Team Results
Round Rock goes 3-1 in the rain-shortened week.
The hitting, which began to pick up in the middle of week #2, continued at a solid pace in week #3. RR batted .277 during the 4 games and averaged 4.8 runs per contest. Increased HR production was also the order of the day…err…week as the club belted out 8 in those 4 games (versus 17 in the prior 18 games).
For the season, Round Rock has climbed into 8th place in the 16-team PCL with a .262 team BA. The club is now tied for 3rd in the league with 25 HRs. Express hitters still lead the league in K’s with 209. And not much surprise then that the club also lags the rest of the league in drawing the fewest walks (55).
The ERA of the pitching staff has zigged and zagged over the 1st three weeks but came in at a decent 3.82 ERA in week #3.
Overall on the year, the club improved its ERA to 3.90 but remains in 7th place in the PCL. They’re also 7th in WHIP at 1.35. Only 2 teams have given up fewer home runs than the Express staff with just 14 gophers allowed.
Maximum Overdrive
RHP Chris Sampson. Made one start during the week and it was impressive, going 8 innings while allowing just one run. His ERA on the season has fallen to 2.17 and his WHIP is a super-impressive 0.83.
OF Luke Scott. Had a .400 BA (6-15) in the four games of week #3 with a double and 2 longballs. The former Oklahoma State Cowboy is at .269/.387/.551 for the season.
2B Brooks Conrad. 2 longballs and 5 RBIs over the course of the abbreviated week. The Arizona State-ex has 10 runs driven in over his last 5 games. He has 17 RBIs for the season to lead the club.
Stuck in Neutral
OF Charlton Jimerson. CJ’s working it like a yo-yo this season as he bounces between hot and cold. He hit .188 (3-16) in week #3 with an awe-inducing 9 whiffs in those 16 ABs. He picked up 4 whiffs on Sunday to give him a very crowded locker containing 4 golden sombreros he’s received on the season. His strikeout rate currently stands at 1 every 2.3 ABs.
Among the PCL Leaders
Jimerson is still tied with Felix Pie for the league-lead with 4 triples.
Scott is tied for 4th in the PCL with 6 longballs while Jimerson with 5 yacks is tied for 8th.
Jimerson is tied for 1st with 15 extra-base hits.
Jimerson with 42 whiffs trails Dallas McPherson and his 45 whiffs for most in the league. No one else is close to those two.
Conrad is tied for 13th in the league in RBIs.
Sampson is 7th in ERA and 3rd in WHIP.
Sampson’s 0.90 WHIP is 5th best.
Team Results
Combine good hitting with good pitching and what do you get? A 5-2 record for the week.
The hurlers pulled together a 3.26 ERA for the week with the starting pitching doing all the heavy lifting. The rotation had a 2.41 ERA for the week. The bullpen guys were deadweight with a 4.62 ERA during the period.
Season to date, the pitching staff is now tied for 2nd best in the 8-team Texas League with a 4.04 ERA. They are the runaway leader in the league with 211 strikeouts but on the downside have the 2nd most walks with 88. Only 2 clubs have given up fewer HR balls.
Offensively, the club hit at a .281 pace in week #3 which brought their team BA for the season up to .280. That continues to rank them 3rd in the league. CC ranks in the middle of the pack in HRs and extra-base hits.
Maximum Overdrive
RHP Matt Albers. Had just one start during the week, going six innings and giving up only one run. That continues his streak of going at least 6 innings in all 5 starts this season and not yielding more than 2 runs in any of them. The Sugar Land native lowered his ERA for the season to 1.69 after his latest outing.
RHP Mitch Talbot. Had a 2.25 ERA in his 2 starts during the week. Particularly impressive in those outings was the 16 strikeouts in 12 IP.
OF Hunter Pence. Hit .367 (11-30) for the week with 2 doubles and a triple. That’s #4 already in the latter category for Pence, who had just 5 triples in his 2 prior seasons combined. The UTA-ex is currently at .354/.413/.657 for the year.
And we can’t believe the week Pence had in throwing out runners. Not known for a strong arm, Hunter nailed 5 over 7 games (2 at second base, 1 at third base, 1 at home and one doubled off at 1B after making an outstanding catch).
SS Ben Zobrist. The .240 BA for the week (6-25) certainly isn’t gonna impress you. How ’bout the .472 OBP? The Dallas Baptist-ex drew 11 walks during the week, and that’s on top of the 9 free passes he worked in week #2. He’s at .287/.422/.391 with 21 walks versus 12 strikeouts.
