His Name is VAUN! BROWN!!
SF Giants Minor Lines, May 13-15, 2022
The Giants said goodbye to one of the most likable players of recent vintage this weekend, when Mauricio Dubón was sent to Houston in return for minor league 1b/C Michael Papierski, solving a roster crunch that had been looming since the winter. This was a shoe that has long been waiting to drop, with Dubón and Thairo Estrada more or less filling the same role on the team and both without options. The expanded roster in April and the injuries that took three key members of the team off the roster coming out of spring training delayed the inevitable, but it’s always appeared as if Dubón was going to be the odd man out in the roster machinations at some point. With Houston dealing with injuries to both of their starting middle infielders, the time became now. Last week, the Giants swung a deal for a backup middle infielder with options who hits left-handed to boot in Donovan Walton, and that seemed like the writing on the wall for Dubón’s last days as a Giant. But his smile, his enthusiasm, his energetic style of play, and his amazing back story all ensure that his time with the Giants will never be forgotten.
Meanwhile, with the empty spot on the 40-man roster that Dubón’s absence created…
For those of you counting at home, this is the fifth different deal these two teams have made over the past two weeks — a chain of transactions that not only includes Mike Ford going in both directions, after the Giants needed to borrow him for a couple of days, the aforementioned Dubón replacement, and now this gorgeous chain of events:
As part of the deal, the Giants sent Alex Blandino to Seattle, ending yet another NorCal hometown kid story. When the Giants signed Blandino this winter, it seemed like he would be able to work his way into the major league picture, but Blandino has had a miserable time of it in Sacramento this year, striking out in 40% of his plate appearances, hitting just .183, and even struggling with his defense.
The carousel never stops!
Meanwhile, we have a whoooooole lot of Minor Lines to check in on, so let’s get after it. Prepare to see a whopping bunch of this:
HITTER of the Weekend: Vaun Brown (SJ), 5 for 11, 3 HR (10), 3b, 6 R, 6 RBI, 3 BB, SB
PITCHER of the Weekend: Kyle Harrison (Eug), 5.0 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 9 K
Today’s Weekend update is a Free For All. There aren’t many of these, so if you like what you see, why not subscribe to get all There R Giants posts delivered ad-free, straight to your Inbox?
Sacramento split series @ El Paso Chihuahuas (Pads), 3-3
Winning 16-12 on Friday night STATCAST
Losing 9-6 on Saturday night STATCAST
Winning 11-8 on Sunday
Winning the home run battle meant winning the war this weekend in one of the country’s true bandboxes. The two teams pounded out 19 dingers over these three games, and in each of the three games, the winning team whacked at least five big flies.
Pitchers essentially deserve combat pay just for taking part in a series like this, with balls flying out in literally every direction. Not surprisingly, none of the arms who took the mound this weekend really distinguished themselves. Half of the 12 pitchers the River Cats used over the weekend allowed at least one homer, collectively, the Sacramento arms allowed 17 hits with exit velocities over 100 mph. Walks were a pretty common side effect, as guys strove to stay far away from the heart of the zone. Gregory Santos, for instance, was throwing a deadly slider on Sunday, but ended up allowing four runs because he struggled to throw strikes with his fastball. I’m sure that every pitcher on the staff will be happy to wash the dust of the west Texas town of El Paso off their necks.
One guy who continues to have fascinating outings no matter where he pitches is Michael Plassmeyer. On Sunday, Plassmeyer once again racked up the whiffs, producing a game high 15 swinging strikes. He has the 3rd highest Swinging Strike percentage in the PCL, but he also has a 5.80 ERA and the highest FIP (7.83) among qualified starters in the league. I mentioned this weekend that The Athletic’s Eno Sarris has shared his Stuff+ numbers on the PCL with me. I’ll get into this more later in the week, but I can tell you that Plassmeyer scores below average on that tool both in terms of his raw stuff and his location, so it’s a bit of a mystery how he produces swinging strikes at such a high rate.
The flip side, of course, is it was a pretty great environment for the hitters. David Villar, in particular, has simply feasted on the River Cats’ road environments this year. Sacramento’s road schedule has sent them to three of the most hitter friendly stadiums in the country (world?), and Villar has demolished them all. He’s hitting a ludicrous .348/.449/.864 on the road this year, with 10 of his 12 home runs coming in 17 games at Reno, Albuquerque, and El Paso.
