21 year old lefty Angel Gonzalez (signed 2007) pulled after 6 innings of no hit ball in the first game of a double header. Team lost the no-no in the 7th, but won the game. LINK
ETA: Bubby Williams also with his 3rd HR of the season (4 games).
I was able to make the drive up to Kingsport for the games tonight. Gonzalez had a very rough start but recovered nicely. He threw mostly fastballs (about 75%). He was supposed to have a pitch limit of 75 or 5 innings. However, the minor league pitching coordinator, Britt Burns, was in the house and gave permission for one more inning but not the second extra inning.
The hits given up by Hagen were hard line drives.
The homers:
Medrono's - huge fly ball that was half way up the light standard when it went over the fence in straight away left.
Nideffer - solid fly ball out to left center.
Williams - hooking line drive down the left field line.
Nideffer made a nice play on a high throw at first. Nothing remarkable about the defense in the first game.
Nash is struggling at the plate. Had one good at bat where he battled back from being down 0-2 and worked a walk but otherwise, not very impressive.
In game 2, the starter was Alaniz not Castillo as MILB is reporting. He went deep in the count alot and reached his pitch count in the 2nd. He had several at bats were batters kept fouling pitches off. It also appeared he was tipping one of his pitches. The first inning two of the hits were on the nose and pulled into right field. It appeared they knew what was coming.
The Homers:
Wallace - nice opp. field shot to right
Nideffer - fly ball to straight away left
Wallace DH both games. He gave several long looks at umps on called pitches. Not the way to win friends when you will be spending time behind the plate this year.
Alaniz's balk was due to his foot getting caught on something on the mound. He never released the ball. Gonzalez had a similar issue in the first game. His foot caught something and the pitch went to the back stop. Luckily no runners were on at the time.
Bullock's move to first is a borderline balk every time. He got away with 3 throw overs before being called for a balk.
Also not reported in the box score is that Mike DiFelice (K-Mets manager) was tossed during line up exchanges for the second game. He wasn't on the bench during the game and didn't coach 3rd. But he did come out of the tunnel to argue that Bullock was balking. Umpire backed him toward the tunnel and he went. The next move Bullock made was called a balk.
We left during the top of the 5th.
The Astros players were doing a lot of cat call style whistling back and forth. It seemed it was their style of chatter. A fielder would whistle and players on he bench or in the bullpen would whistle back.
This team looks better than several of the last few years teams.