RHP Jailen Peguero. 3 of his 4 appearances during the week resulted in saves, giving him 6 for the year. In none of the 4 games did the 23-year old Dominican allow runs, something in common with 4 of his 5 previous appearances. He is repeating the Texas League, having put up a 2.94 ERA for CC last season. If his numbers so far this season are an indication (0.71 ERA, 0.95 WHIP and a 1.42 K/IP ratio), he should be seeing AAA some time very soon.
2B Jonny Ash. Hit .400 for the week (8-20) with 3 doubles. Now has his BA for the season up to .288.
INF Josh Bonifay. Son of Cam was 8-25 for the week (.320 BA) with 3 homers, 2 doubles and 8 runs driven in. Took over the club RBI leadership with 22. Signed as a 6-year minor league FA in the offseason, he’ll be 28 come July.
Stuck in Neutral
RHP Juan Gutierrez. He’s admitted to his mechanics being screwed up, and that’s reflected in his numbers over his last 3 starts: 14 hits and 8 walks given up in 11 IP resulting in 11 earned runs.
Among the Texas League Leaders
Batting average: C J.R. House at .361 (4th), Pence at .354 (5th) and CF Josh Anderson at .330 (12th).
OPS: Pence (1.069) is 4th and House (.958) 11th.
RBIs: Bonifay is 2nd, Pence (21) is T-3rd and House (17) is T-9th.
Runs scored: Pence (23) is 1st, Zobrist (20) is T-3rd, and House (19) is 6th.
Pence is 3rd in slugging, 3rd in extra base hits with 16, T-6th in home runs with 5, 1st in triples with 4 and 9th in OBP.
House is 5th with 9 doubles and 10th in OBP at .411.
Zobrist leads the circuit in walks and is 7th in OBP.
Anderson leads in swipes with 9.
ERA: Albers is 2nd and RHP Josh Miller (3.38) is 9th.
Strikeouts: Reliever and RHP Paul Estrada (29) is T-2nd, Guti (26) is T-6th, Albers (25) and Talbot (25) are T-8th.
WHIP: Albers (1.09) is 4th and Miller (1.21) is 8th.
Miller’s 4 wins tops the league.
Peguero leads with 6 saves.
Walks: reliever Jon Skaggs leads the TL with 17 (in just 16.1 IP), Guti is 5th with 14 and Talbot T-10th with 11.
Team Results
There was an avalanche all right and it was falling straight down on top of Salem as the club goes 1-6 on the week. Manager Jim Pankovits was bemoaning recently that all aspects of his club (pitching, hitting and defense) sucked right now. He’s probably right, but we prefer to put the onus mostly on the offense which provided a pathetic .208 BA for the week and averaged just 2.9 runs a game. For all of ’06, the hitters have fallen to last in the Carolina League with a .233 batting average and rank next to last in runs scored.
The hurler’s ERA for the week wasn’t great (4.11) but you certainly wouldn’t piss on it either. The staff continues to rank 5th in ERA in the 8-team CL, though it’s now risen to 3.70.
Maximum Overdrive
RHPs Chad Reineke and Evan Englebrook. These 2 guys were clearly the weakest links in the starting rotation at the beginning of the season. You wouldn’t have called either a horrible pitcher (in fact we were fairly high on both, particularly Mr. Reineke) but both naturally took a back seat to certain other names in the rotation: Patton, Barthmaier and Paulino. But the two “lesser” pitchers have been far and away the 2 best starting pitchers for Salem to date.
Reineke has a miniscule 0.44 ERA over his last 3 starts, having allowed just 13 hits and 4 walks in 20.2 IP while striking out 19. The Miami of Ohio-ex has his ERA for the season down to 1.88 and his WHIP is just 0.91. Control has been a big problem for the 24-year old in the past (72 walks over 139 IP for his career) but has walked just 6 in 28.2 innings thus far this year. His career K/IP ratio is 1.15 which is about where he is in ’06.
Englebrook is similar to a Reineke in several respects. Both are big guys with Chad being 6’6″ while Evan is 6’8″. Englebrook has also struggled mightily with his command (93 walks in 176 career IP) but has also shown the ability to miss bats with a career K/IP just an eyelash under 1.00. The 8th-round pick in 2004 has also improved his control this season, although not to the extent that Reineke has (9 walks in 24 IP). Evan had an 0.75 ERA in his 2 starts this week and for the year has a 2.25 ERA.
RHP Ryan Thompson. The 23-year old reliever with the prototypical pitcher’s body (6’4″, 220-lb) made 3 appearances during the week and threw a total of 6 scoreless innings. He lowered his ERA for the season to 2.20 in the process.
