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AFL Update: Oct. 14, 2022

Photo Credit: Robsh14 via A View From My Seat
A 6-0 lead vanished in the late innings as Salt River scored the last seven runs to walk off Peoria, 7-6 in seven innings.

Alas, the last two runs came off the arm of Amos Willingham, who got the last out of the 6th inning to strand one but gave up a triple to lead off the seventh. After rolling a grounder to keep the runner at third, Willingham issued a walk, then lost the lead—and the game—on a two-run double. It was the second blown save and the first loss for the Nats’ 17th Rd. pick in 2019.

Drew Millas was the only other National to appear in the game, getting another day off from catching as the team’s DH. He went 0-for-3 with a walk and a run scored.

The Javelinas and Rafters rematch tonight at the Salt River Fields in Scottsdale.

7 Commments

  1. Confirmed that Robert Hassell had his hamate bone removed yesterday. I’m not sure what that bone does but it seems incompatible with playing baseball. The Yankees Andrew Benintendi broke his during an AB in September.

    I know this is redundant but in 10 games Will Frizzell has played in 2 of them. Just stupid.

  2. Dry humor – the chorus here always has a bone to pick from over the baseball
    Themes
    Listen to the Doctor ( Doobie Bros .)
    The bullpen future candidates should be interesting to see in spring camp especially those who’ve been parked on IR
    Peterson
    Moore
    Fonzi
    HH
    Will the Thrills time clock is on perfect timing .
    He’ll be mashing on MASN in due time .

    1. Bar tending repetitive motion action can wear on a hamate bone too
      Bartenders probably make better money than a prospect moving through AA.
      Lol

  3. And they use Millas as the DH instead of Frizzell even though Millas is catching every other game?!? Meanwhile, Robert Perez played his 8th game (out of 10) at 1B and is hitting .179. Frizzell is being treated like roster filler. Baker isn’t getting much run either, as he’s only appeared in three games.

    1. Strange that after blowing up minor league baseball, MLB didn’t touch the AFL, which has always been problematic. I remember back in 2010, Bryce Harper made his professional baseball debut as the taxi squad player, only getting max two games per week, and tallying only 9 games played, despite wowing everyone as a 17 year old with a slash of .343/.410/.629. The following year, he returned as a regular member of the squad, and played in 25 games. The fact that the taxi squad role exists is evidence enough that the AFL needs reforming. But the root of this is the real problem with the AFL: there’s just too many players on each team! A baseball team traditionally has around 25-28 players, but the AFL has traditionally named 36 players to each team. This is almost 50% more players for the exact same amount of playing time. To some extent, it makes sense to limit the pitchers’ innings loads, but there’s little rationality to doing the same for batters, as I’ve yet to see evidence that adding another 15-30 games to batters’ seasons (which are already shortened compared to MLB) leads to any fatigue. All of this could just be easily resolved by adding 2 more teams and making an 8 team league. This would pose absolutely no logistical problems, as the Cactus League already sports 10 stadiums (6 of which are currently used by the AFL) all within extremely close proximity of one another. It would also allow the same number of players (36*6=216), but spread out more reasonably across 8 teams (216/8=27 players per team).

      Instead, teams, the Nationals being the worst offenders, doubled down on the biggest flaw of the AFL and named record numbers of players this season. Peoria has 42 players, including 20 batters, which has only exacerbated the problems. Players they wanted to get a longer look at aren’t getting playing time, while the coaches are still playing favorites. Jackson Merrill and Robert Perez have both started 8 of 10 games, while Frizzell and Stanley Consuegra, an OF for the Mets, have only started 2 games.

      Why name 8th, 9th and 10th players to the AFL if they’re only going to play in up to 20% of the games? The AFL is only 30 games long. What conclusions can be drawn from Frizzell playing in 5 games? Why even bother?

  4. I’m having a hard time figuring out what MLB gets out of this league, other than a few extra innings for the (selected) prospects. they don’t include the games on MiLB.tv so I doubt anyone but the most fervent minor league baseball fans follows the action. there seems to be so many more ways to get in more development time.

    but whenever I question things like this I remember the golden rule: “what’s the answer to every question?”

  5. As others have said, my primary fascination with this AFL was (hopefully) to find out more about what we’ve got in Hassell and Frizzell. Neither is going to happen. We’re told that Hassell is a significant prospect, but we still have no idea about Frizzell. He’s a 23-year-old who raked in a small sample size in low A, following on a single successful college season. We WANT to believe, but with the Nat roadside littered with Mendoza, Banks, Wiseman, and other good college players all the way back to Matt Skole, Ricky Hague, and beyond, it’s hard to completely buy in.

    Frizzell will be 24 when he shows up in Wilmington in April, . . . but yes, I’m a sucker for those 11 homers, 11 doubles, and 44 RBIs in only 34 games at Fredericksburg. Fingers crossed that this guy turns out to be the real deal. But we’re obviously not going to find out if it will play in Peoria.

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