{"id":18221,"date":"2023-08-20T09:59:36","date_gmt":"2023-08-20T13:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=18221"},"modified":"2023-08-21T10:43:13","modified_gmt":"2023-08-21T14:43:13","slug":"last-night-in-richmond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=18221","title":{"rendered":"Last night in Richmond&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Wood-James-Frederisburg-2022.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Wood-James-Frederisburg-2022.jpg\" alt=\"Wood's blast was the highlight of the night for Harrisburg.  Photo via milb\" class=\"wp-image-17972\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Wood-James-Frederisburg-2022.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Wood-James-Frederisburg-2022-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Wood-James-Frederisburg-2022-768x512.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>(freely stealing this idea from <strong>Luke Erickson<\/strong> and nationalsprospects.com, when Luke attends a game in person as he frequently does).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, for those of you who don&#8217;t know, I&#8217;ve relocated to Richmond, home of the SF Giant&#8217;s AA affiliate known as the &#8220;Flying Squirrels.&#8221;  I suppose its because Virginia&#8217;s capital city has a ton of squirrels flying around (no actually, it was a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Richmond_Flying_Squirrels#:~:text=The%20name%20the%20Richmond%20Flying,%2C%20Flatheads%2C%20and%20Hush%20Puppies.\">fan-based naming competition<\/a> back in 2009).  And our own Harrisburg Senators were in town this week for a 6-game series.  So I got a chance to see our prospects in action last night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s my recap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In rough lineup order from last night (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.milb.com\/gameday\/senators-vs-flying-squirrels\/2023\/08\/19\/723967\/final\/box\">here&#8217;s the box-score<\/a>), a game our team lost 7-6 in a walk-off, which was great for the home town fans but pretty galling for a fan of the National&#8217;s team, as they blew multiple leads throughout the night to give away the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Hitters first<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>It only took about 3 minutes for our team to grab the lead 3-0.  As the adage goes in Minor League baseball &#8230; get there early because you don&#8217;t want to miss any action.  We missed it of course because, well, when you&#8217;re attending a baseball game with kids, the odds of getting there for opening pitch are usually nil.  After a <strong>Jacob Young<\/strong> leadoff single and a <strong>Robert Hassell<\/strong> walk, <strong>Trey Lipscomb<\/strong> blasted a ball to left for a quick 3-run lead while we were parking the car.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Lipscomb played 2B, has already earned a promotion this year to AA, and has continued to stay hot.  He went 3-5 on the night, was a double short of the cycle, is batting 3rd for the AA team, and honestly looks like he could really be a find.  We&#8217;ve watched <strong>Luis Garcia<\/strong> scuffle playing 2B (and looking like he eats big macs every night); Lipscomb is an athletic beast who can play anywhere on the dirt.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Young: played CF instead of Hassell, went 2-4 with a walk on the night, was a real spark plug at the top, and made a really nice ranging catch at the wall early on.  I like this guy too, and talked about how he may possibly fit into the OF log jam of prospects we have.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>James Wood<\/strong> has been struggling since getting to AA, but he hit an absolute blast to right field that was awe-inspiring from our 1st-baseline bleacher seats.  Phew.  Someone&#8217;s going home with a dented roof, because he cleared both fences in right and nailed a car in the parking lot.  He was only 1-5 on the night, but he did hit the ball hard 3 times.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Hassell looked absolutely awful.  0-4 with a walk and three strikeouts.  Honestly, not once did he take what i&#8217;d call a confident swing.  This is consistent with basically his entire Nats career so far.  I know he had hamate bone issues, which takes a year to recover from.  I know he&#8217;s a top prospect and hit while in SD&#8217;s system.  What the heck is going on here?  I mean, was all his production in San Diego&#8217;s system due to hitter&#8217;s parks?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Brady House<\/strong> batted 5th and was &#8220;just&#8221; 1-4, but it was probably a bit unlucky 1-4.  He had a sharp line out to 2B for one out and he blasted a ball to CF that was caught on the warning track for another out.  He also looked very, very solid at 3B, making a ton of plays, including a couple of in-between hops that looked tough on the way off the bat.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Frankie Tostado<\/strong> played 1B and batted 6th: nothing striking either way.  <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Israel Pineda<\/strong> was free swinging at the plate, waved at a bunch of pitches, had two punchouts.  