End of month award time! While the farm system overall hasn’t had a great year, there have been some notable highlights, and the minor league Player of the Month honors took note!
Congrats to the honorees, who definitely are all putting up monster seasons (though Kyle didn’t necessarily go out and celebrate the honor in quite the way he wanted — stay tuned!). And speaking of congratulations, we don’t forget our old friends around here! The There R Giants podcast can now count a big leaguer on its rolls! Congrats, Caleb!
HITTER of the Night: Ka’ai Tom (Sac), 4 for 5, HR (3), 3 Runs, 5 RBI
PITCHER of the Night: Ryan Murphy (Eug), 5.0 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 0 BB, 9 K, 1 HR
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Sacramento lost @ Las Vegas Aviators (A’s), 11-10
Despite playing their home games in the lively Las Vegas Ballpark, the Aviators have the third worst offense in the PCL, scoring just 5.31 Runs per game. Sacramento is barely in front of them at 5.33. So you might not think this is the likeliest pair to get involved in a donnybrook, especially with the River Cats missing their two biggest sluggers, David Villar and Austin Dean, from the lineup (Villar still not having played since being hit in the wrist by a pitch earlier in the series, continuing to be a worrisome circumstance for the guy having the best upper minors season in the system). To make matters worse, slugger Kevin Padlo left the game after the second inning — no announced cause for his sudden departure. There was a line drive in the bottom of the 2nd that he skied up to try to reach (unsuccessfully) that could conceivably had led to some discomfort, but other than that, there was no obvious reason for him leaving the game.
Nonetheless, the River Cats gave the slugfest their all, capturing the lead three different times in a crazy back and forth tilt. Ka’ai Tom led the charge with four different RBI hits — Tom personally captured the lead for the Cats twice with RBI singles, before knocking in two more with a double to the wall and a big bomb in the 7th inning. That gave him five RBIs for the night, along with three runs scored — accounting for 70% of the team’s runs!
The burly left-hander is on a tear this week, with six hits in his past nine at bats, including three for extra-bases. He also helped short circuit what was threatening to be a disastrous 2nd inning for starter Enmanuel De Jesus by making a terrific throw home to cut down a runner in the middle of a three-run rally. Just a terrific overall night for the Flyin’ Hawai’in!
Jason Krizan had another two hits, as well. He’s had nearly as good a two night run as Tom, with five hits in nine at bats. Heliot Ramos returned to the Sacramento lineup after a couple of cross-country trips and a few major league at bats. While he was with the big club, Ramos told the San Jose Mercury News’ Evan Webeck that some recent mechanical adjustments were leading to a better feeling at the plate:
I was tightening up too much, I didn’t have space for my hands. I just opened up a little bit and try to be more free to hit the ball. … But now I have a pretty good idea of how to do it. I’m feeling good, I’m feeling great.
“Didn’t have space for my hands” really is a good description of the issues that have plagued Ramos this year, as he struggles to get his hands through the zone and meet the ball at the front of the plate where the force he’s generating with his swing can do the most damage. It will be very interesting to see the results his new mechanics produce now that he’s back in the laboratory of Triple A. In last night’s game, he continued to put the ball on the ground, grounding out twice and singling on a hard hit ball that 3b Matt Davidson couldn’t quite handle. He also struck out — waving at a 2-2 changeup from Adam Oller that broke down his swing — and worked a walk.
Sacramento’s pitching was also missing a major piece — but for the happy reason that scheduled starter Sean Hjelle was pitching in Miami instead. In his place, De Jesus really had a tough time of it. He struggled to throw strikes with either his fastball or slider — which is something you definitely can’t get away with when playing PCL brand baseball. He walked four and was in near perpetual hitters’ counts. Fewer than 20% of his pitches were called strikes, and he had just a 13% whiff rate. Not all the contact against him was hard — he allowed back to back shift-busters in a three-run 2nd inning — but there were nearly always runners on and Vegas is a place where constant contact is going to hurt you.
Still, the Cats were hanging on to a 10-8 lead in the 8th, when Matt Carasiti allowed two booming home runs — both traveling over 400 feet — to surrender the lead and the game. Carasiti has shown pretty good velocity this year, but he makes a lot of location mistakes in the middle of the zone that get hit hard — he allowed three 100+ mph hits in just the 8th inning last night — leading to his 7.94 ERA on the year.
Anyway, lots of great work by Tom!
Richmond Split a DH @ Akron Rubber Ducks (Guardians)
Losing 1st Game 6-2 (7 inn)
Winning 2nd Game 6-4 (7 inn)
If Kyle Harrison impressed in his Double A debut by being able to battle through adversity successfully, he learned in the follow up that it’s a dangerous game to play at this level. While he was often able to make the perfect pitch in jams against Hartford, location mistakes in the wrong moments piled up against him in Akron.