It’s hard to know what to make of this exactly, or how predictive it might be, but I guess absent further information, I’ll fall back on my old truism — it’s better to succeed than not. Villar’s 175 wRC+ is currently the top mark in the league, and only one other player is within 20 points of that mark (old friend Kevin Pillar, at 158)! Given that, you know, other players in this league get to hit in these environments, too, and, in fact, some players get to hit there in half of their games, this seems significant!
One bit of information I think I can derive from Villar’s power surge on the road is that he really has evolved as a hitter over the last year. Early in 2021, he was strictly a pull-power hitter, but as he began to hone in on his strike zone more in the second half of last season, he began finding more and more of his power to center and right field. He’s been punishing fastballs on the outer half away lately. Whether that power stroke plays in the humidor-infested, dead-ball laden MLB of 2022 (2023?) is of course, a question worth pondering. It sure plays in El Paso!
Another guy who had a huge series was OF Austin Dean, who went deep three times on Sunday, giving him four home runs on the weekend. Dean has had an interesting start to the season. If you’ve paid attention to the Stats Reviews on Tuesdays, Dean has been among the league leaders in two categories: Isolated Slugging and Fly Ball Rate. That means he’s primed to to do damage on his contact — and he has done that. But he’s also striking out about a third of the time and, unlike most of the Giants acquisitions under Farhan Zaidi, he rarely walks, and has been chasing a lot. When he connects though…
One guy who hasn’t made a lot of hay on the road trips so far is Heliot Ramos, who is hitting just .138/.200/.185 in his 14 road games — despite the great hitting environments. Ramos went just 2 for 10 in the two games he played this weekend, but one of those two hits did leave the yard for his 3rd HR of the year — and first extra-base hit of any kind since April 23. Ramos got a big looping breaking ball in the eyes and belted it 97 mph and 403 feet, just getting over the center field wall.
Newcomer Isan Diaz also enjoyed the friendly confines, belting three homers and a triple in his three games. Probably of more immediate import to the Giants, Tommy La Stella played three games in a row, two of them in the field, and looks to be close to ready to return. La Stella has now played five games over the last six days, mostly going full games and mostly playing in the field. Yesterday, he DH’d, and came out came out after two at bats, though it sounds like he’s feeling good and nearing a return. He went 5 for 11 over the weekend, including a Grand Slam, and has hit .310 in his rehab appearances so far.
It really is something of a mystery how to interpret games played at these Rocky Mountain locations in the PCL. Breaking balls don’t really break, fly balls fly forever, it’s an inherently unfair atmosphere for pitchers and overly kind to hitters. In the end of the series, each team got their slugs in and each team came away with three slug-fest victories.
Let’s get this team back to sea level.
Richmond wins series @ Harrisburg Senators (Nats), 4-2
Winning 6-5 in 10 inn on Friday night
Winning 7-4 on Saturday night
Losing 12-1 on Sunday
But as we’ll continue to see in today’s Big Post — Giants’ affiliates don’t seem to need the benefit of elevation or thin air to produce longballs at a rapid pace.
The Squirrels have been using the tater as their weapon of choice all year, with their 44 home runs leading the Eastern League. Just five teams in Low A, High A, or Double A leagues exceed that total (Triple A has played more games and, generally, better hitting conditions). I’m not sure I would have predicted the Richmond club would become one of the minors’ leading dinger rosters at the start of the year.
Richmond played a crazy, record-setting game on Friday night — and not a good kind of record! Harrisburg starter Steven Fuentes hit five Richmond batters, and seven Squirrels got to first via the ouch in the game. The seven overall HB and five by a starting pitcher were franchise records for both franchises! Early word is that it was the most batters hit in an Eastern league game going back at least as far as 2005. I’ll take a wild stab and say that streak might go back a bit further than that, as well. Those HBP continued to thin a team that was running low on bodies (though more on that in a minute). Franklin Labour was placed on the IL after taking a fastball earlier in the week, and Diego Rincones had to leave the game Friday after being one of the many plunkees (he returned later in the weekend fortunately).
To make matter worse on Friday night, the Squirrels were outhit 14-6 in the game. Yet somehow they came away with an extra innings win. That was because their hits had impact!