The organization has gotten a lot of mileage out of this guy, who wasn’t drafted as a college senior out of Division II power Florida Southern (whose alumni include Brett Tomko, Lance Niekro and former ‘stro John Hudek). Signed by the Astros in July of ’04, he pitched at Greeneville that 1st year and put up a 2.25 ERA with a fabulous 33:4 strikeout to walk ratio in 36 IP. He was more hittable last season in Lexington but still put up superb K/W numbers: 76:15 in 72 IP. This season? A mere 15:1 in 16.1 innings.
OF Frankie Caraballo. The righty-hitting Caraballo has been known for swinging hot and cold in the extreme and this week he turned on the heater. Homering in 3 straight games (and having hit zero for the season prior to that), his BA for the week was .304 (7-23). With a couple of doubles added in, 5 of his 7 hits were of the extra-base variety. His numbers for the season are still fairly mediocre (.232/.303/.435).
Stuck in Neutral
C Lou Santangelo. Remains on the list for the second straight week. Hit just .190 (4-21) for the seven-day period with 11 strikeouts. He’s now down to .215/.261/.385 for the season. He and Jimerson may battle all season to see which one has the highest strikeout rate (Santangelo is currently at 1 every 2.4 ABs).
The leadoff spot. Manager Jim Pankovits has used a number of players in that role over the first 3 and 1/2 weeks of the season and just about all have faltered. Beau Torbert, Drew Sutton, Wade Robinson and Edwin Maysonet are batting a collective .211 from the top spot in the lineup.
Among the Carolina League Leaders
1B/3B/DH Neil Sellers: 4th in BA (.313), 5th in OBP (.411), 11th in slugging (.450), 7th in OPS (.861), 4th in RBIs (18), 1st in doubles (11) and T-10th in runs scored (12).
Caraballo is T-5th with 3 longballs.
Santangelo and OF Ervin Alcantara are tied for the league lead with 27 strikeouts.
ERA: Reineke ranks 6th and Englebrook 10th.
Strikeouts: Reineke (31) is 2nd, RHP Jimmy Barthmaier (26) is T-4th, and LHP Troy Patton (22) is 10th.
WHIP: Reineke is 4th and Englebrook (1.08) is tied for 9th.
Team Results
Lexington hitters batted .286 during the week but managed to score only 3.3 runs per game. That combined with a pitching staff that put up an ERA of 5.30 over the seven day period and the Legends might have been lucky to end up with a 3-4 record.
The offense leapt up to 4th in the 16-team SAL with a .263 BA. Lex remains middle of the pack in runs scored, home runs and doubles. The club is 4th in stolen bases with 28 (with a 72% success rate).
The pitchers have fallen to 10th in the league with a 3.86 ERA.
Maximum Overdrive
1B Ole Sheldon. Not only maintained his BA but bumped it up a few notches by hitting .421 (8-19) for the week. Showed some welcome pop during that stretch with 3 doubles and a homer. Now at .409/.518/.591 for the season.
RHP Sammy Gervacio. Remains on the hot list with 3 more scoreless appearances during the week to maintain that perfect 0.00 ERA.
Stuck in Neutral
CF Josh Flores. Still sputtering. Hit just .167 (3-18) for the week. And the leadoff man from Triton JC in Illinois is still looking for that first walk.
RHP Jamie Gant. No more able to get out of his funk than Flores. In his only appearance during the week, gave up 3 runs on 3 hits and 3 walks in just 1.2 innings. That makes it 6 outings in a row in which he’s given up runs and further balloons his ERA to a nice round 10.00.
Among the SAL Leaders
Batting average: Sheldon at .409 (1st), C J.R Towles at .390 (2nd) and 2B Eric King at .356 (5th).
OBP: Sheldon at .518 (1st), Towles at .446 (5th) and King at .422 (8th).
Slugging: Sheldon is 9th.
OPS: Sheldon at 1.109 (2nd) and Towles at .989 (9th).
Other Persons of Interest
SS Tommy Manzella. We’re not about to elevate a guy hitting .161 for the season to the MO list. Manzella, however, does deserve some props for hitting .400 (6-15) for the week with a double, 2 homers and 5 RBIs.
RF Eli Iorg. We hope he bottomed out when he went 0-10 in the early part of the week to drop his BA to a season-low .182. Garth’s son has gone 4-10 since then.
LHP Scott Sarver. The 21st-round pick last season out of Cal State Fullerton already has picked off 3 runners this season since being called up from extended to take Ryan McKeller’s spot on the roster. Of course, with a 1.84 WHIP he’s had lots of practice with runners on base.