Wednesday’s News & Notes
| Team | Yesterday | Today | Pitching Probables |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rochester | Won, 10-9 | @ Charlotte, 7:04pm | Champlain (5-1, 3.43) vs. Ma. Adams (1-0, 3.00) |
| Harrisburg | Lost, 4-2 | @ Chesapeake, 6:35pm | A. Young (1st AA start of ’26) vs Watts-Brown (0-6, 8.27) |
| Wilmington | Lost, 5-0 | vs. Frederick, 6:35pm | Sime (0-0, 2.53) vs. Hunter (0-0, 2.76) |
| Fredericksburg | Lost, 15-2 | vs. Wilson, 6:35pm | L. Sullivan (3-2, 5.40) vs. Mercedes (1-1, 5.13) |
| FCL Nationals | OFF DAY | vs. FCL Marlins, 12pm | |
| DSL Nationals | Lost, 10-2 | OFF DAY |
Rochester 10 Charlotte 9
• Penrod 1IP, 1H, 0R, 1BB, 1K
• Perales (W, 2-4) 5⅓ IP, 7H, 6R, 5ER, 2BB, 3K, HR
• L. Young ⅔ IP, 2H, 1R, 1ER, 1BB, 0K
• King 2-5, R, 2RBI
• House 2-5, R, RBI
• Wiemer 2-4, R, 2K, CS
• Pinckney 1-3, 2R, HR(10), 3RBI
The Red Wings sent 11 men to the plate in the 7th and seven came around to score to take a 10-2 lead. The Knights answered with four and got three in the 9th but fell short for a 10-9 Rochester win. Zach Penrod opened the game and gave up a hit and a walk before giving way to Luis Perales, who gave up six runs on seven hits (one HR) and two walks over five and a 1/3rd to get the Jack Morris win. Seaver King, Brady House, and Joey Wiemer each singled twice while Andrew Pinckney launched his 10th HR to lead the Red Wings offense. Roster moves: C Tres Barrera retired.
Chesapeake 4 Harrisburg 2
• Randall 5IP, 2H, 0R, 1BB, 2K
• Dean (BS, 1; L, 0-4) 1IP, 2H, 3R, 3ER, 3BB, 2K, HR
• Thomas 1-2, R, HR, 2RBI
• C. Wallace 1-3, BB
Johnathon Thomas hit a two-run HR to give Harrisburg a 2-0 lead early, but Noah Dean handed over his beer and gave up three in the 6th as Chesapeake took the opener, 4-2. Josh Randall blanked the BaySox for five frames, allowing two hits and a walk and striking out two. Sam Brown, Cayden Wallace, and Devin Fitz-Gerald rounded out the Senators hit column with a single apiece. Roster moves: LHP Alex Young reassigned from Fredericksburg; C Kyle Hayes placed on Development List; IF Marcus Brown traded to Houston for a bag of balls and a coupon for Outback cash.
Frederick 5 Wilmington 0
• Y. Tejeda Jr. (L, 2-5) 5⅔ IP, 4H, 2R, 0ER, 3BB, 7K, HBP, PO @ 1B
• Roberts 1IP, 0H, 0R, 1BB, 1K
• Cruz 1-3, 2K
• Banks 0-2, BB, CS
Teo Banks drew a walk in the third to end the perfect game and Ronny Cruz singled with one out in the 4th to end the no-hitter. No Blue Rocks batter reached second base. Meanwhile, the Keys took advantage of seven walks and two errors to score five times on six hits as Frederick shut out Wilmington 5-0. Yoel Tejeda took the loss, giving up two unearned runs on four hits and three walks while striking out seven.
Wilson 15 Fredericksburg 2
• M. De La Cruz (L, 0-1 ⅔ IP, 1H, 2R, 2ER, 4BB, 0K, 31-10 PIT-K
• Fagnant 2IP, 1H, 0R, 2BB, 1K
• D. Tejeda 2-2
• J. Cruz 2-3, E
Christian Fagnant kept his ERA at 0.00 with another two scoreless innings. The problem is he’s a backup catcher for Fredericksburg and was presed into duty by the rest of FredNats throwing in-game BP in a 15-2 defenestration by Wilson. Marlon De La Cruz didn’t make it out of the 1st as he retired two of seven batters and walked four of them to take the loss. The Warbirds put up crooked numbers in five of their first six “ups” against the first five FredNats pitchers. Dashyll Tejeda singled twice while Juan Cruz singled and doubled and Hunter Hines hit his 2nd Low-A HR to lead the FredNats counterattack. Roster moves: RHP Ryan Minckler placed on the 7-day I.L.
