Batter's Box Interactive Magazine - Sierra Rises High, Bullpens Blow

Buffalo won with a big day from Moises Sierra. Anthony Gose had a good day two. Elsewhere it was bad bullpen day. New Hampshire took a bad, bad loss. They scored in the top of the twelfth in a scoreless game but saw the win slip away on a bases loaded walk and the always exciting walk-off hit by pitch. Dunedin also had a bullpen loss, Andy Burns kept hitting. Jake Marisnick played his first game of the season for Jupiter. Lansing had a tie game in the eighth but lost.

Buffalo 5 Rochester 3

Moises Sierra was in the middle of most of the action on Sunday. In the first inning he singled in Jim Negrych who had ledd off with a double. In the third Ryan Goins and Anthony Gose singled and Sierra again singled to drive in run number 2. The third run had nothing to do with Sierra, Ryan Langerhans homered. After the home run Goins reached on an error, Gose drove him in and then Sierra doubled to make it a 5-1 lead at the time. Sierra had 3 hits, Gose, Langerhans and LaRoche had 2 hits each.

Edgar Gonzalez started and went 5.1. Four relievers backed him up.

Sierra is now hitting .397 and has an OPS just over 1000. He rarely walks, just 4 in 63 at-bats, but doesn't strikeout much either. He is still a bit of a hacker. Some hackers do fine in the major leagues, if they only hack in the zone, other hackers fail in the majors

New Hampshire 1 Reading 2 - 12 innings

This one goes down as a bad loss. First the Fisher Cats scored in the top of the twelfth to take a 1-0 lead. They had to get four hits to get that one run. The teams headed to the bottom of the ninth and Tommy Hottovy was called on to nail it down. But he gave up a lead-off single, followed it with a walk, then after a sacrifice an intentional walk. Bases loaded, one out. Hottovy hit the next batter to tie the game then hit the next batter. That qualifies as a bit of a meltdown and a bad loss.

New Hampshire had to face Jesse Biddle, one of the hottest pitchers in the minors right now. He struck out 10 hitters over six innings and just allowed one hit. Tyson Brummett was just as good, he gave up two hits over six innings. Chorye Spoone and Joel Carreno pitched five perfect innings of relief. Kevin Pillar and Jack Murphy had two hits each.

Dunedin 3 Jupiter 5

Jays fall behind 3-0 early, tie it with 3 in the seventh but Jupiter score 2 in the eighth. Scott Copeland pitched four innings, gave up eight hits and three runs. In the seventh Jason Leblebjian recorded his first hit of the season, a three run home run to tie the game. Dustin Antolin came on to pitch with one out in the eighth and he was hit hard, two runs later the Jays were in a hole. In the ninth Dunedin loaded the bases with no outs but, like the parent club, they couldn't get a hit with runners in scoring position.

Once again Andy Burns had two hits, as did Nick Baligod and Derrick Chung. Jake Marisnick was in the lineup for Jupiter, he was 1-4 in his first game of the season.

Lansing 3 Cedar Rapids 4

Tie game, bottom of the eighth. Wil Browning allowed a two out walk. That was followed by two singles and there went he lead. Alonzo Gonzalez started and pitched six innings. he was charged with three runs on six hits but no strikeouts.

Dalton Pompey tripled in the first run and doubled in the third run. In between Kellen Sweeney, the hometown boy, homered. Pompey and Sweeney had two hits each.

Three Stars

#3 - Tyson Brummett

#2 - Dalton Pompey

#1 - Moises Sierra

Box'zzz

Posted by Gerry on Sunday, April 28 2013 @ 05:41 PM EDT.

Sierra Rises High, Bullpens Blow | 8 comments | Create New Account

The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.

Richard S.S. - Sunday, April 28 2013 @ 09:25 PM EDT (#271166) #

Moises Sierra's sojurn in the Majors started 31 July 2012, until season end. From July 31st until August 31st he was very good. From September 1st on, he truly sucked. Since then, he's hitting (with Buffalo) better than ever (in Las Vegas). His earlier Minor record shows he was injured often. Reports had him changing his training routine and playing his first full years in 2011 and 2012 since maybe 2008 and 2009. If he can defend better, he could be up, possibly highlighting him for a trade. There are very few Prospects in AAA, let's at least look at the ones not named Anthony Gose.

ogator - Monday, April 29 2013 @ 07:00 PM EDT (#271235) #

Escobar, Hechavarria, Alvarez,
Mathis, DeSlafani, Marisnik, Nicolino

Just trying to test myself to see if I could remember that slew of names. I can't see my monitor through the tears. Did anyone notice DeSlafani's era in the Dunedin game tonight? Small sample size...whatever.

China fan - Monday, April 29 2013 @ 07:31 PM EDT (#271240) #

DeSclafani has only had 15 innings this season, so it's a little hard to draw any conclusions so far. But he is 23 years old and still playing in A-ball, so I'm a little skeptical that he's going to amount to much. As for the other players on your list: none of them are doing much so far, except Nicolino. Some of them are injured; some of them are playing poorly in the majors.