Half of the Squirrels’ six hits on the night came from one man — one big, beefy man! Sean Roby opened the night by drilling an RBI double at 112 mph to the wall in CF. He later hit a high fastball so hard it seems like it should have ended up a pile of yarn like in The Natural. As it was, the ball bypassed both the wall and the stands entirely and got in line for a basket of wings out on the concourse. This was truly an assault on a poor ball:
The rest of Roby’s weekend wasn’t quite as successful, as he took hat tricks on both Saturday and Sunday, striking out six times in nine trips to the plate. Ouch!
Richmond’s other big swing of the bat on Friday came from Frankie Tostado, who is now leading the league in hitting at .333. Tostado has started to show more power lately, slugging .571 in the month of May, after posting just a .446 SLG in April. Though he still tends to have a line drive, off-field approach, he’s been looking to turn and yank balls a little more often of late. He has raw power, he just needs to let it eat more consistently.
Though they had a 5-1 lead at that point, Richmond ended up having to steal an extra-innings win with some small ball, bunting Simon Whiteman to 3b and then bringing him home with a Sac Fly. Starter Jake Dahlberg allowed Harrisburg to get back into the game with a three-run 6th inning. Chris Wright ultimately allowed the tying run to score in the 8th on a line drive single, though the two hits he’d allowed before that were pretty cheap. Still, that’s an outcome of his reduced strikeout rate that we’ve seen this year. The more contact you allow, the more chance that it will come back to hurt you.
R.J. Dabovich, on the other hand, had one of his best outings of the year Friday. The big right-hander completely shut the Senators down over the last two innings, retiring six in a row, three of them on strikeouts. Dabovich sent the game to extras with a perfect 9th, and held the Manfred Runner at 2b with a perfect 10th that included two Ks.
Saturday it was more of the same, as Richmond used three more long balls to take a 7-4 win. Brett Auerbach started things off with a two-run homer, his fourth of the year. It was Auerbach’s first home run since missing nearly two weeks with illness. Overall, the multi-positional super sub is just 3 for 25 since returning from that absence. His average is now down to .208, and he’s striking out in about 30% of his PA on the year.
The rest of the offense on Saturday came from the big catcher from UNC, Brandon Martorano, who had the first multi-homer game of his career. Martorano hasn’t had a lot of hit success on the year (.185 batting average), but he’s walked 12% of the time, and his hits tend to be loud ones. Six of his last seven hits have been either doubles or homers — a stretch that dates back to April 28. For the year, BMart has 15 hits, and 10 of them have gone for extra bases. Martorano launched a go-ahead three-run homer in the 6th inning, and added a solo shot in the 9th. That’s three home runs from the catching crew on the night!
Sunday …. well, maybe we don’t need to deal with Sunday’s 12-1 shellacking. The team had just two hits (a Shane Matheny double and a single from Simon Whiteman), and the pitchers gave up… a few more than two hits! Bryan Brickhouse followed up his career best outing earlier in the week with what might have been a career worst. That’s not helping the comeback story!
Anyway, a road win series is always worth celebrating, and the Squirrels hit the road today with the best record in the EL Southwest Division. That’s enough to make it a happy drive! So, let’s wash the Sunday drubbing off our backs with some nifty defense from Matheny.
I mentioned above that the Squirrels were in need of some more bodies, and yesterday they got a couple!
Armani Smith finally made his Double A debut on Sunday (don’t ask…), perhaps freeing up some OF opportunities in Eugene. Hm…..🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
Eugene won series vs. Vancouver Canadiens (Blue Jays) 3-1
Canceled due to, what else, more rain on Friday night
Winning 1-0 in Gm 1 on Saturday night (8 inn)
Losing 12-4 in Gm 2 (7 inn)
Winning 10-0 on Sunday
Eugene’s luck with weather has been atrocious lately. Between Monday-Friday, they played exactly one game, and even that one was split between two nights (Monday and Thursday), both of which were full of delays. In between the start of that game and its completion three days later, the University of Oregon played two full games, undeterred by weather. Go figure.
The Emeralds not only couldn’t get in their hoped for double header on Thursday (because the six innings of suspended play from Monday lasted until past midnight), they were then rained out again on Friday. On Sunday night, the Ems played their first regular 9-inning game in 10 days, and they’ve already had two games canceled from the schedule entirely.. It’s really been ridiculous and has to be incredibly frustrating for the players — but, again, this was an issue that was plainly evident when MLB first started talking about making the NWL a full-season league. Hopefully, every year won’t be like this.
