Monday’s News & Notes
| Team | Yesterday | Today | Pitching Probables |
| Rochester | Lost, 5-3 | OFF DAY | N/A |
| Harrisburg | Lost, 7-5 | OFF DAY | N/A |
| Wilmington | Won, 4-3 | OFF DAY | N/A |
| Fredericksburg | Won, 4-1 | OFF DAY | N/A |
| FCL Nationals | OFF DAY | OFF DAY | |
| DSL Nationals | OFF DAY | vs DSL Arizona Black, 11am |
Syracuse 5 Rochester 3
• Alvarez 5IP, 6H, 3R, 1ER, 1BB, 2K, 2HBP, WP
• Adon 2IP, 1H, 0R, 0BB, 5K
• C. Romero (L, 2-2) 1IP, 1H, 2R, 2ER, 1BB, 0K, HR
• Cluff 2-3, R, HR, 2RBI
• Stubbs 1-3, R, 2B, RBI
After taking and losing a 3-0 lead, the Mets got a two-run HR in the 9th to give the Red Wings a 5-3 loss. Andrew Alvarez now has nine no-decisions in 16 starts after giving up three runs (one earned ) on six hits and a walk over five innings. He struck out two and hit two batters. Carlos Romero gave up the aforementioned dinger in his lone inning pitched after issuing a leadoff walk. Darren Baker singled, stole secondm and scored ahead of C.J. Stubbs’s double. Jackson Cluff capped off the rally with a two-run HR, his third of the season. Cluff singled again in the 5th as did Trey Lipscomb in the 7th for the five Rochester hits.
Akron 7 Harrisburg 5
• Sykora (L, 0-1) 3⅔ IP, 4H, 4R, 4ER, 5BB, 6K,
• Mejia 1⅓ IP, 0H, 0R, 2BB, 0K
• C. De La Cruz 2-3, R, BB, HR, 2RBI, CS
• Glasser 2-4, R, 3B, RBI, SB
• Made 2-4, 2B, RBI
Travis Sykora walked three and struck out five in his first turn through the lineup. But the second turn is where the RubberDucks gave him a four-run bath, knocking the 21-y.o. from the tub box with two out in the 4th and 79 pitches for a loss in his AA debut. Harrisburg had given him a 3-0 lead after two but a three-run 6th courtesy of Mason Thompson dug a 7-3 hole to which the Sens could only answer with two in the 7th for 7-5 loss. Phillip Glasser extended his hit streak to 12 games with a single and a triple while Carlos De La Cruz smacked a two-run HR to lead the Harrisburg offense.
Wilmington 4 Hudson Valley 3
• Sthele (W, 4-3) 5IP, 4H, 2R, 2ER, 0BB, 2K
• Arguelles (H, 2) 2⅔ IP, 2H, 0R, 1BB, 1K
• Petersen 3-4, 2R, 2-2B
• Cruz 1-3, R, 2RBI
The Blue Rocks got three in the 2nd and one in the 3rd and got justenough pitching to make it stand up fo the third straight win, 4-3. Travis “Sunday” Sthele held services for five innings of two-run ball with four hits, no walks, and two whiffs to win his fourth game. Anthony Arguelles and Jared Simpson covered the next three frames and kept Hudson Valley off the board. Miguel Gomez put four runners on and let in one but preserved the lad for his fourth save. Sam Petersen singled once and doubled twice while Armando Cruz drove in two with a groundout in the 2nd and a single in the 3rd to lead the Wilmington offense.
Fredericksburg 4 Kannapolis 1
• B. Romero (W, 1-1) 5IP, 5H, 1R, 0ER, 0BB, 5K
• Cranz (SV, 9) 1IP, 1H, 0R, 0BB, 1K
• Dickerson 2-3
• Rombach 3-4, R, 2B, HR, 2RBI
• Vaquero 1-2, 2SF, 2RBI
Brayan Romero bounced back from beatdown in the opener to win the series finale Sunday Afternoon in Fredericksburg.
FCL Nationals, 22-16, 2nd place FCL East, 1½ GB
The F-Nats took three of five last week but remain in second place behind the F-Astros having played (and lost) more games than the first-place F-Astros. This week is another short week (four games) with home games tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday and a road game on Saturday.