DSL Rangers Red 10 DSL Nationals 2
• M. Medina (L, 0-2) 3⅓ IP, 4H, 2R, 0ER, 0BB, 4K, WP
• Ronodon 1IP, 0H, 0R, 1BB, 1K,
• J. Duran 2-4, R, HR, RBI
• Tusen 1-4, R, 2SB
The D-Nats dropped their fifth straight, 10-2 and fell into last place in the DSL South. Maximin Media wore the loss with two unearned runs let in on four hits over three and a 1/3rd innings. Juan Duran singled and homered while Adrian Tusen singled once, scored once, and stole two bases to highlight the DSL Nationals six-hit, two-walk offense.
Gotta give out a Roger Craig : Hummm, baby ! To Tejada Jr.
And how many of us said this last night : Good Lord !!!
Another day BL
I missed Tyler Schoff getting traded a few days ago to the Braves. What a peculiar season. A 27 year old spending the whole season in the FCL, and then he’s been assigned to A ball with the Braves org. Schoff was throwing (effectively) in AAA last season. There’s got to be more to this story, but I wish him luck!
That coupled with Marcus Brown’s trade is another departure from the past. Curious that theyre actually trading org filler like this rather than just releasing them.
Yesterday highlighted the lack of depth in this org among our bullpens. Jared Beck had another disaster class performance, walking 5 and allowing 5 ER in 1.1 IP. Beck now has an incredible 45 BB in 27 IP. Amazing he’s still getting regular playing time as a soon to be 26 year old in Low A ball.
Some almost as poor outings from 24 year old Gus Hughes and 27 year old Kevin Davis on display in Fredericksburg.
A lot of this stems from getting literally no value out of the DSL over the past decade, leaving the lower minors bereft of talent. That trend hasn’t ended this year. The DSL Nats still stink. They’re a miserable 4-13 on the season, and have exactly 2 hitter above average, and quite a few well below average, including our big bonus baby Samil Serrano (59 wRC+). Then among the arms it’s no better. Only half of the 18 arms to appear so far have struck out more batter than they’ve walked. Of those 9, only 4 have an ERA below 5.00. Its especially damning that we have so little quality while only fielding one team. I hope the new FO is working hard to make our Domincan operations not one of the worst in the game, so we don’t have to play 26 year olds with walk rates of 15 BB/9 any longer.
wonderful piece from Spencer in the Athletic on the morning after the bullpen meltdown last night. some of his points:
>previous org developed no high octane relievers
>new regime did not buy same because that’s not what teams projected to lose 95 games do
>bullpen ranks 30th in FanGraphs’ Stuff+ metric
it’s a process and they are less than one year in. I don’t understand all the moves but I love watching them play out when they succeed. nobody bats 1.000, it’s baseball.
That makes a lot of sense. I surely didn’t think 2 solid setup men would be what this team needed.
Last couple of days, I’ve been dreaming about the haul they’ll get for Foster Griffin.
we developed Jose A. *sigh*
“new regime did not buy same because that’s not what teams projected to lose 95 games do”
This is the one I don’t understand or forgive. Even if the team does go on to lose 95 games, you are allowed to trade them for prospects at the deadline.
For a team sitting under $100M – even counting Strasburg and the rest of the dead money – to be unwilling to spend $15-20M on two or three relievers is a travesty.
In the most likely scenario, where you suck and trade them, you’re essentially buying prospects. I’d have to look at the data, but given that you’re only paying 2/3rd of their salary, I bet the average transaction is pretty close to break even.
And then, you know, baseball is weird and high variance and in a not insignificant minority of futures you’re actually surprisingly competitive. And then in those cases you’re glad you have a couple decent bullpen arms.
It’s basically arbitrage, if you primarily care about winning games now and in the future. The only reason not to do it is to make sure the Lerners have $3.51 billion instead of $3.49 billion. And, while your mileage may vary, that’s not a priority of mine.
I think this is 100% correct in theory. The problem is that relief pitchers either break or suck (which is probably because they are broken but not 100% broken) with high probability compared to other types of players. The very best relief pitchers command multi-year deals. Although I agree that the FO should have spent money on free agent players (including relief pitchers), this was decidedly not the offseason to offer multi-year deals to relief pitchers. So, the Nats would have been bargain hunting for 1-yr RPs who may or may not have turned out to be good or healthy enough to trade. I still think they should have done it (and “doing it” means being willing to outbid teams with more expected wins than the Nats, which is what they would have had to do). It could have been pitched to ownership as a way to “buy prospects at the trade deadline”–which we might have expected ownership to value during the offseason–and not to “make the 2026 MLB club win more games”–which we might have expected ownership not to value.