Unlike in Harrison’s first start (and unlike most of his 2022 campaign), he struggled with his strike throwing last night, often leaving the fastball high and to the armside, or pulling it down into the dirt gloveside (as we saw a lot of in his age 19 season in San Jose). He seemed to be having some issues getting comfortable with the mound in Akron, as he kept looking or pawing at his landing spot after pitches in the first couple of innings. His four walks allowed were the most he’d issued since a game against Stockton, last July 23.
Walks cost him in both the 3rd and 4th innings, each of which rolled up into a crooked number against him. In the 3rd, Harrison issued a leadoff walk on a couple of really non-competitive pitches after reaching a two-strike count. After getting an out on a slow chopper and picking up a crucial second out on a slider that caught the outside edge against Bo Naylor, Harrison got to an 0-2 count against Akron shortstop Brayan Rocchio. Harrison had blown Rocchio away with a fastball in the 1st inning:
,,,but this second time, he left an 0-2 fastball up and more in the middle of the plate, and Rocchio was able to bounce it hard through the right side. It might have been the third out of the inning, but with the runner going, the 2b had gone to cover the bag, and Rocchio’s grounder made it through to the outfield grass. The ol’ “game of inches” made itself felt on the very next pitch, when Akron slugger George Valera was laying in wait on a Harrison “get it in” breaking ball (I think this was his new curveball that he’s been experimenting with), and crushed it for a three-run bomb.
The next inning played out much the same. There were some control issues (a walk and a HB on his final pitch of the night), there was a well-placed single and also a defensive lapse (with shortstop Will Wilson turning a tailor-made double play ball into just a single out with a decision to throw to 3b to cut down the lead runner). And then, when Harrison really needed to make a pitch to limit the damage, there was a big hit instead — this time a double off the top of the wall on an inside fastball that wasn’t quite inside enough.
It’s harder at this level! Still fun to watch Harrison make good hitters take swings like this though!
The Richmond bats didn’t help much, collecting just three hits in the first game and getting shut out until their final out of the game. But the bats came roaring back to life in the nightcap, with their favorite cudgel, the long ball, being the weapon of choice.
Sean Roby woke up the bench in the 1st inning with a patented Roby LOUD BOMB blast. The strikeout rates are obviously out of control for Roby this year (flitting right around the 40% mark), but nobody on the team produces the exit velocities he does when he makes contact. This one was 106 mph off the bat and traveled 402 feet on a line.
That gave the Squirrels a 3-0 lead before the first out of the game was recorded. It was the first of three homers in the game for Richmond, accounting for all six of the team’s runs. Indeed, they only had five hits in the game, along with three walks and a game-opening HBP. But any time some one was on base, it seemed to wave the red “Home Run” towel in their eyes.
Tyler Fitzgerald hit his 7th (nearly inching his average up over the .200 mark), and Robert Emery chipped in with his third of the year.
After starter Bryan Brickhouse allowed four runs through five innings, the Squirrels got solid relief work from Taylor Rashi and Chris Wright to hold on over the final two innings. The pair struck out four, but the late innings weren’t without some drama. Wright continues to struggle to throw strikes. That’s been an issue for him all year, but it seems to be increasing in recent outings. He’s walked 10 batters in his past four games (five innings), including two walks with two outs last night. It’s not one pitch either, as he’s been struggling to put both the fastball and the curve in the zone. With the fastball, he’s mostly missing up and to the armside, while the curve just dips down into the dirt below the zone. Wright got out of it last night, freezing the dangerous Valera on a two-strike breaking ball to end the game.
Eugene won @ Everett AquaSox (Mariners), 8-2
Rehabbing Ryan Murphy was almost perfect over five innings, making just one pitch he’d like to have back — a one-out two-run homer in the third. Aside from that mistake, Murphy was dominant, mixing his high fastball and low breaking balls to perfection. Murphy didn’t have a ton of swinging strikes — just nine on the night, and almost half of those came in his final inning — but he was dotting the edge of the zone with his slider and rising 92-94 fastball as usual, and getting guys to chase the curve in the dirt with regularity.
This was by far the best of Murphy’s rehab starts. It was the first in which he hasn’t issued a walk, and he also made it through five innings for the first time. Hopefully, he won’t last too much longer in High A. It would be nice to see him join Harrison and take on the Double A challenge.
The taut, 2-2 game was broken open late by a couple big swings of the bat. Carter Williams gave Eugene the lead with an RBI double in the 7th. Williams, who joined the club in May, has just 10 hits on the year, but four of them have gone for extra bases, and he’s amassed 9 RBI so far. Hunter Bishop then piled on by crushing his 5th home run of the year deep to right field. It was the best offensive night of the year for Bishop — maybe the best of his professional career — as he reached base four times on two hits and two walks, and didn’t strike out. That’s just the seventh time this year out of 38 games that Bishop has avoided the whiff. His average is up to .211 and OPS up to .662. Progress!
