.62 ERA