Actually, he already had all the facial hair to begin with. I'm just practicing posting pictures, a new weapon in my arsenal I hope to use more frequently. Since the big club was rained out, sparing us the Byung Hyun Kim Starter Experiment, I somewhat pathetically spent the evening listening to the Tourists/Delmarva tilt while learning the ins and outs of my new site. The Tourists won 7-1 behind Joe Koshansky's sixth home run and a fairly solid outing by Jacob Postlewait.
Koshansky has as much power potential as anyone in the Rockies' system with the lone exception of Ian Stewart, but he's a bit old for the Sally League and probably needs challenged more. Postlewait is also old and probably profiles more as a middle reliever once (or if) he reaches the majors, but he did even a better job than the box score indicates, as it sounded like several of the eight hits were weak pop flies that fell in, and at least two bordered on defensive errors.
I was really hoping that Chris Nelson would play, however he was held out. Our second best prospect according to BA has been struggling all year, batting an inflated .100 (inflated because his OBP is actually more abysmal at .091 due to two sacrifices and a very Aaron Milesish zero walks) and not looking at all like he did last year.
Modesto lost 8-2 to Lancaster as D-Backs prospect Garrett Mock tied us up for 7 innings, striking out ten, and one of our hard throwing righthanded relievers down there, Eudy Morel, took the loss after running into trouble in the ninth. This is the first time Morel has really had any problems all year, so watch for him to bounce back. Starter Tomas Santiago was effective, but not spectacular. Jud Thigpen hit his third homerun in the first and continues to thrive with the nuts, err, Nuts.
Tulsa also won, 4-3, with outfielder Ryan Spillbourghs getting two hits and scoring once. Other than Alex Serrano picking up his third save, most of the rest of the positive performance came from non-prospects. I'm glad the Drillers have started to use Serrano as a closer, his numbers coming up have always been good as you can tell from the link, and the career minor leaguer they got to replace last year's stud closer Ryan Speier, Paul Bevis, hasn't been impressive at all thus far.
Speier will of course be returning to Colorado Springs with Scott Dohmann after the two have been throttled so far this year with the Rockies. The Sky Sox like the Rockies were postponed due to rain and cold. In a little bit I'll have a game thread up. Ciao.