DSL Nationals, 10-10, 5th place, DSL South, 7GB
The DSL Nationals remain stuck at .500 despite a -5 run differential. This week, it’s home games today, Thursday, and Friday and road games tomorrow and Saturday.
Reading the box score, it looks like Sykora’s performance was just unlucky rather than it being bad.
In the 3rd inning, where he allowed 3 ER, this is the sequence: BB–SB–bunt single–pop out–ground ball single to 2B Made–fly out–single on line drive to OF–line out. If either of those infield hits turn into an out, it’s a very different box score and outing from Sykora. Still, he was clearly struggling with his command, which has been uncharacteristic this year.
Sykora’s 3rd inning was a classic, what can go wrong, will go wrong for a pitcher. That said, Sykora started the inning not with one BB, but two BB. Then, the bad luck hit. So, Sykora started the mess, but all hell broke loose.
Many factors weigh in on Alvarez nine non decisions .
Brutal bullpen
Hot and cold offense
The leather skills behind him ?
Luke I cannot resist Chivilli – Cavilli
Me and Hulio down by the school yard .
6 3 RHP just signed
Luke
Julio or Hulio ??
Also, Millas finally gets playing time!! Only 5 days after his promotion…
Davey must hate the guy, because there’s no other justification for giving Ruiz and now Adams so much playing time. The guy has done somersaults for 3 years now to avoid playing Millas, and instead two of the consistently worst catchers in baseball.
But congrats to Millas on seizing the opportunity! 1 for 3 with a 2B and a BB, plus a CS behind the plate.
The clock is ticking for the Nats to do something about DeJong’s rehab (I think they have one week left). They’re clearly drawing it out as long as possible, and House is, unfortunately, not doing himself any favors. A line of .231/.268/.288 isn’t going to cut it. Tena’s line of .248/.325/.365 got him demoted. Will they demote House or DFA DeJong? Will be interesting to see which they choose.
In agreement on Millas!!! He is definitely the better defensive catcher.
We’re definitely not doing any favors to our young arms with statistically the worst defense in the game behind them, and the worst defensive catchers in front of them!
Not sure how many opportunties we need to see for the Nats to determine that Keibert and Riley Adams are below average catchers and that is kind. Millas is a solid defensive catcher, that switch hits and can actually run a little.
Verges on insanity what the Nats have done to Drew Millas (FWIW, not saying Millas is next Matt Weiters), but just ridiculous how the Nats give opportunity after opportunity to Ruiz and Adams, while they never fail to rate among the worst in MLB, while Millas sits.
You’re preaching to the choir!
Millas has spent 116 days on a major league roster, and started only 26 games.
Rizzo shares some of the blame for allowing Ruiz and Adams to be on the major league roster for such long periods, but this mostly falls on Davey. Millas has been right there, available to use, and Davey repeatedly refuses to do so.
Meanwhile, Millas has a career 102 wRC+ and above average defense (compare this to Ruiz: 84 wCR+ and Adams: 80 wRC+ while also being the worst defensive catchers). This is Exhibit Z on why it is indeed “on the coaching”.
The one thing that I want to caution is that, public reputation aside, Millas hasn’t shown that he’s actually capable of average catcher defense. It’s been an admittedly small sample, but not that small. 237 innings. So, maybe a 5 or 6 weeks of play as a full time catcher.
His framing grades out at 1 run below average. If you extrapolate that to Ruiz’ s 3589 innings, it’s -15. Which isn’t that much better than Ruiz’s -25. Adams is even worse. -20 over just 1444 innings, which prorates out to -50 for comparison.
Similarly, he’s better than Adams but worse than Ruiz limiting stolen bases. And his PB+WP/1000 innings is almost as bad as Adams and worse than Ruiz.
I’m not sure fans can ever know the truth about game calling, but the other defensive components are close enough that it’s perfectly plausible that the team thinks Millas is a net negative defensively.
The advantage, as far as I see it, for Millas and the reason that he should get a serious run this season, even if it means DFA’ing Adams, has nothing to do with his median projection. It’s that his error bars are pretty high. Maybe he poor defense we’ve seen is just nerves and he’ll improve when he settles down. Maybe not. But it’s worth finding out.
Everybody including Sykora getting “ Schumanned “
Schumann resonance .
Monday Monday ( Mamas and Papas )
No Tappas !