Team Results
Round Rock goes 3-3 in week #2 as they put their hittin’ shoes on.
The Express hitters had a couple more of those double-digit strikeout games in ’em at the beginning of the week (making it 10 out of the first 13 games of the season they’d reached that level). But once they got that out of their system, it was off to the races. The club scored 32 times in the next 4 games and pumped out an average of just over 12 hits per game. For the entire week/6-game period, RR hit at a .290 clip. Obviously, the 15-run/22-hit affair on Sunday has a wee bit of an impact on the numbers.
For the season, the Express moves up into 11th place in the league with a .263 team BA. Mebbe because RR ranks 6th in the PCL with 17 yacks, their 5.4 average runs scored per game puts ’em in 7th place.
While the hitters were heading in the right direction, the pitching was going south. RR hurlers had a collective 4.98 ERA in week #2 versus 3.45 ERA for week #1. It’s tempting to point the finger at the castoffs from other organizations who’ve been added to the roster at a furious pace of late as the reason for the decline, but they (David Lee aside) actually acquitted themselves rather well during the week.
For the year, RR now ranks 7th in the 16-team PCL with a 4.02 ERA.
Maximum Overdrive
RHP Chris Sampson. In his 2 starts in week #2, Chris went 12 innings and yielded 5 runs on just 9 hits. Granted, not superstar numbers but still very solid. Overall, he’s allowed just 18 hits in 21 IP (4 starts) with a very cool 16:1 strikeout to walk ratio. And his 6-8 performance at the plate thus far is just a little icing on the cake.
OF Charlton Jimerson. Despite the golden sombrero on Sunday, he did reduce his whiffs in week #2. They’re still horrible (about 1 every 3 ABs) but it is down substantially from week #1. Chewy hit .345 this week and is currently on a 5-game hitting streak. He’s at .295/.313/.590 for the season.
INF Joe McEwing. Had hits in 5 of the 6 games and for the week batted .381 with 5 RBIs.
Stuck in Neutral
C Hector Gimenez. This half of the Hector/Humberto catching platoon (they’ve been alternating games) went 2-16 on the week and drops to .214/.267/.238 for the year.
2B Brooks Conrad. Hit just .136 (3-22) in week #2. The 2-5 game Sunday with 5 ribbies is a heckuva way to break out of a mini-slump, though.
Among the PCL Leaders
Jimerson is tied with Felix Pie for the league-lead with 4 triples.
Jimerson and teammate OF Luke Scott are tied for 8th with 4 longballs.
Jimerson’s 31 whiffs are 2nd-most in the circuit.
Scott is tied for 6th with 11 walks.
Sampson is tied for 11th with a 2.57 ERA.
Sampson’s 0.90 WHIP is 5th best.
Other Persons of Interest
LHP Phil Barzilla. The Rice-ex as lefty specialist out of the bullpen for the Astros at some point? Dunno, but the evidence suggests there might be some rocky moments. Last year, lefties in the Texas League hit .358 against him. This season (though obviously the sample size is small) lefty hitters have a .375 BA off him.
Team Results
Frisco’s John Danks (#2 overall prospect for Texas), Thomas Diamond (#3) and Armando Galarraga (#7) are, along with Edinson Volquez at AAA Oklahoma, the top pitching prospects in the Rangers organization. All are considered some of the better pitching prospects in all of baseball. The Frisco trio in 6 games this season against the Hooks (2 starts apiece) have an 0-5 record and have just been pummeled. The threesome’s ERA in the six games is 8.31 with 35 hits allowed in only 21.2 innings.
Much of the beating up occurred this past week as the Corpus offense kicked it into high gear. CC averaged 6.9 runs per game while hitting .329. With some reasonably good pitching, no wonder the club went 5-2 on the week (and all of those games were on the road).
For all of ’06, CC moves from dead last a week ago to 3rd in the 8-team Texas League with a .279 BA. Just the opposite of their “betters” in RR, Hooks’ hitters are toughest to whiff in the TL.
The “reasonably good” pitching referred to above was exclusive of the game last Monday, where a trio of CC pitchers allowed Midland 12 runs (11 earned). If you knock out that game, the ERA for the week was 3.06.
For the year, the staff’s 4.38 ERA is good for 4th in the league. Knock out the 2 games in Midland that simply got out of hand (the Monday game and the Sunday game preceding it, where the RockHounds scored a total of 32 runs) and you get a 3.09 ERA for the remaining 15 ballgames CC has played this season.
Maximum Overdrive
RHP Matt Albers. 2 excellent starts during the week (both wins), for a total of 13 innings, produced a 2.77 ERA. In his initial 4 starts this season in his 1st exposure to AA, he has yet to give up more than 2 runs in any of them and has gone at least 6 innings in each.
