Mormon Baseball

Harper has been hot so far this season. No, not Bryce Harper — he’s on the DL in the majors. His older brother Bryan Harper, currently a relief pitcher for the Potomac Nationals in the Carolina League (A+). Bryan has a 1.62 era in 16.2 innings of work–which would lead the league if he had pitched the number of innings needed to qualify (32 innings so far). Although he is a reliever, he has appeared in just 10 of Potomac’s 40 games this season. Read the rest of this entry »

Finally back after suffering a lat strain late in spring training, Doug Fister struggled through a bad start week before last, and then was back in form, giving up just 1 earned run in a 7-inning no-decision start against the Diamondbacks. Fister gave up 5 hits and no walks in the start (0.71 WHIP) and struck out 6. His performance must be making the National’s brass happy about signing Fister during the off season. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week it was Adam Miller’s turn to lead the Mormon pitchers in the minor leagues. He pitched 5 innings of shut-out ball, earning his 3rd win for the season and brought his season era down to 2.67. The performance leaves Miller 12th in the Midwest League in era, with 10 earned runs over the 33.2 innings pitched (25th in the league). He has turned in a solid performance, one that may lead to promotion.

And Miller wasn’t alone in shutting out opponents last week. The Binghamton Mets’ Tyler Pill (Eastern League — AA) also earned a 0.00 era and a win for the week, but Pill is trying to work off some  poor outings, and his work last week only brought his era down to 5.16, while giving him a win to accompany his 5 losses this season. For Pill, last week was great, but he will need several more great weeks to bring his stats in line.

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Earning his 5th save of the season last week, the White Sox’s Matt Lindstrom is looking like a solid closer at the moment. In his two one-inning appearances last week he gave up just 1 hit and 1 walk — for a 1.00 WHIP and 0.00 era. For the season his era is down to 2.81 in 16 innings of relief and 8 save opportunities. But Lindstrom isn’t expected to keep up this level of performance for the whole year.

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How long do you have to play well in the minors before you are promoted? You might think that after a player is clearly dominating in a league that promotion would swiftly occur. And according to that logic, right now Marcus Littlewood might be justified in such expectations. Littlewood is dominating the Midwest League (A), leading the league in batting average (.361) and sporting a strong slash line that is either 3rd or 4th in the league. This is coming after a strong season last year. So why not promote him?

A similar argument could be made for Adam Law, who was dominant in both the Arizona League (R) and Pioneer League (R) last year and has done well this year in the California League (A+), with a .309 average (tied for 18th in the league) and 5 stolen bases (tied for 20th). It might be early to promote Law again, so I expected that he would stay in California.

Nope. Law was demoted last week, back to the Ogden Raptors of the Pioneer League, whose season doesn’t start until June 16th.

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While last week the Mormons in the major leagues managed almost a bust, those who weren’t injured seemed to come roaring back last week, led by the Yankee’s Jacoby Ellsbury. Last week Ellsbury was 8 for 18 (.444) raising his season batting average to .333. He also hit a home run, earned 3 rbis and stole two bases and jumped back onto the stat leaders board in 3 more categories.

On paper, Ellsbury was followed by the Mariner’s John Buck, who hit .750 last week and scored two runs. But Buck’s performance came from one game, against the hapless Astros, in which he was 3 for 4. That game raised Buck’s season average to .300 — but since Buck is a backup catcher with only 20 at bats so far, its hard to see much significance in a single game’s performance.

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The Round Rock Express’ Adam Rosales started to make the case for a return to the majors last week, going 8 for 18 (.444) at the plate with 7 walks. The walks alone are quite stunning—he nearly doubled the number of times he walked for the season, and jumped to 6th in walks in the AAA Pacific Coast League. For the season, he is batting .254 with 4 home runs, 13 runs scored and 10 rbis in 71 at bats—perhaps not enough to get him back to the majors immediately, but certainly the beginning of an argument for his return (should there be an opening).

Rosales isn’t the only Mormon in the minors who excelled at the plate last week. He was followed closely by the Beloit Snappers’ Jaycob Brugman, who was 9 for 23 (.391) with a home run and 4 walks, and by Rancho Cucamonga’s Adam Law (California League – A+), who was 11 for 30 (.367) with 7 runs scored and 3 rbis. For the season Law’s .325 average is close behind that of Marcus Littlewood, who continues to dominate the Midwest League (A) with a .395 average (1st in the league).

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While its not unusual for an individual player to have an off week, its much more unusual for all of the Mormon players to have poor or mediocre performances at the same time. But this past week was like that.

Perhaps the strongest performance was from the Royals’ pitcher Jeremy Guthrie, who improved his era in two starts last week. But Guthrie’s performance can’t really be called stellar: a 4.05 era for the two starts, a loss, 16 hits and a walk with 6 earned runs over 13.1 innings pitched. Meh…

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The New York Times recently published an interactive map, A Map of Baseball Nation, which shows what team is most liked in each zip code across the U.S., based on what team they have “liked” on Facebook. Its kind of fun to see the geographic spread of the fans.

I was particularly intrigued to see how Utah appeared — looking at the county by county data no team gets the majority, and, I was surprised to find out, the Yankees and Red Sox were the most popular teams, depending on the area. Why would that be so? Do Mormons prefer the Yankees and Red Sox?

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After starting the season slow, the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes’ Adam Law stepped up his performance last week to something like what he did last year, his first after being drafted. Law was 9 for 20 (.450) in 6 games, with 7 runs scored, 5 rbis, 7 walks and 2 stolen bases. And Law raised his batting average for the season to .298, while planting a foot among the statistics leaders in batting average, on-base percentage and in stolen bases. Its the kind of performance Law was known for last year, when he tore up first the Arizona rookie league, and then the Pioneer league, leading to his promotion to the California League (A+) instead of an A-level league with those who were drafted the same time he was. Is it too much to expect him to reach AA by the end of the year?

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