While Rockies prospects tend to underwhelm at their league All-Star contests, the Futures Game often seems to bring out their best. This was the case yesterday as the only chink in Jhoulys Chacin's inning of work was organization-mate Eric Young Jr's walk. Chacin struck out two of the other batters he faced and got his standard groundout for the third. EY2, for his part, also hit a home run off of Francisco Samuel. Chacin's world team wound up winning 7-5 over Young and the U.S. team.
No Matt Murton and no EY2, makes Sky Sox lineup sad. Sad Sky Sox.
Brandon Hynick had a start that was somewhere in the borderlands between meh (only 75 pitches to record 17 outs) and bleh (eight hits, four runs), so let's just call it mleh and leave it.
On the morning of Independence Day, Darin Holcomb had a slash line of .245/.300/.318 for the season. One seven game hit streak since, wherein he's gone 14 for 25 with three doubles and three home runs, the third of which he hit in last night's loss, has him now at .273/.349/.394. It's going to be interesting to see where he goes from here, as when he's on, his bat is one of the best in the Rockies minor leagues. It's just been dormant so long, since late last summer, really, that like a lawnmower engine left idle over the winter, it seems like it might be tricky to keep it running at first.
Chaz Roe gave up three dingers.
Cory Riordan must have been grateful he held out for those eight solid innings last night as his Nuts teammates finally got his back with a three run rally right after Riordan finished his work for the evening, earning him the much deserved W. In that bottom of the eighth with the Nuts trailing one nil and one out, Maikol Gonzalez singled, Wilin Rosario followed with a double. After an intentional walk to Rhadames Nazario to load the bases, Michael Mitchell did what the opposition wanted with a grounder to short, but apparently the needed DP was not in order and the Mavericks could only retire Mitchell at first. Gonzalez scored and Rosario and Nazario moved up, setting up a duel between pitcher Donald Hume and the Nuts best hitter, Charlie Blackmon. Blackmon won by lining a two run triple to center. Craig Baker came on and struck out two in a perfect ninth for his 23rd save of the season.
Scott Beerer gets a spotlight on his transition from the mound back to the field in this article at MiLB.com. The article's an interesting read as it casts the Rockies organization as a sort of Mephistopholes who control the very souls of their minor league players:
The fact that the Rockies refused to release Beerer put him in limbo, as he wasn't able pursue a hitting career with another organization. So he joined the "real world," training to be an EMT in his native California while working nights as a bartender and bouncer. But, of course, he didn't give up his dream.
Mwahaha... I'm glad that Beerer's back and getting more of a challenge now at Modesto. It will be interesting to see what he makes of it.
Asheville: Did not play
The Dust Devils are still adjusting to prohibition, err... life without Beerer, and without Mike Zuanich. They got a lot of walks yesterday, but didn't have the muscle to drive the runs home. Pitchers Josh Hungerman, Kyle Walker and Craig Bennigson did well.
Kyle Hancock really is pitching better than his 0-3 record and 8.84 ERA indicates, his last two starts have seen him give up two and three runs respectively, rather than the eight and six he put up in his first two starts. He's still having mostly clean innings with one blow up thrown in somewhere, in yesterday's case a three run second wherein he gave up all four of his allowed hits and one of his two walks. The blow-ups still count, but this should be a lot more fixable than a pitcher that's just consistently bad. I'm actually somewhat optimistic with him.
Edwar Cabrera, in the meantime, is a bit more perplexing. Somewhere in his journey from the Dominican to Casper in each of the last couple of years he's transitioned from Roger Clemens to Roger Rabbit (that was a Woody Paige type of joke in case you didn't notice, see anybody can make them) as last night in his second 2009 stateside game he retired just one batter in relief of Hancock, but gave up three hits including a home run, a walk and two runs in total.
Second round draft selection Nolan Arenado made his debut as DH and got a single. Arenado probably supplants David Kandilas (who hasn't been getting much playing time in a sign of how raw he still is, so is the 1 for 18 start. This one's going to take a couple of years before we really start seeing a return) as the top position player prospect with the Ghosts.