Colorado Springs 2 Las Vegas 9
Jesse Chavez didn't appear to be too disappointed in not getting promoted to the big leagues. Chavez pitched 5.2 innings giving up one run on three hits with seven K's.
Anthony Gose got the Jays on the board very quickly, he doubled to lead off the game, stole second and scored on a sac fly from Adeiny Hechavarria. A sac fly scored the 51's second run in the second inning, Travis d'Arnaud's fly brought in Moises Sierra who had singled. The 51's scored four runs in the fifth inning to put the game away, d'Arnaud, Travis Snider and David Cooper each doubled in the inning, although Snider's was a cheap double. From there the 51's tacked on three more runs and the bullpen held Colorado in check.
Cal Jays has a first person report on this game in yesterday's MLU.
Notes:
Jesse Chavez has a 3.32 ERA, pretty good for the PCL.
Baseball is a long season and players stats at start of the year get magnified. I looked at the last ten days OPS for a few Las Vegas hitters:
Snider 1371 (Snider has a 16 game hit streak to lead the league)
Gose 784
d'Arnaud 726
Hechavarria 572
Those numbers explain why we need 30 to 40 games before we should pay attention to the stats.
New Hampshire at New Britain - Postponed
Dunedin actually outhit the Yankees 8-6 but Tampa had a couple of big flys while the Jays had none. John Stilson only pitched two innings in this game and he gave up one run. The bullpen duo of Scott Gracey and Dayton Marze gave up five runs between them.
Dunedin scored in the first inning on an RBI single from Kevin Nolan but then the Yankees went to work. Trailing 4-1 in the sixth Kenan Bailli tripled in a couple of runs but that was as close as Dunedin could get. Jon Talley was 2-2 with two walks and among players with 50 at-bats he leads the team in OPS. Kevin Nolan is second as he has a nice season going.
Notes:
The "Lansing trio" haven't found the measure of the FSL yet. Their OPS' are:
Marisnick 739
Knecht 702
Crouse 653
Knecht also leads the team with 23 K's, a K rate of 36%.
Kevin Ahrens is hitting .208.
The Lansing hitters had only two hits in this game, both doubles by Carlos Perez and Kevin Pillar. David Rollins pitched five shutout innings, three hits and four K's. Kramer Champlin gave up the two runs in relief to take the loss.
Notes:
Name the Lugnut pitcher with the highest (worst) WHIP on the team? Answer below.
The three Lugnut hitters with an OPS over 800 are Kevin Patterson, Chris Hawkins and Jon Berti, although Patterson has only 33 at-bats. KC Hobson has an OPS of 608 as he repeats A ball and he may lose at-bats to Patterson at some point. Hawkins has only 9 K's in 60 at-bats.
Kellen Sweeney is hitting just .231 but he has just 8 K's in 52 at-bats so he is holding his own. After missing a lot of time in 2011 it would be fine for Sweeney to be average in the first half and hopefully take off in the second half.
The Lugnut pitcher with the highest WHIP is Noah Syndergaard at 1.46. 1.46 is not terrible and it is a testament to the strong pitching on the team that 1.46 is the highest. Justin Nicolino is at .67 and Aaron Sanchez is at .89. In nine innings Sanchez has allowed three hits, Nicolino five. Sanchez falls behind in OPS due to his five walks to one for Nicolino. Syndergaard does lead the team with 17 K's. That sounds like a hard throwing pitcher who throws it down the middle and challenges the hitters.
Three Stars:
3rd Star: Dave Rollins
2nd Star: Jon Talley
1st Star: Jesse Chavez
More Notes:
In case you missed it over the weekend Randy Boone made his first start in a year for Dunedin. I would expect him to make several more starts there before being pushed up to New Hampshire. Shane Opitz was promoted to Lansing from extended. Opitz played well for Vancouver last season.