CF Josh Anderson. Aided by Sunday’s 5-hit game, Josh hit .469 (15-32) in week #2 with 9 runs scored. We even think we saw him walk 3 times during the week, which wouldn’t be a big deal ‘cept that’s triple the number of times he did it in week #1.
OF Hunter Pence. Slowed down off his red-hot pace but still hit .300 (9-30) for the week with 6 RBIs. Now at .348/.392/.725 on the year.
C/1B J.R. House. Jeez, this is almost getting boring. Almost. Hits in all 7 games for the week, hits in all 17 games this season. You know you’re going good when you hit .400 (12-30) for the week and that actually brings your BA down from where it was previously. Drove in 8 runs. Now at .417/.442/.611 for the season.
SS Ben Zobrist. Hit .423 (11-26) for the week and scored 9 runs. Remember the comment last time that it was odd that he’d only drawn 2 walks? Forget that crap as this week he worked 9 of them suckers. For the year, he’s now in his typical position of having more walks (11) than strikeouts (8). Entering ’06, his career totals were 127 walks versus 83 strikeouts.
C Kevin Davidson. Went 5-10 at the plate during the week, highlighted by that 2 HR/4 RBI game Sunday.
RHP Jon Skaggs. The former #1 pick and former Rice star had 2 appearances during the week, totaling 5.1 innings with no runs and only 1 hit allowed. Not bad for a guy who spent the vast majority of the last 5 years (or what there was of it after injury) as a starting pitcher in the Yankee organization.
Stuck in Neutral
1B/3B Jared Sandberg. After going 0-3 on Wednesday to drop his BA for the year to .128, he disappeared into manager Dave Clark’s doghouse for 3 straight games. Resurfacing on Sunday, Jared went 1-5 while striking out 3 times while the rest of the lineup was treating John Danks and company like BP pitchers. That hit was his only accomplishment for a week in which he went 1-11. For the season, this organizational player (or any other euphemism you’d care to insert in lieu of “roster filler”) is at .136/.208/.182.
Among the Texas League Leaders
Batting average: House at .417 (1st), Pence at .348 (8th) and Anderson at .333 (T-12th).
OPS: Pence (1.117) is 2nd and House (1.053) 4th.
Pence is 2nd in slugging, T-3rd in home runs with 5, 2nd in RBIs with 18 and 1st in triples with 3.
House is T-4th with 8 doubles, T-8th in RBIs with 13 and is 2nd in runs scored with 17.
Zobrist is T-3rd in walks and is T-7th with 14 runs scored.
ERA: Albers is 3rd (1.73) and reliever and RHP Paul Estrada is 10th (3.77).
Albers is T-4th in strikeouts with 21 and is 5th in WHIP at 1.04.
Estrada is 3rd in strikeouts with 22 (in just 14.1 IP) and is 7th in WHIP at 1.12.
RHP Jailen Peguero is T-2nd with 3 saves.
RHP Dave Rollandini is T-3rd in gopher balls with 4 (in just 10.1 IP out of the bullpen).
Other Persons of Interest
RHP Juan Gutierrez. Jinxed him. 8 earned runs on 10 walks and 4 hits over 7 IP in his 2 starts this week.
Team Results
A 4-2 record for the week as Salem pitching makes the difference.
The hurlers’ ERA for week #2 was a very satisfactory 2.89. The fact that they didn’t allow any gopher balls during the week (versus 11 tossed up in week #1) kept everyone but opposition hitters very happy. Though the 3.53 mark for the season is a substantial improvement from where it sat last week, Salem’s overall rank (5th) in the Carolina League ERA chase remains unchanged.
The pitching was definitely needed to offset an anemic offense. Avalanche hitters had a collective .226 BA for the week. They did smack 15 doubles during the week (though just one HR) to lift their league-leading total for the season to 35. The .243 team BA for the season ranks them 5th in the 8-team Carolina League.
The running game has blown a tire. The Avalanche were thrown out on 5 of 6 SB tries in week #2 after having gone 11-3 in that department in week #1. Actually, given the lack of overall team speed, it’s no surprise the numbers have fallen back. It’s also the reason Salem has yet to hit a triple.
Maximum Overdrive
OF Ervin Alcantara. Had hits in all 6 games and hit .400 (8-20) for the week. Has his BA for the season up to .300. Love him to death all you want, but only because you think he’s good to his mother and kind to animals. As a 25-year old, he’s positively ancient by A-ball standards.
1B/3B/DH Neil Sellers. Has dropped off from his torrid early pace but still hit .304 (7-23) for the week with 7 RBIs. He’s currently at .386/.478/.561.
Stuck in Neutral
C Lou Santangelo. A meager .125 BA (2-16) for the week with zilch in the way of RBIs and 7 K’s. For the season, he’s whiffing about once for every 2.8 at-bats which is pretty much where he was career-wise at the start of ’06.
