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#BlueJays affiliates were 2-for-6 Tuesday with Buffalo and Dunedin getting the wins. Vancouver and the GCL boys had the day off. #LetsGoBlueJays


Buffalo 5 Rochester 3

A three-run home run by Santiago Espinal off Brusdar Graterol provided the margin of victory. Socrates Brito socked one out of the yard off Kohl Stewart for the 15th time of the year. Andy Burns had two hits. Anthony Alford was 0-for-4.

Anthony Kay had five Ks over 6-2/3 shutout innings in which he gave up five hits and two walks. He also produced six outs on the dirt for the win. Zach Jackson stranded two runners for Kay and struck out one over 1-1/3 innings. Justin Shafer served up a two-run dinger among three runs allowed in the ninth.


Trenton 2 New Hampshire 0

A two-run triple by Langley, BC native Kellin Deglan off Hector Perez produced all the scoring in this one. Perez lasted four innings and gave up two hits and three walks but punched out seven. Joey Pulido whiffed four to overcome two hits and two walks over two shutout frames. Jake Fishman walked four batters but still managed to put up two zeros on the linescore thanks in part to two whiffs.

Josh Palacios had two hits and stole his 14th base in 19 tries. Kevin Smith and Logan Warmoth had the other base knocks but are hitting just .210 and .195 respectively.


Dunedin 3 Fort Myers 2 - Game 1 (7 Innings)


Ryan Noda's 13th home run of the season in the sixth inning was the difference. Samad Taylor singled, walked and scored a run. Reggie Pruitt was 1-for-3 with an RBI.

Maximo Castillo conceded just one unearned run over 5-1/3 innings on four hits while striking out five to improve to 11-5. Jackson Rees also had an unearned marker on his line but got the final five outs for the save. His ERA is at 1.02.


Fort Myers 5 Dunedin 2 - Game 2 (7 Innings)

Kevin Vicuna had the only two-hit game for Dunedin. He has a hit in three straight after returning from his two-game trial with Buffalo. Reggie Pruitt extended his hitting streak to eight with a base hit in four at-bats. Demi Orimoloye walked and stole his 22nd base.

Graham Spraker scattered three hits and three walks over four shutout frames. Maverik Buffo was goosed for four runs (three earned) over two innings for the loss.


Great Lakes 12 Lansing 9

The funky batting line of the night was turned in by Griffin Conine with a 1-3-1-1-4 (AB-R-H-RBI-BB) with his hit being a double. Tanner Kirwer was 1-for-3 with two walks and two stolen bases, stealing second and third to give him 17 on the year. Yorman Rodriguez and John Aiello had the only two-hit games.

Cobi Johnson was jolted for a converted touchdown over four frames with four of the runs being earned, serving up two home run balls. Will McAffer was whacked for three more runs, including a long ball, over two frames.


Burlington 10 Bluefield 4

Davis Schneider is enjoying his best stretch as a professional. He has four two-hit games, including Tuesday, and has reached base in 10 straight to give him a .315 batting average. Leonard Jimenez had two hits to give him a .289 BA. Miguel Hiraldo was 1-for-4 but committed two errors at second to give him 16 on the campaign.

Sam Ryan surrendered a home run and four runs in total on seven hits, a walk and a hit by pitch but he struck out five. Aldo Ovando got stiffed with the loss with an unearned run allowed over two frames. Yunior Hinojosa was hijacked for five runs (three earned) over two innings.



Linescores


*** 3 Stars!!! ***

3. Griffin Conine, Lansing

2. Maximo Castillo, Dunedin

1. Anthony Kay, Buffalo
A. Kay More Than A-Okay! | 29 comments | Create New Account
The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
hypobole - Wednesday, August 28 2019 @ 12:23 AM EDT (#380516) #
Correction on the Buffalo recap. Espinal's 3 run homer came off Brusdar Grateral. Kohl Stewart served up the Brito HR.
dan gordon - Wednesday, August 28 2019 @ 12:51 AM EDT (#380517) #
Kay is starting to look like a good candidate for the 2020 rotation. Since the trade, in 33 1/3 IP with Buffalo, he has an ERA of 1.89, is striking out more than a batter an inning, and opponents are hitting just .217 against him. He was dominating at AA early this season, and had a few rough starts in AAA pre-trade, which might have made the difference in Toronto being able to get him along with SWR in the Stroman trade. Speaking of Stroman, he had another mediocre start for the Mets Tuesday, giving up 4 earned runs in 6 innings, and has an ERA of 4.91 with the Mets.
Glevin - Wednesday, August 28 2019 @ 02:26 AM EDT (#380521) #
Stroman is who he is which is a good pitcher with a FIP in the 3.70-3.90 range. He'll be fine. The return for the Jays is looking great right now though (after less than a month). I don't think I ever remember a period where Jays pitching prospects seemed to be so on outing after outing.

