Catching Up With the Lugnuts

Monday, April 26 2010 @ 11:39 PM EDT

There was quite a bit of rain in the minor leagues on Monday night. None of it affected the Blue Jays' affiliates. What did affect the affiliates, however, was the absence of games on the schedule. Las Vegas was the only affiliate in action, and they lost what must have been a pretty boring game, especially after Sunday´s thriller.

Sacramento 6 at Las Vegas 5

This game was over by the top of the 3rd inning. Well, not really, since it was still a close game, but after going down 6 to 4 thanks to a poor start from former-former-Jay Zach Jackson, the 51s would only score 1 more run, wasting a fine effort from the bullpen - Steven Register and Sean Henn combined to throw 5 shut-out innings with 5 base-runners.

Offensively, I was pretty excited for Brett Wallace to have a big day after seeing that he homered in his first at-bat, but he went 0-4 with a K the rest of the way. 1-5 with a 2-run bomb is still a good day though, and Wallace is up to 8 jacks on the year. Aaron Mathews and The Big Lubanski also homered, while JPA doubled, walked and K´ed twice in 5 trips.

Three Stars

3. Brett Wallace - 2-run homer

2. Aaron Mathews - solo homer, RBI single

1. Steven Register - 3 shut-out innings, 2 base-runners

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The Fisher Cats' website has a tiny little off-day feature on Darin Mastroianni. Among the key pieces of information contained is that Mastroianni is "picking up where he left off". The article also features a poorly-photoshopped Mastro-Collage that makes it look like his helmet has wings made of the NH logo. That could explain all the stolen bases - as the article points out, Darin had the 3rd-most steals in the 2009 Eastern League despite only playing half a season, and has jumped out to a big lead this year with 11 steals already.

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MILB's official site has articles on their Pitchers and Hitters of the Week. No Junior Jays made the cut, though Canadian and former-possibly-almost-Jay (and now-Phillie) Phillippe Aumont took home Eastern League pitching honours by throwing 17 innings of 1-run ball over the course of the week. Other recognizable names to take home accolades include a couple of Royal Mikes: Montgomery and Moustakas.

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And finally, I thought it would be fun to give a little report on one team in the Jays' organization each week, so let's start with the Lansing Lugnuts. The 'Nuts are 3rd in their division (of 8), with an 11-7 record, 3 games behind Lake County.

Hitters

The big story of the year has been A.J. Jimenez who, after missing the first couple weeks of the season, has been absolutely on fire. Jimenez has hit for average, power, shown good plate discipline, and perhaps most amazingly, has stolen 6 bases in just 6 games. Small sample size warnings obviously apply, but the fact is 6 unbelievable games are already in the books for the soon-to-be 20-year-old catcher (his birthday is on Saturday) and nothing can take those counting stats away.

After Jimenez we've got a bunch of older players: Bradley Glenn, Mark Sobolewski and Brad McElroy are all having fine seasons at the plate but all were born in 1986 or 87 and we'll need to see them at higher levels before we get too excited. Oliver Dominguez, on the other hand, is a just-21-year-old who has gone from a .628 OPS in the GCL last year to an .879 OPS through his first 31 at bats this year. He's got an ISO approaching .200, has walked more than he's struck out, and has 7 steals.

Kenny Wilson has a solid slash line through 17 games, but the 24 strike-outs are worrisome. Sean Ochinko has cooled off since his torrid debut last year while Ryan Schimpf has been mediocre. At the bottom of the table, Ryan Goins, Eric Eiland and Balbino Fuenmayor have been pretty awful.

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