There might be good reason to complain about the Marlins trade if Buehrle and Johnson continue to have mediocre seasons -- or if Nicolino and Marisnick turn into excellent major-leaguers. But in the short term anyway, I think the Jays are still the likely winners of this trade.

finch - Monday, April 29 2013 @ 09:05 PM EDT (#271252) #

Hech is back in the minors. AA I believe.

If Andy Burns keeps this pace for another 50-70 ABs...call up to NH?

John Northey - Tuesday, April 30 2013 @ 09:48 AM EDT (#271262) #

Good question... if the two big trades didn't happen what would the Jays have?
Adeiny Hechavarria: 184/231/286 for a 44 OPS+
Henderson Alvarez: injured, has yet to pitch
Yunel Escobar: 164/228/288 46 OPS+ for the Rays - a double bonus, hurts the Rays while not hurting the Jays
Jeff Mathis: on DL all year so far, no PA for the key to the trade
The other 3 are still in the minors.

Mets trade:
John Buck: 241/269/575 for a 132 OPS+ - very similar to JPA's 242/258/558, a little better but not drastically so for this point of the season.
Other 3 in minors (Travis d'Arnaud has played in 12 games hitting 250/429/472 in Vegas, Noah Syndergaard in A+ 3.24 ERA with 3.6 BB/9 and 9.4 K/9, Wuilmer Becerra hasn't played yet)

So basically, outside of prospects there isn't much to want back from those trades. We see 2 SS who are hitting like Izturis is (43 OPS+ for Izzy), a pitcher on the DL, a catcher on the DL, and a catcher hitting like JPA does (all power) for $5 1/2 million more. FYI: Mets have an 86 ERA+ vs the Jays 96 so I wouldn't think Buck is a big plus on defense.

The Houston trade for Happ?
All in minors except for Francisco Cordero (hasn't played) and Ben Francisco (-9 OPS+ for Yankees) and I doubt anyone wants them back. The 5 in the minors were highlighted by Asher Wojciechowski who is in AA at 24 and has a 2.08 ERA 2.4 BB/9 9.3 K/9. Carlos Perez is the only other one to play so far in 2013 hitting in AA 283/356/415).

So the big 3 trades where tons of prospects vanished have yet to produce a ML player (no shock at this point) other than the established ones who, outside of Buck, have sucked hard this year.

ogator - Tuesday, April 30 2013 @ 11:12 AM EDT (#271264) #

One of the attractive and frustrating qualities of this site is that just about every opinion will be greeted with a contrary one. At this point, I think the Blue Jays off-season moves seem horrible. They traded appreciating talent for diminishing talent. They traded cheap almost free players for very expensive ones. For the trades to have been successful, one would expect that the Blue Jay team, in the short term would be very successful and that what they sacrificed was long term potential. Instead, from my vantage point, what they have is a terrible team with (in spite of what the front office says) very little promise and much of the potential talent has been sacrificed. To say that the players the Blue Jays traded are not yet productive, I think, is to completely misunderstand the rationale behind the trade especially from Florida's perspective. Bonifacio, Johnson, Buehrle have made no positive contribution and they cost a ton of money. The Reyes injury is unfortunate. But that money could have been spent more wisely and the team would still have many players with great potential. I don't know how one can justify the trade with a straight face. The team could turn it around. Reyes could bounce back early. But right now this trade seems about as disastrous as it could be.

Thomas - Tuesday, April 30 2013 @ 01:01 PM EDT (#271271) #

"But that money could have been spent more wisely and the team would still have many players with great potential."

There's no guarantee the players would have signed with Toronto. However, it's a legitimate question if the team would look better having submitted higher offers to Anibal Sanchez or Edwin Jackson and signing one of them rather than trading for Buehrle and Johnson and their contracts.

The one move that looks to be a mistake was AA not submitting a realistic winning bid on Darvish. I use "not.. realistic" there because the Jays came in well below the winning bid on Matsuzaka and the pre-posting rumours surrounding Darvish suggested the bid needed to win his services would be around or, more likely, higher than Boston's bid on Matsuzaka. Many Bauxites argued strongly in favour of bidding aggressively on Darvish. While it would have been a risky move, April has demonstrated how much risk is present in every big money move.

greenfrog - Tuesday, April 30 2013 @ 01:22 PM EDT (#271276) #

Darvish has developed nicely under the guidance of Mike Maddux. No guarantee he would be doing as well in Toronto, but it does look as though Darvish was a missed opportunity.

Three other recent IFAs of note that the Jays passed on: Cespedes, Soler, Puig. As Buster Olney noted in his column today, the A's are 93-49 when Cespedes plays. He would look pretty good as the Jays' LF.

Sierra Rises High, Bullpens Blow | 8 comments | Create New Account

The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.