Some other prospect thoughts...

BA chat about Groshans
"Ben Badler: If he just stays on the field, I think we're talking about a top 25 overall prospect in the minors at this time next year"

The Jays prospect depth has done what we all hoped and is pretty good even after Vladdy, Jansen, and Bichette have graduated. I have the next tier (of guys I think are really interesting/promising) something like:
1-Pearson
2-Groshans
3-Martinez
4-SWR
5-Manoah
6-Moreno
7-Hiraldo
8-Pardinho
9-Kay
10-Kloffenstein
11-Williams
12-Kirk
uglyone - Wednesday, August 28 2019 @ 09:20 AM EDT (#380527) #
"Kay is starting to look like a good candidate for the 2020 rotation."

At age 25 next year, he kind of has to be, if he's anywhere close to the kind of prospect people think he is.
cascando - Wednesday, August 28 2019 @ 10:13 AM EDT (#380534) #
Kay was a first round pick out of college in 2016 and then missed all of 2017 because of TJ surgery. This is only his second year of actually pitching in the minors and he looks like he might be ready.
bpoz - Wednesday, August 28 2019 @ 10:32 AM EDT (#380536) #
I see Kay as part of the 2020 wave arrival of pitchers.

Some like SRF and Murphy will be burning their 2nd option. Kay and Zeuch would burn their 1st.

Hopefully Pearson sticks right away.
Gerry - Wednesday, August 28 2019 @ 11:43 AM EDT (#380539) #
The forgotten man, Jon Harris, started and pitched one inning for the GCL Jays today.
jerjapan - Wednesday, August 28 2019 @ 01:23 PM EDT (#380549) #
Harris strikes me as a guy in need of a fresh start.  Kay is an exciting rotation option next year though, despite the age - he's got the first round pedigree, 2 seasons of good results and he's at 131 IP and counting.  Perhaps he's more of a mid/back of rotation starter, but the 2 guys we got for Stroman certainly are showing some legit helium.
I'm interested in seeing Rees in AA - he's reminding me a bit of Danny Barnes at the moment. 

Is Ryan Noda still a prospect in people's eyes?  He's spent time on Pipeline's top 30, although he slipped off following the draft and the trade deadline, but I think Dunedin is suppressing his bat a bit - despite the underwhelming slash line, he's still got a wRC+ of 135.  Fangraphs had him outside of their top 34 in February and called him a 'below-average athlete' - although his career 34 SB vs. 10 CS makes me wonder if that is entirely fair. 


ayjackson - Wednesday, August 28 2019 @ 03:55 PM EDT (#380559) #
Pairing Pearson up with an opener next year (Mayza?) would be a good way of keeping around 155 IP.

I didn't envision him opening 2020 with the Jays 5 months ago.
ramone - Wednesday, August 28 2019 @ 04:15 PM EDT (#380562) #
Jays are sending Kevin Smith, Cullen Large and Logan Warmoth to the AFL, along with 4 yet to be determined pitchers.

https://www.mlb.com/news/2019-arizona-fall-league-rosters?t=mlb-pipeline-coverage

#2JBrumfield - Wednesday, August 28 2019 @ 04:25 PM EDT (#380563) #
Correction on the Buffalo recap. Espinal's 3 run homer came off Brusdar Grateral. Kohl Stewart served up the Brito HR.

Noted and corrected.

The latest C's Chat with Jared DiCesare is now available for your reading pleasure.
ramone - Wednesday, August 28 2019 @ 04:49 PM EDT (#380565) #
The GCL is shutting down early due to the hurricane

https://twitter.com/jjcoop36/status/1166813447109193728?s=20
lexomatic - Wednesday, August 28 2019 @ 05:02 PM EDT (#380568) #

