Future Redbirds

Quick injury update for you — as erik reported 3 days ago, Eternal Prospect Rick Ankiel goes to the DL with an achilles tendon injury. Jocketty doesn’t believe it to be serious though so hopefully Rick just aggravated something and he’ll be back in a week. . .hopefully.

Memphis 0, Round Rock 2

• Skip Schumaker takes over lead off duties from Brendan Ryan. This may be for the best since Ryan has been mired in a season long slump. . .I call it a slump because I desperately want to believe he’s better than this. Skip was 1-for-3 with a BB while Ryan was 1-for-4.
• The offense got shut down tonight collecting 4 hits (1 double) and 2 walks.
• Blake Hawksworth had a good outing. He threw 97 pitches in 6 innings of work allowing 2 runs. Only 3 hits but 4 blasted walks — have I mentioned I hate it when our pitchers walk guys — and striking out 6. He did have a nice 8-3 ground ball to fly ball ratio. He allowed a HR as well but still, a very nice outing for a developing player.
• Mike Sillman, Andy Cavazos and Hugo Castellanos all come in and pitch a scoreless inning of relief. A walk for Sillman, walk + hit + 2Ks for Cavazos and zeros across the line for Hugo.

Springfield 8, Tulsa 7 (12 Innings)

• Long game for Springfield tonight. I’m not sure what this means but I smell re-injury - from the game log: Defensive Substitution: Sean Danielson replaces center fielder Jonathan Jay, batting 1st, playing center field. That was in the bottom of the first and I just can’t imagine it’s a good thing. Hopefully, erik or I will come across a report tomorrow that we can pass on to you rather than my pessimistic concerns.
• Cody Haerther goes 2-for-5 with a pair of BB (one was intentional).
• Bryan Anderson goes 2-for-5 plus a BB.
• Rasmus went 2-for-3. Check out erik’s notes on him as well.
• Juan Lucena was toting the hot bat tonight going 5-for-5.
• Eric Haberer had a ‘painful’ outing allowing 6 ER in 5.1 innings. He struck out 5 and walked none — yeah! — but hit 4(!) batters — boo!
• Jason Motte struck out 3 in 2.2 innings of work.
• Chris Perez (the 6th pitcher used) gets the save striking out 2 and avoiding the free passes for once.

Palm Beach 10, Vero Beach 7 (Game 1 - Suspended from 4/15)

• Took me a while to figure out what the blast was going on here — The beaches were resuming a suspended game from the 15th of April in addition to playing a second game today. I’ll go ahead and do a full recap of this game.
• Allen Craig goes 3-for-4 with a 4 runs, a double, HR and a BB. I’d say that’s a nice offensive game.
• Mark Hamilton goes 3-for-4.
• Shane Robinson has a HR.
• Danilo Sanchez goes 3-for-4 with 4 RBI, a double, HR and a BB. I’d say that’s a nice offensive g. . .wait, haven’t we been here before?
• Luke Gregerson gets the two-out-save striking out one of the two batters he faced.
• Scott Vander Weg went 4.1 strong innings allowing just 1 run.

Palm Beach 2, Vero Beach 1 (Game 2)

• The story of this game was Tyler Norrick, a 6′3″ lefty from Southern Illinois University Carbondale who took a no-hitter into the 6th inning. He’s a bit older than you’d like for High-A (23) but he’s been pitching well all year with an adjusted ERA of 3.27 — quite good. He’s right below that 2:1 K:BB ratio that I like to see and he’s got some fly ball tendencies but he’s put up good numbers so far. I’d like to see how he would do at AA. There’s no one in mind that is stinking it up at AA (although moving someone up into Kiesler’s AAA spot could fix that — but we need him for depth *shudder*) so he’ll probably stay a while longer at Palm Beach. He struck out 7 while walking three in today’s venture — well done Tyler.
• Matthew Trent picks up the save with a scoreless inning.
• Each position player had a hit today for PB except Isaias Garcia who went 0-for-3. Mark Hamilton also drew a walk.

Quad Cities 2, West Michigan 5

• Trio of players had 2-for-4 night: Brandon Buckman, Christian Reyes and Jared Schweitzer. Rather unexciting offensive night outside of those three.
• Blake King had an excellent outing going 4 innings with 1 hit, 3 walks, and 4 Ks. A WHIP of 1.000, I’ll take it.
• Michael Schellinger pitches a scoreless inning followed by Brandon Dickson who gets hit hard. 3.1 innings with 4 runs (3 earned), 3 hits, 2 BBs and 5K.
• Kenny Maiques also gives up the infrequent run while walking 2.
• [erik intruding again] just found it scary the amount of steals were allowed by Omar Falcon and his pitchers. The White Caps were 8/9 on steal attempts last night, a team record.  Yamma hamma. I didn’t catch that until I read Goold’s blog post from today.  He also has some interesting information about the ‘piggyback’ starter tandem QC has, and how it has wrankled some of the big wigs because less pitchers are getting “wins” and somehow they fear that it could diminish their confidence. ergh.