The difficulty in actually getting on the field has somewhat obscured the fact that Luis Matos now hasn’t played since May 4. There’s no word on what is wrong with the Giants #2 prospect, of course — this is an organization that didn’t put Seth Corry on the IL list until he’d already had shoulder surgery, nearly a month after he had been removed in the 1st inning from his last start. With Matos’ unusually slow start to the year, the fear begins to creep into our minds that something physical is lingering. We’ll just have to hope we see him back soon, healthy and productive.
In the meantime, one Emerald who absolutely IS healthy and productive is 20-year-old Kyle Harrison. The young lefty didn’t really have great feel for his slider on Saturday night, but he absolutely overwhelmed Vancouver with his fastball. Touching 96 with the heater, he threw it by hitters repeatedly, and dotted the corners with it when they weren’t swinging. Harrison allowed just two hits, a bloop double and a line drive single, walked just one, and struck out nine in his 5.0 innings of work. That gives him 30 K now in his last three starts, and his 51 K are the fourth highest total in minor league baseball this year.
Harrison picked up six of the nine in this game on called third strikes, as he showed maybe his best fastball command of the year — certainly better than his last two outings. When the Canadiens did take their hacks at it, the swings looked uncomfortable and feeble. As we’ve seen before with Harrison when the slider feel isn’t there, he adjusted by utilizing his changeup more than we’ve seen this year, and got swing and misses with that pitch as well. In 75 pitches, Harrison produced 14 swinging strikes.
With just five runs allowed in 24 innings, Harrison’s ERA is now down to 1.88. Beyond that, four of those five runs came in his one disastrous outing when he clearly wasn’t at his best physically. Outside of that start, he’s been a beast, allowing just one run on 11 hits in 22 innings, while striking out 46 and walking just 7. It’s feeling like this 20-year-old might need a new challenge.
Despite Harrison’s brilliance, the Emeralds had to take Game 1 to extra innings and sneak away with a 1-0 win on a hard ground ball single from Marco Luciano — one of three times the star shortstop reached base in the game. Luciano would be removed from Game 2 after diving awkwardly after a ball in the field, and he didn’t play on Sunday. Again, hopefully it was just a minor tweak and nothing that will keep the talented 20-year-old off the field for long. It seemed more precautionary than serious, but one never knows. He’s off to a great start to the year, hitting .303/.381/.506. Luciano seems to be focusing on hitting for contact this year so far, especially lately, as he has just one extra-base hit this month. Let’s get a good look at his walk off winner:
Randy Rodriguez couldn’t quite match up to Harrison in the nightcap, but he had one of his most impressive outings of the year regardless. The right-hander is still ramping up (he’s yet to throw more than 3 innings), but he’s starting to throw with more authority again. He’s struck out 11 batters in his last two outings (6.0 IP), and had seven swinging strikes in this game. Beyond the numbers, his fastball and slider looked sharper in this start than they have recently. Rodriguez has been hit around a bit more this spring than we saw last summer — he’s already given up more homers than he did all last season (2 to 1). But I still point to the effect that the lockout had on Rodriguez. While his teammates were in minor league camp working out from January 31 on, he wasn’t allowed to report until the major leaguers showed up, a week into March.
After Rodriguez pitched on Saturday, things got messy, as Juan Sanchez and Abel Adames combined on an incredibly ugly 10-run inning, turning a taut 2-1 game into a laugher, and sending the fans who had already survived 14 innings of play to the turnstiles. Shudder!
Sunday night, it was more great pitching — and this time from a source we’ve been waiting to see all year! Ryan Murphy, There R Giants #8 prospect in the system, finally got on the mound for the first time officially in 2022. After being slowed in spring training with a recurrence of back issues, Murphy has ramped back up, cleared all the medical hurdles, and finally got an assignment out of Arizona!
