Sunday Pebble Report: Deduno, Billings and Hollingsworth pitch sparkling gems, Gomez homers twice

Colorado Springs: Postponed. 

Tulsa: W 3-0

Samuel Deduno has been hot and cold this season, when he's on, like he was yesterday, he's nearly unhittable, he pitched six innings allowing three hits, two walks and striking out seven. The Drillers were able to scratch out single runs in the first, fifth and eighth innings for the win.

Modesto: W 6-2

To give you a sense of where the Rockies pitching prospects in Modesto are compared to the rest of the California League, consider that Buster Posey at home this season before Friday night's game was hitting .500/.583/.900 in 36 plate appearances. Against Modesto the last two days, he's gone zero for eight. Brandon Crawford hit a homerun on Friday night, but that's the only time he's connected and he has struck out four times. Outside of Angel Villalona, who's gone four for eight this series so far, the Nuts have kept a bunch of talented bats in check, and that's a really nice sign.

Bruce Billings pitched seven innings yesterday allowing just one hit to this lineup and striking out seven on his way to picking up the victory. Hector Gomez started to justify why a lot of us feel that he has a solid chance to be considered the Rockies top prospect by the end of the season by hitting two homeruns and a single in his third game back to lead the offense. I grew to like Billings as a pitcher and prospect watching him in several starts last season, and I would say that besides Connor Graham, he's the Modesto starter most likely to make an MLB team at some point. My big concern still is that he doesn't seem quite right for Coors Field with some massive flyball tendencies

Asheville: W 3-2

Ethan Hollingsworth pitched six innings and allowed  an unearned run on four hits and zero walks. He struck out six in his best start of the season. Hollingsworth has a 58% GB rate on the season.

All of Asheville's scoring came in the fourth inning as walks to Kiel Roling and James Cesario and an error on a Ryan Peisel squib loaded the bases with none out. Roling scored on a Tyler Massey groundout, Cesario and Peisel on a two-out single by Thomas Field.

Other:

As Jason Hammel prepares to start today, it might be worth noting that the prospect we traded for him, Aneury Rodriguez, hasn't been doing so hot for Tampa's AA farm team. Friday was Rodriguez's best start of the season, so maybe he's turning it around, but a 6.85 ERA, 0-4 record in five starts is at the very least indicative of how far Rodriguez has to go to become big league ready.