Ghordy Santos piled on with a three-run homer in the 9th. It was a much needed swing for Santos, who scuffled through May, hitting just .205/.275/.289 with 30 strikeouts in 91 PA during the month.
Marco Luciano, on the flip side, had one of his roughest nights of the season, going 0 for 5 with a hat trick. The Giants have been slow to move guys this season, and perhaps one thing they’d still like to see from a player like Luciano is how he makes adjustments when the hot streaks die down, as they will during the ebb and flow of the season. You often learn more about a player’s development during struggles than during successes.
The continued lack of video for so many of Eugene’s games is frustrating, but at least the team continues to give us some peeks into the pre-game action.
San Jose lost to Stockton Ports (A’s), 5-4 (11 inn)
Matt Mikulski knows that sinking “game of inches” feeling as well. In the second inning, he issued one of his two walks on the night. It seemed harmless enough at the time. There were two outs and he was facing the bottom of the order. But the seventh place hitter was able to get just enough bat on an 0-2 pitch to drop it into the Bermuda Triangle between 2b, 1b, and RF to extend the inning. As with Harrison, the near miss bit him immediately when he let an inside fastball leak the tiniest bit over the middle and it was belted out to left field for a three-run homer.
That one swing aside, Mikulski was brilliant. Significantly, his fastball velocity has been ticking up as the season progresses. A zippy fastball was a big part of his success last year at Fordham, so it’s been concerning to see that heater sitting around 90-91 through the opening act of the year. In his last couple of starts, that’s moved up incrementally more into the 92-94 range, and it’s made a big difference with how the pitch has played. Mikulski is now starting to get swing and misses on the heater upstairs, something that was really missing from his game in most of his starts in April and early May.
Being able to attack up with the fastball then really opens up the bottom of the zone for Mikulski’s slider, which has been his best pitch all year. Last night he was able to get outs at both the top and bottom of the zone, and it really made a difference in his effectiveness. This is the guy the Giants were hoping to get with their second round pick.
That one swing, however, really mattered, as it erased an early 3-0 lead for the Giants, and the sluggish San Jose bats just didn’t have many answers. Though the team collected 10 hits — including three more for Vaun Brown and two for a suddenly hot Garrett Frechette — they went just four for 16 with runners in scoring position. After Frechette’s two-out, two run single in the first, they wouldn’t bring another runner home until the 10th inning.
In the 10th, the Ports were able to bring home the free runner off Trevor McDonald — who was excellent once again over a four-inning piggyback outing — thanks to a bunt and a sacrifice fly. San Jose came back to tie it in the 10th on Brown’s third single — and second RBI hit — of the night.
In the top of the 11th, the Giants appeared to be on their way to shutting the Ports down when a line drive turned into an inning-starting double play and erased the free runner. But reliever Jose Cruz made a series of critical errors that brought in the winning run without a ball being put into play. Cruz first issued a two-out walk by letting the pitch clock expire, taking a long long time looking in at the signs. A stolen base, on which catcher Max Wright was unable to get a throw off, put the winning run at 2b. Wright had entered the game in the 10th inning after starter Rayner Santana had been removed for a pinch runner, and he might have asked to stay on the bench had he known what was in store for him.
On the very next pitch, Cruz crossed Wright up, throwing one of his lethal 98 mph fastballs when Wright was clearly looking for a slider. The pitch nearly knocked Wright over, and before he could recover his wits enough to chase it down, the winning run came all the way around from 2b to score. As Joe Ritzo said, it was an unbelievable ending.
Tonight’s Scheduled Starters:
Sacramento (TBD) @ Las Vegas (Logue), 7:05 pm, MiLBTV
Richmond (TBD) @ Akron (TBD), 4:05 pm, MiLBTV
Eugene (Wong) @ Everett (TBD), 5:05 pm, NO VIDEO
Eugene (Black) @ Everett (Joyce), Game 2, NO VIDEO
San Jose (Silva) vs. Stockton (Myers), 6:00 pm, MiLBTV
“TBD” doing yeoman’s work around the system, as both Sacramento and Richmond are looking at bullpen nights. Eugene gets yet another weather makeup double header — something they’ve specialized in this year. It should be right-handers Jake Wong and Mason Black throwing the two games for them tonight, with Eric Silva taking the mound in San Jose. With the Raiders-esque Silva and Black on the bump, you have maybe two new top 10 guys (teasing the re-rank) to look forward to tonight.
Enjoy the rest of the weekend everybody!