The Giants have chosen to start Murphy out conservatively, with a rehab assignment back in Eugene, where he was last seen starting the championship clinching game last September. The Murphy that Eugene fans saw last night looked a lot like that other guy who won the clincher: he moved his low-90s fastball up and down, spotting it at the knees and at the corner, and then went to his breaking balls as putaway pitches. The curve did most of the damage last night, though he mixed in his slider effectively at times, too. Murphy worked at a fast pace and seemed in command throughout. Oddly, the only two batters who reached base against him were both leadoff hitters — a lined single off a fastball after a long, 9-pitch at bat in the 2nd, and a leadoff walk to start the 3rd. Otherwise, Murphy was carving just like last year. Good to see you back, Ryan!
Jake Wong followed Murphy for four innings, and he, too, carved up the Canadiens with one of his strongest outings of the year. Wong ran his fastball up to 96, consistently beating Vancouver’s hitters with hard stuff and a big looping curve for a specialty pitch, and went four nearly perfect innings, striking out six and allowing just one of the 13 batters he faced to reach base.
The offense was a bit spottier on Saturday before finally breaking out on Sunday. Eugene had plenty of hits over the two games of the double-header, but struggled to get runs across the plate — scoring just two runs over the first 14 innings of play before getting three “garbage time” runs in their final at bats, following the 10 run explosion from Vancouver.
There were some impressive swings of the bat for the team mixed in, nonetheless.
Patrick Bailey crushed a belt-high fastball off the wall in the first game for his 2nd double of the year. He followed that up with a three-hit game on Sunday night — albeit with a gift “double” that was just a routine fly ball that nobody decided to catch. Bailey is hitting just .172 overall, with just a .258 OBP, which continues to be more of an oddity than anything else — everyone I talk to about Bailey is convinced that the track record of hitting is more meaningful than the High A struggles. More swings like this are hopefully coming.
Prior to Game 2 on Saturday, Jairo Pomares hadn’t had a multi-hit game all year, with 15 hits over 19 games. He changed that, going 2 for 3 with a walk and a double in the night cap on Saturday. He also drove a ball deep to the CF wall in the first game, and drew another walk. He’s doing work to improve his approach, with his walk rate up substantially from last year (up to 7.7% from a woeful 1% with Eugene last summer). The K rate has only come down slightly, but he is making hard contact when he connects. Eight of his 17 hits have gone for extra bases. He didn’t add to his hit collection any on Sunday night, but he did add to his “hard contact” collection with a shot that was a little too hard to handle!
With Smith leaving for Richmond and Matos on an extended absence, some fresh bodies were also needed in Eugene’s lineup. That brought another happy sight, as Carter Williams was assigned to the Emeralds to make his season debut, after spending the first month of the year in extended spring training. Williams started in right field in game two of the double-header, and then again on Sunday, when he introduced himself to the home crowd with a terrific shot onto the roof of the UO workout facility beyond the right field bullpens.
Don’t you love it when you get that “ooohhhh” sound from the crowd off the crack of the bat?
The Sunday shellacking also included a three-hit game from Ghordy Santos, who had been scuffling a bit of late. Going into last night’s game, Santos was just 5 for 28 with 12 K in the month of May. They also got a big blast from Jimmy Glowenke — a hitter who has been scuffling for most of the year so far. Though Jimmy Glow has shown some big power on occasion this year, overall he’s hitting just .191/.286/.368. Glowenke shows a good eye at the plate, and is walking a good clip (10.6%), but he’s been just a .245 hitter so far in his minor league career. The biggest problem this year seems to be that he’s just not getting hits on balls in play — his BABIP is just .233. That can mean bad luck, but in the minors, it can often mean just a lot of poor contact as well. Hitting is Glowenke’s ticket to higher levels, so that needs to get turned around. Nothing wrong with this contact, though…
San Jose won series vs. Lake Elsinore Storm (Pads) 5-1
Winning 10-5 on Friday night
Winning 8-7 on Saturday night
Winning 10-0 on Sunday
But now we finally come to the real highlight of the week — the growing Legend of Vaun Brown!
In eleven games started this month, has homered eight times! Does that seem like a lot to you? Because it sure seems like a lot to me! Brown homered three times this weekend among his five hits, including both a game-tying two run shot in the 7th inning of Saturday night’s game and a walk off shot two innings later. It is truly rare to find a tooled up senior out of college, but it really does seem like the Giants pulled the rabbit out of the hat with Brown. I’ve heard anecdotally that Brown was a skinny little high schooler who developed a little late — and it seems like the timing of the pandemic might have played a key role in his story, too. His tools were ripening at the exact same time that he was hidden away from scouts’ views, unable to show them off. Regardless, there’s something happening here even if we’re not 100% sure what it is with Mr. Brown.
