Joseph Sullivan hit his 6th home run of the season in the second game of Corpus Christi’s doubleheader.
The freak injury no doubtedly set this kid back a bit, but he may be starting to figure it out. The size, speed, arm, power combo could be special if all the tools continue to develop. Haven’t looked much into his K% or whiff rates. If he can improve his stock and become a legit prospect, that would be an impressive job by the development team and a good overslot pick by the Dana Regime. I personally pretty much had written this kid off last fall.
It's getting close to time to start worrying about Ethan Frey. he's 116 pa into the season in a league he should be putting up big numbers in if he is truly an elite prospect. So far he's putting up a .220/.319/.290 slash line and there's not much evidence it's bad luck. The good news is he isn't swinging and missing a ton and he's still playing CF so there's some defensive value tehre, but he's taking too many called strikes and his contact quality appears to be trash. Hopefully he figures something out pretty quick because otherwise his stock will start to freefall. On the flip side, I am slowly getting very excited about Tyler Whitaker. He's walking at about double the rate he has previously in his career and he's striking out significantly less. He has yet to hit a HR but based on his babip and the fact that hes hit a few doubles I think he's hitting the ball hard. If he starts to put a few balls over the fence without his k/bb rates changing, he will start to project as a really good prospect. Quite a rebound for him.
Asheville only has 10 position players on their roster right now. Their bench tonight consists of Caden Powell and 3 backup catchers. I’m hopping Nick Monistere gets promoted up there soon.
Pitchers in the lower levels have been very suspect this first 6 weeks. They usually have to sort through a lot of guys before things settle in but it sure seems like Asheville and Fayetteville have had a lot of noncompetitive games.
Ethan Pecko threw 3.2ip scoreless with 5k and 1bb. He is looking tough. He threw 60 pitches tonight so I think they are building him up slowly. But he is on track to break in this season. Could be a good one.
Im thinking he’ll be called up as soon as he’s stretched out. Dana is clearly on the warm seat and the pitching has been so shallow, he’s going to want to show he can get his talent that he drafted to contribute
Who knows but it kind of makes sense that Pecko might be ready to come up right when they are finally ready to cut the cord on McCullers. I would be pretty stoked about a 2nd half 6 man rotation of Brown, Arrighetti, Burrows, Imai, Lambert, and Pecko.
Joseph Sullivan led off Corpus Christi’s game with his 7th home run of the year. Trevor Austin has gone deep twice for the Hooks to give him 6 blasts on the season. And Jason Schiavone homered again for Asheville. He now has 13 homers on the year.
One thing I noticed is that Schiavone also has 9 steals. I wonder when the last time a minor leaguer had 30+ HR and 20+ SB in a season. I would bet it’s never been done by a player who played most of his games at catcher.
They picked up Rhylan Thomas today. He's not a bad player. Might be a AAAA type, but he's better than he is showing so far this year so who knows. Never got much of a chance with Seattle.
Nehomar Ochoa remains hot for Fayetteville as he’s 4-5 with an RBI double and an RBI single; he has four multi-hit games in his last five. Xavier Neyens has drawn 3 walks tonight and he has scored on both of Ochoa’s RBI hits.