Wednesday Pebble Report:

My latest farm report tries to find comparison point to start evaluating the career of Wilin Rosario, which is a tricky task with a player that young. You'll often be told to be wary of prospects repeating at a team, as Rosario is at Casper, but that warning doesn't apply very well in this case for several reasons, ranging from the more advanced level of play in the Pioneer League (the difference between the level of play in the PL to the NWL or New York Penn League is considerably smaller than the difference from the PL to the Arizona or Florida complex leagues) to the kind of culture shock a teenager would experience coming from a tightly packed tropical island nation to the sparse sage desert of the Rocky Mountain west to the fact that a single Ghosts season does not provide enough of a picture. So a season and a half in, the picture on Rosario is much clearer, and it's very bright.

Colorado Springs: Off

The Sky Sox are on their All-Star break.

Tulsa: W 14-2

To score fourteen runs with just three extra base hits, and only one homerun is pretty difficult, but the Drillers managed it last night. Thirteen singles, five walks, three stolen bases, three opposition errors and zero runners erased by CS's or GIDP's made for a well oiled Driller team, pun intended. Ching Lung Lo pitched five innings and gave up both runs, leaving after just 79 pitches as it looks like he's still on a pitch count since returning from the DL last week. In those two starts, though, he's been remarkably effective, throwing ten innings and allowing just seven hits and a walk while striking out five. Justin Nelson and Brian Esposito accounted for the three extra base hits, Nelson with two doubles and Esposito the homer, and the two each had three hits in the game. Matt Miller also had three singles, Eric Young Junior a single and two walks, and Corey Wimberly two singles and a walk.

Modesto: L 4-6

Daniel Mayora's been hitting well lately, .418 in his last ten games after last night's three hits, and as I mentioned in the Rocky, he's got three HR's this month (his only three of the season) all of them in that ten game span. It's a welcome sign that he hasn't completely stagnated at High A and has made some necessary adjustments to his offensive game, and it's beginning to look like it's still okay to take him seriously as a prospect. Jay Cox homered and Mike McKenry doubled, while Keith Weiser and Will Harris were responsible for the opposition's scores. Neither was particularly bad, just not good enough. Harris got burned by a two-out mistake pitch that resulted in a two run homer, and Weiser gave up four over seven innings at one of the league's more brutal parks on pitchers.

Asheville: Off

Tri-City: L 7-9

Christian Friedrich's second start for the organization shows that he still needs to make some adjustments to the professional game, but it's important to not get too discouraged just yet. Still, there's plenty to be wary about here. Friedrich gave up five runs off of eight hits and two walks in four innings and only struck out two. Three of the hits were for extra bases, one a double to Josh Vitters (not performing against top prospects of other organizations is one strike). The other two were a triple and homerun to Andrew Rundle, a left handed hitting outfielder for the Hawks (looking bad in what should be a platoon advantage is strike two). Let's just give him a couple of mulligans to get his bearings (btw - Boise is a more of a Pioneer League style run happy environment compared to the rest of the NWL) as he's got a hefty body of work in the amateur ranks as well as pristine scouting reports that should be given the most weight in evaluating him for some time yet. Scot Robinson, Thomas Field and Bo Bowman each homered for the Dust Devils, Field's a three run shot. Bowman and Patrick Rose each collected three hits in the loss. Rose also had two errors and Jhaysson Agustin one.

Casper: Off