Nate Perry has hit two homers tonight for Tri-City; he now has 11 on the season. Cristian Javier's final line: 6 IP, 2 H, 2 BB, 8 K; Javier will probably make one more appearance this season and he might go the entire year without allowing five hits in any of his appearances.
Sits low 90's, touches 95ish as a starter. Depending on what else he's got and the command of it, I don't see why that can't work, especially if it plays up out of the pen.
Any chance in your mind (or any of our other prospect watchers minds) he sees a September call up? I think we still have a little bit of dead weight on the 40 man, and we have a metric **** ton of guys coming off the roster this year in FA...
No idea, most of what I just said came from guys I trust watching his RR start. Love the use of metric ****ton, btw, that's one of my favorite units of weights and measures.
Luhnow said not likely this year with James, Abreu, Urquidy, Armenteros, and other guys that have been to the majors on Sunday.
The AAA rotation should be quite good next season: Whitley #2 prospect per MLB.com Abreu #5 Javier #10 Bielak #11 Urquidy #12 Armenteros #22 F Valdez 2.59 xfip in AAA this year C Perez Emanuel Hartman Sneed Martes That doesn’t include Ivey or Paredes, both of whom could reasonably start next season in AAA, having had sufficient experience and success in AA. That’s 6 of their current top 30 prospects, 2 high ceiling lefties, 2 high floor lefties, Martes (a former elite prospect who is still only 23) and Sneed, who was steady in AAA and looked great in the majors. Sure, 2-3 of those guys are likely to make Houston’s bullpen next season, but I suspect that kind of depth made it easier for Luhnow to trade Martin and Bukauskas.
RR is playing the Missions (Brewers) tonight, if anyone has that baseball jones. Internet radio works, so does the terrestrial. Nearly five months of jostling between two of the best teams in Triple-A baseball comes down to this: If Round Rock wins this week’s home series against San Antonio, the Express will all but lock down a division title and a playoff berth. Any other outcome will extend the race into Labor Day weekend when the season ends. The Express (79-52) own the top record in the Pacific Coast League and led the Missions (77-54) by two games entering Sunday night. [it's only 1 game as of Monday] The critical four-game set at Dell Diamond will begin Monday night with Kent Emanuel (7-2, 4.23 ERA) expected to start for Round Rock against MLB veteran Shelby Miller (1-1, 3.12). Only the division winner gets to the playoffs.
Another nice outing for Luis Garcia: 5 IP, 4 BB, 10 K Garcia now has 156 strikeouts in 102.2 innings this season.
I haven’t seen him hit 95, mostly have seen 90-92 mph but I haven’t seen every start. I like him better as a starter personally. He isn’t going to make his money off velocity and when he over throws he gets hit because his movement straightens out. FWIW his change up REALLY plays off his fastball because his arm angle and speed is the exact same and he throws that change up at 86-88 and the fastball 90-92... so the hitter has no idea what he is seeing. Couple that with a really nasty curve ball and a whispy slider and it is easy to see why hitters cannot hit him well. Also... his fastball has a lot of movement and hitters struggle judging it on the pitchers plane and continue to swing under it. So he has a perfect repertoire for starting and pitching deep into games if he can get better command and improve the consistency of his change up. Curve: elite Fastball: mediocre velocity/good movement Slider: average as a single pitch but works off curve Change up: devastating when consistent. Velocity plays perfect off fastball and moves different than fastball so keeps hitters off balance (some call it a cutter, but it isn’t a cutter). Lacks velocity and ideal size so not someone that attracts a lot of attention from scouts. Is turning into a prospect because of pitches all playing off each other very well. A flaw is that he goes to his curve as a put away pitch too much. Needs to work in control of fastball and command of change up to get big league hitters out.
Just going by what I was told by the RR guys, Mike Capps and such who watch all the games. I haven't seen it personally either.
