Jordan Romano pitched a seven inning one hitter on Saturday with nine strikeouts. Lucas Harrell returned to AAA with an excellent start of five shutout innings. Chris Rowley had a good start, Sean Reid-Foley did not. Bo Bichette kept on hitting. Bradley Jones notched his first home run for Dunedin.
Buffalo
Lucas Harrell pitched five shutout innings in his first start for Buffalo. Harrell is presumably AAA material unless he keep pitching like this. Former Blue Jay Marcus Walden got he win against the Jays on Sunday. Walden is now starting for Pawtucket and has a 2.01 ERA. Walden was lost on waivers and has moved around some, he is now 28 years old.
Rowdy Tellez had one hit in two games and his average is down to .200. Its almost the middle of June, Tellez needs to start figuring out AAA pitching. He looked like he was heating up a few weeks ago but his batting has slipped back.
Ian Parmley played two games over the weekend and went 1-4 in each. Parmley's average is .304, one of the top ten in the IL, but his OPS is .737 and he is sporting a 25% K rate. That 737 converts to a 600'ish major league OPS so not good enough yet. Buffalo has three hitters in the top ten in hitting. Jason Leblebijian was 3-10 with a home run this weekend. The third hitter in the top ten is Dwight Smith Jr who was 4-11 with a double and a home run.
Jarrod Saltalamacchia was 1-11 in three games at DH over the weekend. Salty now joins Tellez with a .200 average. He needs to pick it up, or the Jays could release him for the second time this season.
New Hampshire
Among the pitchers Chris Rowley was excellent, Jon Harris was good and Sean Reid-Foley was not. Rowley's starts have a deja-vu feel about them. He has allowed one run in each of his last three starts. In his last two starts he pitched seven innings, giving up three hits and one run. Last time out he had eight punch-outs, this time "just" six. Jon Harris went six innings on Sunday and conceded two runs on seven hits. SRF just went three innings with six runs on his file. Baseball players always talk about getting more consistent, that's what SRF is looking for.
Danny Jansen hit his first AA home run on Friday night, two hits total, and he liked that so much he did it again on Saturday. Jansen has a .972 OPS in AA after a .963 OPS in Dunedin. There is no sign he is slowing down. Jansen's K rate has moved up a little, from 10% to 15% but his walk rate has gone up too.
Gunnar Heidt had five hits, three of them doubles, over the weekend to raise his on base by 10 points and his slugging by 20. Overall his OPS is just .704 so there is still work to do. The Fisher Cats had some good hitting over the weekend, Matt Dean and Tim Lopes had three hit games on Saturday. Richard Urena had three hits in two games, Harold Ramirez had four hits in three games.
Dunedin
Jordan Romano was outstanding on Saturday. One run allowed on one hit over seven innings. Romano hit the first batter then gave up his hit. He then retired 18 in a row before hitting another batter. He then got his final three outs including his ninth strikeout. Romano's ERA is 2.18 and his ERA in both May and June is around 1.50. Romano has 72 K's in 66 innings.
Ryan Borucki had a rare bad start on Friday, he conceded seven in less than four innings. Borucki's ERA is 4.55, he had an OK April, a great May, ERA 1.98, and now June's ERA is high with this start.
Bradley Jones has had a slow start to high A. He did pick up a hit in each of the three weekend games including, on Sunday, a three run home run, his first for Dunedin. Jones' batting average is .200, he hasn't figured out high A yet. x
The Dunedin bats were pretty quiet on the weekend, over three games they had just 19 hits and Gregorio Petit had five of those. Max Pentecost went 0-4 on Friday and did not play on Saturday or Sunday. He did catch Friday's game so perhaps he picked up a knock. Cavan Biggio hit his fourth home run on Friday.
Lansing
Lansing had 25 hits in three games but gave up 18 runs to lose two of three. The only starting pitcher not to allow a run was Yennsy Diaz making his first start. Diaz only pitched two innings due to a pitch count of 54.
Bo Bichette broke his hitting streak with an oh-fer on Friday but then picked up five hits over the next two games, three of them were doubles. Vlad Jr had two hits in two games.
Edward Olivares homered in all three weekend games. In total he had four hits, all for extra bases. Olivares is hitting .275 with an OPS of 822.
JB Woodman hit a big three run home run on Sunday to help Lansing get the win. Woodman had a mini hot streak at the start of the week with fewer K's but he had two K's in each of his last three games. Back to normal I guess.
Three Stars
Third Star - Edward Olivares
Second Star - JB Woodman
First Star - Bo Bichette
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