It was not a night for starting pitchers on the farm, as either poor performance or North Carolina rain prevented any of the six starters from having a shutdown night.
Syracuse 3 @ Durham 2 (10)
A rain delay after the fifth chased both starters, one of which was Josh Towers. Four hits, one walk, two strikeouts, one unearned run for the bulldog before the weather had other plans. 41 strikes in 61 pitches; sounds like a typical Good Towers night.
Syracuse got two in the second to counter the Bulls' first-inning run when Jason Phillips walked, Rob Cosby singled, and both eventually came around on sac flies. Phillips was later ejected for arguing a strikeout call, which brought Cosby in from RF to play 1B. Before then, with Chad Mottola (who is not exactly Willie Mays) in Toronto, Syracuse sent out a lineup with John-Ford Griffin and Cosby in the corners. Ouch.
Ryan Houston pitched three scoreless innings throwing just 33 pitches. Brandon League came in for the regular save and, unfortunately for the visitors, Rodney Nye The RBI Guy lived up to his newly-created nickname and they went to extra innings. In the top of the 10th, Ryan Roberts singled, stole second, advanced to third on Kevin Cash's throwing error, then scored on Luis Figueroa's third hit of the night, a grounder up the middle.
It must have been "Former Marginal Blue Jays Named Kevin Night" in Durham, as both Cash and Witt started this game for the Bulls. (However, there was no sign of Kevin "I'm Packing Heat" Batiste, "No, The Other" Kevin Brown, Kevin "Instead of Mike Sirotka, Take Me" Beirne or "Please, Make Him Stop" Kevin Frederick.)
New Britain 7 @ New Hampshire 0
Two walks in five innings (or 3.6 per 9) for David Purcey might seem high. Or does it seem low? Judge for yourself -- entering last night, he had a mark of 2.9 BB/9 in AA and 6.6 BB/9 in AAA. With the benefit of hindsight, Syracuse was probably a stretch for him, but I suppose the front office wouldn't have promoted him that quickly if they thought he would pitch like he did for the Chiefs. In any event, according to one person in attendance (read on), Purcey was "consistently high and erratic."
Oh, the game? Well...the F-Cats managed only six singles and, obviously, no runs. That's what happens when Matt Garza goes for the other team. More details on this afternoon game come from Bauxite SparrowOD, who was in attendance.
Dunedin 5 @ Sarasota 3
The D-Jays broke through with three in the top of the seventh, but they certainly had their chances before then (they left 11 men on base throughout the whole game). In that inning, it was anything but power, with four ground ball singles and a wild pitch leading to the three runs. Aaron Mathews, Ryan Patterson and Chris Gutierrez all had two hits and Christian Snavely reached safely three times, scoring twice.
T.J. Gornati pitched three shutout innings in relief for the win.
West Michigan 5 @ Lansing 1
Aaron Tressler, who has been excellent this year for Lansing, was doing fine, really, until he met up with Justin Justice. (That's not a superhero's secret identity, by the way -- it's actually the guy's name.) Justice's third homerun of the year changed the score from 1-0 to 4-0. Top draft pick Cameron Maybin stole two bases previous to the HR and scored on a double; there's your fourth run.
Josh Bell's triple led to the only run for the Lugnuts. He scored on a groundout.
Auburn 1 @ Mahoning Valley 5
If I still listened to the FAN, I might think of Mike Wilner when seeing Mahoning Valley's 5 runs, 9 hits and 0 errors in the boxscore. Of course, it means nothing to me now, but it meant something to the Doubledays, as they never even sniffed the lead in this one. No extra-base hits -- sound familiar? -- and pitching that can only be described with that all-purpose word, "meh."
Whoever Nick Pesco is, he pitched six scoreless last night for the winners, striking out seven and allowing a mere four hits.
Bristol 4 @ Pulaski 8
It's become a tradition lately for the P-Jays game to go unupdated for several minutes at a time. Last night was no exception. Three hits for leadoff hitter Chris Emanuele, as well as two runs scored, an RBI and a walk, paced the offense. Joshua Lex scored after walking in the first, drove two home with a single in the second and doubled home another in the fourth.
Three Star Selection
3. Chris Emanuele
2. Joshua Lex
1. Luis Figueroa
One last thing. Does anyone remember that odd rumour during the Season From Hell that had Carlos Delgado going to LA for Juan Encarnacion and "Brian Morris"? Well, we all had a good laugh when it turned out Morris didn't exist and Delgado didn't go anywhere. I don't know how I missed this last month, what with all of Pistol's draft coverage, but the Dodgers drafted a Bryan Morris -- note the spelling -- in the first round this year. Funny how things work.
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