Is Ryan Noda still a prospect in people's eyes?
He had to show last year's power and eye, and both have fallen off.  He could get back on track but right now he's trending the wrong way and looks to be at best a 1B/OF bench player  - a lesser version of Biggio. His Sb could be all deception and technique - which isn't useless - but it's hard to call him a below-average athlete not having seen him.
I mean his season still works out to a 135 wRC+ which is 31st in all of A+ for 150+ AB.  14 of those players are roughly the same age or older.
scottt - Wednesday, August 28 2019 @ 05:55 PM EDT (#380573) #
Murphy? Merryweather? Diaz? Perez?
scottt - Wednesday, August 28 2019 @ 05:57 PM EDT (#380574) #
Or pairing him with a feature pitcher ever other start.
PeterG - Wednesday, August 28 2019 @ 06:23 PM EDT (#380578) #
Don't see an opener or a pairing for Pearson. He won't learn to be a major league starter. I don't like the opener much and don't think Jays do either. We are seeing it now as a matter of necessity. Hopefully, it is not required in 2020.
Shoeless Joe - Wednesday, August 28 2019 @ 08:10 PM EDT (#380591) #
Griffen Conine now has 6BB and only 1 K in his last 15 plate appearances, he's clearly working on his discipline. Actually in his last 10 games plus tonight he has a 27.3 BB% and a 20.5 K%.
Gerry - Wednesday, August 28 2019 @ 09:43 PM EDT (#380594) #
The Vancouver Canadians and Adam Kloffenstein are on Sportsnet Pacific tonight at ten. Set your PVR's.
greenfrog - Wednesday, August 28 2019 @ 09:48 PM EDT (#380596) #
Moncada was able to get his K rate below 30% and he's now roughly a 5 WAR player.

Gallo has been a valuable player (3.4 so far this year in only 70 games) despite having almost a 40% K rate in the majors.

Strange times. It will be interesting to see how Conine ends up doing. He does seem like a player who could go either way -- flame out or refine his game and become an above-average major-leaguer (or something in between).
dan gordon - Wednesday, August 28 2019 @ 10:49 PM EDT (#380598) #
Watching some of the Vancouver game. Kloffenstein is pitching, and he looks great. Has a beautiful 12-6 curveball that he throws for consistent strikes, and he locates his sinking fastball down at the knees or on the inner/outer edge of the zone very well. There's no speed gun, but the announcers will occasionally say the speed of the fastball, and it is in the 92-95 range typically, and they said he touches 96. Just looks like a really polished pitcher. You'd never know he just turned 19. They are talking about how he makes notes on the various hitters and gives the other guys on the staff advice on how to approach them. Some of the opposing hitters look helpless against him. Extremely impressive.
scottt - Thursday, August 29 2019 @ 08:07 AM EDT (#380601) #
It's a pitch count issue. Either they limit him below 5 innings per start or they shut him down early.
I don't see them taking chances with him. I'm pretty sure he'll want to get wins. That's just expected.
Not starting the game is a huge hit on the ego. I don't think he'd go for that either.

scottt - Thursday, August 29 2019 @ 08:23 AM EDT (#380604) #
Vancouver won 8-7. They are still 3 games back of Tri-City with 3 games left to play.
I'm not sure about a tie breaking rule. I doubt they'd play an extra game.

Mike Green - Thursday, August 29 2019 @ 12:05 PM EDT (#380613) #
Thank you for that report, Dan.  He sounds like a young, exciting arm with a mature approach. 
greenfrog - Thursday, August 29 2019 @ 12:20 PM EDT (#380614) #
Groshans and Kloff was quite a coup for Steve Sanders at the top of the 2018 draft. Let’s hope both players are fully healthy in 2020 and beyond.
Nigel - Thursday, August 29 2019 @ 12:32 PM EDT (#380615) #
I was at Kloff's game last night. It was my second viewing of him this year. I saw him earlier in the season and he appears to have made big strides in him command (his control has always been solid) since then - that's impressive. Dan's summary is bang on. It's actually the Halladay repitoire almost to a tee (I'm not saying that he's Roy Halladay). He will be an interesting test case of the "sinker is dead" theory because, just like Halladay, everything with Kloff works of a 92-94 sinker which he commands extremely well and has lots of movement.
Mike Green - Thursday, August 29 2019 @ 12:50 PM EDT (#380618) #
Wasn't Halladay's curve more lateral and less vertical? 

I wonder how the repertoire will play at higher levels with everything moving up and down and not much side-to-side.  I think that you'd need to be able to pitch up and in consistently to prevent batters from hanging over the plate and golfing. 
Nigel - Thursday, August 29 2019 @ 12:58 PM EDT (#380619) #
I agree that Halladay's curve probably had more lateral movement than Kloff's. Kloff's arm angle looks a bit higher than "post-fix" Halladay. Kloff's fastball looks to have similar (although, again, maybe not as much) arm side run to Halladay's though. Only guessing, but I would think the thing to watch will be how lefty sluggers hit off him as he moves up.
dan gordon - Thursday, August 29 2019 @ 07:08 PM EDT (#380634) #
After watching Kloffenstein for only a couple of batters, I thought I was watching Chris Carpenter. His curve looks exactly like Carpenter's. That would be a very nice outcome, Carp had 35 WAR for his career.
bpoz - Thursday, August 29 2019 @ 08:01 PM EDT (#380639) #
Thanks to all for the Kloff analysis.
A. Kay More Than A-Okay! | 29 comments | Create New Account
The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.