I know his value is behind the plate, but the dude is only hitting .175 for AA right now.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Lucious Fox<\/strong>&#8230;. looked awful at the plate.  0-4, three strikeouts, and his body language basically screamed &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to be here.&#8221;  He&#8217;s 26, batting 8th in AA, and I wonder why he&#8217;s still on the team.  At least he&#8217;s DFA&#8217;d off the 40man at this point.  If we had a more pressing SS prospect, i&#8217;d guess that he&#8217;d be gone.  Lipscomb looks more like a 2B\/3B guy, Cluff is an org guy, and high-A doesn&#8217;t really have anyone banging on the door.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Jackson Cluff<\/strong> could be starting at SS instead of Fox; tonight he DH&#8217;d and batted 9th.  Ask yourself: if you are batting your DH ninth &#8230; is it safe to say you have roster issues?  Normally Cluff is at SS, <strong>Trey Harris<\/strong> is at DH, and the team shows a bit more pop.  That being said, Cluff, did an admirable job table setting, going 2-3 with a walk and easily stealing bases all night.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pitchers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Mitchell Parker<\/strong> got the start on the mound.  If you&#8217;ve never seen him &#8230; his mechanics scream one guy: <strong>Clayton Kershaw<\/strong>.  He has the same arm stretch straight up to the sky to start, he has similar arm action, a funky delivery, he&#8217;s lefty, and he gets a ton of Ks.  He had 8 punch-outs in 5IP on the night.  <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Parker gave up a run in the 3rd on this sequence: 10-bounce grounder, balk, Wild Pitch, and then sac fly.  So, not exactly helping himself, but also not really getting pounded early.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>But he then went this sequence in the 5th: bunt single to open (House was literally playing on the grass at 3B and by the time he got to the bunt the guy was rounding first), then another seeing-eye-single up the middle to have 2 on with nobody out, then Richmond&#8217;s best hitter blasted a homer to score three and tie the game.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Honestly, Parker looked pretty solid on the night.  I only saw two really hard hit balls, both by the same guy <strong>Shane Matheny<\/strong> who seemed to have a read on him all night.  But, as has been a pattern for Parker, he was profligate with his pitches, needing 92 to get through five innings.  I still like him as a prospect, even though his ERA in AA is in the upper 4.s<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>After Parker came out, 2021 NDFA <strong>Tyler Schoff<\/strong> came in and pitched a neatly effective 6th.  A NDFA advancing to AA is a pretty solid outcome; he didn&#8217;t have super awesome stuff, but he was effective.  He&#8217;s looking like that classic middle reliever RHP guy who gets by on movement and who suddenly is pitching in the 6th for the big league club.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Malvin Pena<\/strong> pitched the 7th and 8th; he looked like a slightly trimmer version of <strong>Lee Smith<\/strong> on the mound.  Pena pitched a clean 7th but then went homer-double-RBI single in the 8th to cough up a 6-4 lead and send the home crowd into a frenzy.  The single went to Wood, who made a valiant attempt to throw the guy out at the plate and nearly got him.  Solid defensive play.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>So, now its tied 6-6 in the 9th and we bring in <strong>Patrick Ruotolo<\/strong>, a MLFA we signed out of the Mexican League in early July and who pitched for this same Richmond team in 2021 for nearly a full season.  Now he&#8217;s a 28yr old reliever in AA &#8230; and he pitched like it.  Walk to open the 9th (already a 50% chance of that guy scoring), then a sharply hit single for two-on, none out.  Ruotolo did induce what looked like it could be a DP grounder, but it ate up Lipscomb at 2nd and an arguable force-call didn&#8217;t go his way.  Bases loaded, none out, and the same guy who blasted a homer earlier in the game lofted a deep flyball to CF that easily scored the walk-off run.  Not an impressive outing from Ruotolo.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>So, that&#8217;s the observations from the game.  Senators blow leads of 3-0 and 6-4 to lose 7-6.  The post-game fireworks were cool though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(freely stealing this idea from Luke Erickson and nationalsprospects.com, when Luke attends a game in person as he frequently does). So, for those of you who don&#8217;t know, I&#8217;ve relocated to Richmond, home of the SF Giant&#8217;s AA affiliate known as the &#8220;Flying Squirrels.&#8221; I suppose its because Virginia&#8217;s capital city has a ton of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,4324],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minorspitching","category-prospects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18221"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18224,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18221\/revisions\/18224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}