3B Billy Hart. The Astros probably did him no favors this year by jumping him 2 levels to Salem after being limited by back problems to just 10 games and 39 ABs last season at TRC. Coupled with the fact that he was fairly raw to begin with after just 480 ABs during his 3-year career at USC, and the athletically-gifted 5th-rounder just hasn’t seen a tremendous amount of high-level pitching. Went 1-12 on the week and is “hitting” .152/.204/.174 for the season.
2B Drew Sutton. Only managed one hit in 17 ABs during the week, good (or bad, in this case) for an .059 BA. Salem’s leadoff man also didn’t draw a walk or score any runs. Down to a .191 BA for the season.
OF Frankie Caraballo. Went 3-14 during the week and is just 5-37 in his last 10 games. Still hasn’t homered.
Among the Carolina League Leaders
Sellers: 1st in BA, 1st in OBP, 2nd in slugging, 1st in OPS (1.039), 2nd in RBIs (14), 1st in doubles (10) and T-7th in runs scored.
OF Beau Torbert is tied for 4th with 5 doubles.
ERA: LHP Troy Patton (0.68), RHP Chad Reineke (2.70) and RHP Jimmy Barthmaier (2.95) rank 1st, 10th and 14th respectively.
Barthmaier, Reineke and Patton are all in the top ten in strikeouts.
Reineke is 4th in WHIP at 0.90.
Other Persons of Interest
Felipe Paulino. It was just one game so we’re not gonna elevate him to the top list just yet. But the performance Friday night against one of the better-hitting clubs in the Carolina League was impressive. Allowed just one earned run on 4 hits over 6 IP.
Team Results
A 3-3 week saw the pitching drop off some (3.98 ERA in week #2 versus last week’s 2.97) and the hitting improve slightly (.259 BA versus .251 in week #1). Hitting-wise, the Legends now rank 8th in the 16-team Sally with a .254 BA. They’re also middle of the pack in runs scored, home runs and doubles. Lex is one of the better running clubs in the league, having stolen 23 out of 29 bases. The mound staff has fallen to 6th in the SAL with a 3.34 ERA. Their 1.41 collective WHIP is one of the worst in the league.
Maximum Overdrive
2B Eric King. Had hits in all 5 games he played in during the week with a .450 BA (9-20). Not blessed with a lot of pop, Eli Iorg’s Tennessee teammate has put up decent numbers (.400/.466/.460) thus far.
C J.R. Towles. Hardly slowed down this week as he went 6-13 (.461 BA). Accordingly, his numbers for the season to date (.474/.545/.684) look much as they did at the end of week #1.
1B Ole Sheldon. Like Towles, showed little in the way of droppage in week #2 by hitting .389 (7-18) and also walking 5 times. Five of his seven hits were singles, with two doubles.
OF Mitch Einertson. He hit .333 for the week (7-21) with just one strikeout and is 6-12 in his last 3 games.
RHP Sammy Gervacio. The 21-year old Dominican reliever’s ERA of 0.00 through 7 games (11.2 IP) will increase quickly and substantially if he doesn’t get his walk rate down. He’s handed out 6 to date, though he has also whiffed 15. Gervacio entered the season with a 1.44 K/IP ratio for his career.
Stuck in Neutral
CF Josh Flores. Like a number of the speedster/leadoff types in the organization, Mr. Flores (.226/.238/.371) has difficulty reaching base unless it’s on a base hit. After having played in 15 of the first 17 games for the Legends, Josh has yet to draw a walk.
RF Eli Iorg. When you have a supplemental 1st-rounder who’s 23 years old, was an advanced D1 player in college and with a strong family pedigree, one kind of expects him to hit the ground running in low-A ball. That of course hasn’t been the case with Eli (.214/.237.286). OTOH, we still are just 2 1/2 weeks into the season. Even with the less than strong start, Iorg has still managed to lead Lexington in RBIs with 11.
SS Tommy Manzella. The Tulane-ex started just 3 games during the week (Wlad Sutil started the remainder of the games at SS) and went 1-10. That lone hit was still exceeded by the number of strikeouts (2). The season tally for the Louisiana native is .073/.170/.098 with 15 whiffs versus 3 hits.
RHP Jamie Gant. Last year’s 29th-round pick out of Mississippi State has given up runs in each of his last 5 outings, thus explaining the not-exactly-flyspeck-size 9.82 ERA.
Among the SAL Leaders
Batting average: Towles at .474 (1st), Sheldon at .404 (3rd) and King at .400 (4th).
OBP: Towles at .545 (1st), Sheldon at .532 (2nd) and King at .466 (7th).
OPS: Towles at 1.230 (2nd) and Sheldon at 1.064 (6th).
Towles is 2nd in slugging at .684.