One of the most impressive things about Brown is the way he can take on that right-center field power alley at Excite Park. The right side of the field has long been death to left-handed power hitters due to the prevailing winds, to see a right-hander defeat it so regularly is truly an impressive feat of strength, especially from such a short, punchy swing that doesn’t seem like it should generate that much power. On Brown’s very next swing (on Sunday), he nearly replicated Saturday night’s walk-off, hitting a triple off the top of the wall in deep right field. The dude’s just having a crazy season! I hardly even manage to talk about his 10 SB!
And he’s not the only one going off! Grant McCray has gone 24 for 56 in May — a total that includes five home runs, five doubles, a triple, 16 RBI and 12 runs scored. The speedy leadoff man also has six SB in the month. McCray wasn’t quite as scorching hot as Brown this weekend, but he did pick up four hits, including a homer and two doubles, drew three walks, stole two bases and scored four runs! Not a shabby bit of leading off there, Grant! On Friday night, he came a triple shy of a cycle, drilling a belt-high fastball over the wall in CF, lining a double to the left field gap, and then beating out a slow chopper to 2b with his speed. This really is an exciting package of skills starting to come to fruition right now.
McCray and Brown are clearly leading the charge for the Giants’ offense, and they’ve charged up the leaderboards themselves. They have the top two slugging percentages in the Cal League, with Brown at .636 and McCray somewhat incredibly at .606 — this is a lithe, fast center fielder, not Beefy McBeeferson! What the heck is Grant McCray doing slugging over .600? Mashing! That’s what! They’re also 3rd and 4th in league OPS (Brown 1.038, McCray 1.026) and 4th and 5th in wRC+ (Brown 168, McCray 166). With Eugene’s OF situation a little less crowded thanks to Smith’s promotion and Matos’ seeming unavailability, it’s fair to wonder whether either of this pair might be in line for a promotion of their own — particularly Brown who, a month from turning 24, is too old for Low A anyway. We’ll see how things shake out.
McCray and Brown have a lot to do with San Jose’s current streak of 13 consecutive games with a HR — a streak that has seen them hit 27 HR overall! But they’re not the only ones going deep on the regular. Let’s give a shout out for Abdiel Layer, who went 9 for 23 during the series against the Storm with three dingers of his own. The backup shortstop and all around utility guy has K’d way too much in his two seasons with San Jose (37% last year and currently 34% this year), and the average tends to linger in the low .200s, but he has real power from both sides of the plate.
The end of the series turned into a virtual batting practice for the Giants, who got big contributions from everywhere in the lineup. Victor Bericoto collected five hits Saturday and Sunday, including his 4th home run of the year, a little elevated cutter that he drove deep into left-center field. Like a lot of Giants’ hitters, Bericoto is selective, walks a lot (16%), has good power, but needs to cut down on the strikeouts (32%) and get the ball in play more often (.228 batting average). That feels like a theme across the system. Players are doing a great job at showing patience and power, but there’s a little too much all or nothing going on around the system — of course, that has to do with the incredible quality of pitching everywhere as well, so give credit where credit is due. The game is incredibly hard right now!
Adrian Sugastey also had a nice couple of nights, picking up two hits each in back to back games. He had two doubles on Saturday night, and came back with an RBI single as part of the Sunday explosion. For the year, the 19-year-old catcher is hitting .219/.317/.305.
With one notable exception, the pitching was also fantastic for San Jose over the weekend. Keaton Winn got BABIP’d a little in a weird four-run inning on Friday night, but he also continued to display a power game that plays even in more extended starts. With a fastball that touched 97 (and has been as high as 100 earlier in the year) and two power secondaries — a slider and splitter that are both in the high 80s and pushing towards 90 mph themselves), Winn often seems to just toy with Low A hitters. The Giants are being very cautious with Winn coming off Tommy John surgery, but this is absolutely looking like a major league arm right now.
The same can be said of a reliever whom I haven’t spoken much about so far — young Mat Olsen, the 9th round pick last year out of Central Arizona College. Olsen was almost perfect in two relief appearances this weekend, retiring 9 of the 10 batters he faced with five strikeouts. Only a HBP soiled Olsen’s line over the two games. There’s nothing subtle about what Olsen is doing — he’s rearing back and firing 97. He mixes in a slider as a change of pace, but he’s mostly about throwing the ol’ speedball by ‘em, and he’s been doing it at a pretty regular pace so far this year. Olsen has allowed just one earned run in 17.0 IP, and has a 24 to 3 K:BB ratio. He’s gotten swinging strikes on just over 1/5 of his pitches this year, 20.2% — one of five different pitchers on this staff with a 20% swinging strike rate, led by Winn at 20.6% (Trevor McDonald, Jose Cruz, and Evan Gates are the others).
The weirdest outing of the weekend, however, came from 1st round pick Will Bednar, who, once again, seemed to have no idea where his fastball was going. Bednar walked three batters in the first inning — two of them after two were out — on just 13 pitches. Though he nearly escaped the jam, he hung an 0-2 slider that got banged into center field for an RBI single, and then unloaded the bases in a hurry when he allowed a Grand Slam to his final batter. Bednar often looks like a guy who is too good for this level and needs a quick promotion, but he also has these outbursts of wildness occasionally, where he seems incapable of getting back in the strike zone. He’s now walked 13 batters in 24.1 IP and hit 9 others. Bednar has also been a bit prone to the gopher ball, with four home runs allowed so far, with spinning sliders often to blame.
Eugene is now down two starters with Seth Corry gone to surgery and Prelander Berroa gone entirely (three if you count Carson Ragsdale going down for the year). It makes sense that Bednar, the 1st round pick with big time college experience, should be in line to go up and fill the rotation holes, but outings like Saturday night’s certainly don’t argue for promotion.
Mason Black, on the other hand, had another excellent start on Sunday, starting off the white-washing with 5 shutout innings — increasing his scoreless streak to 16 innings. Given that streak of 0s, it’s probably not too surprising that Black leads the Cal League in ERA (1.88) and FIP (2.52). He also has the second highest strikeout rate (31.9%) in the league and fourth lowest walk rate (6.9%) among qualified starters. That’s a pretty good combination of skills, Mason!
One other pitcher who deserves some acclaim is Esmerlin Vinicio. The stringbean 19-year-old started out the year a little rough, but he’s been looking much better lately. He’s had two four-strikeout outings in short relief this week, and has allowed just three runs over his past seven appearances. He’s attacking the strike zone a little more confidently lately and putting guys away with that gorgeous curve of his.
The Giants have now won five consecutive games and 10 of their past 13. They have the league’s best record (21-12) at the quarter point in the season. Maybe they are ready to run it back!
Setting Up the Week
Sacramento River Cats, 18-18, T-3rd in PCL West
Run Differential -18
Host the last place Tacoma Rainiers, starting Tuesday.
Given the amount of deals between these two orgs lately, this is practically going to be an intrasquad affair.
Richmond Flying Squirrels, 20-13, 1st in EL Southwest
Run Differential +2
Stay on road, playing @ 5th place Altoona Curve, starting Tuesday
It’s back to back travel weeks for the Squirrels, whose run differential doesn’t really back up the great record. Lots of tight victories for the Squirrels so far.
Eugene Emeralds, 16-12, 1st in NWL
Run Differential +10
Hitting the road — hopefully a dryer road — @ Spokane, starting Tuesday
Eugene has rather incredibly risen to the top of the standings while hardly ever playing a full game. They sure could use a spell of good weather and steady play.
San Jose Giants, 21-12, 1st in Cal Lg North
Run Differential, +39
Heading south @ Inland Empire, starting Tuesday.
After two weeks at home the league’s best team makes the long southern trek down to Inland Empire, their first trip to the Southland this year. The Giants are once again locked in a tight divisional battle with Fresno, which has the league’s best run differential and second best record, a game behind San Jose. This year, both of those teams can’t go to the Championship series, as the league returns to a standard, two-halves, two-round playoff structure that ends with one representative of each division in the final round.
Enjoy the off day and let’s get back to the ball tomorrow!
The Ducks have a tongue in cheek saying that "It Never Rains In Autzen", as in it doesn't rain in Eugene on home Duck football games. And its pretty true, albeit the weather in the Fall is much better than early Spring up there. Perhaps it runs true for UO's baseball team.
Murphy making his season debut was a weekend highlight. Good to get another big arm back on the field after losing Prelander.