Mormon Baseball

Posts Tagged ‘Tyson Brummett’

Often when minor league players are promoted from one class to another their performance falls off as they adjust to the new league. But occasionally that doesn’t happen, such as happened recently with Jacob Hannemann. The Cubs’ top-20 prospect arrived in the Florida State League this past week and promptly made a mark. Hitting 7 for 22 (.318), Hannemann also had 5 runs scored, 2 rbis, 2 walks and 3 stolen bases. And it is in stolen bases that Hannemann excels—an analysis at Fangraphs places him 5th in all the minor leagues, despite the fact that he is only now reaching the A+ level.

Hannemann’s performance last week is slightly behind that of Brett Pill, who plays in the Korean League. Pill, who once played for the Giants, was 8 for 23 (.348) last week with 5 runs scored, 3 rbis, 2 home runs and a stolen base. And his season record remains great; he is hitting .322 over 205 at bats, with 15 home runs.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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).

Read the rest of this entry »

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?

Read the rest of this entry »

The Dayton Dragons’ Jeff Gelalich (pronounced JELL-ah-litch) is pretty good. Among the various Mormon prospects inthe minors, he now has the best batting average (although he is playing in the single A Midwest League). He also has scored 31 runs, walked 21 times and stolen 12 bases in 172 at bats. So should he be promoted to AA?

Unfortunately, he’s not so good that he is on the Midwest League’s leader boards, which might be a signal that he should be promoted. But he might be good enough for promotion, if there was a need. And it is the “need” part of the equation that is hard to judge in the minors. If the players in AA all have more potential, surely the management won’t send them down to make room for Gelalich. And those players may be in AA for the same reason — there are already strong AAA prospects, who are also waiting for something to happen to make the majors—in this case the Cincinnati Reds. Unfortunately, its not just about how good you are, its also about other players and how well they are playing. So everyone in the minors waits and watches and tries to play their best so that when the need is there they can be promoted. Still, with Gelalich’s numbers, especially with his .360 average last week, a promotion to AA later this year seems possible.

Read the rest of this entry »

There might be more to say about the Mormons in the minors this week if so many weren’t on the disabled list. A week ago Bryan Harper and Mitch Talbot were on the 7-day list, and this past week they were joined by Cale Iorg and Mitch Maier. And only Harper seems ready to return to play.

And while they are out, there isn’t too much to focus on.The best performance was from Jacksonville Suns’ pitcher Matt Neil, who gave up just 1 earned run in 5 innings, but failed to earn hist first win of the year when his team lost the game after he left the field. Neil has brought his era down to 4.79 and seems to have settled down to his standard pitching form, we hope.

Read the rest of this entry »

If there is a Mormon “Cinderella” player this year, it sure looks like it is Shane Peterson. After starting last year in AA, working his way to AAA, Peterson was invited to spring training and promptly tore up the ball, hitting .408 over 39 at bats and making a big impression on the Athletics brass. He started the regular season with the AAA Sacramento River Cats, and by last week he was again beating up the white spheroid, going 14 for 27 (.519) and scoring 9 times. So when the As were hit with injuries at shortstop and left field, they called up the outfielder Peterson—and had him play first base yesterday! Huh?

Apparently its temporary. The As regular first baseman, Brandon Moss, is out on paternity leave, and since Peterson has experience at 1st (64 games in AA in 2011) and was hitting better than the backup first baseman, Nate Freiman (current batting average .176), he got the job. What will happen next? I assume it depends on how Peterson adjusts and performs. Yesterday he went o for 4 with a strike out, but the As won the game and Peterson performed well in the field, so he has at least a few games—till Moss returns—to prove himself.

While this past week Peterson outperformed any other Mormon in the minor leagues, he wasn’t the only player making a difference at the plate.

Read the rest of this entry »

Somewhat surprisingly, the story of  Mormons in the minor leagues last week was a pitching story. The assumption I ususally make is that pitchers need time to warm up to the season—they often don’t perform well for the first few games of the year. But the Mormon pitchers in the minors were split 50/50 for the past week—half pitching well and half poorly.

[Most of the Mormons (9 of 15 players) we know about in the minors are pitchers—likely because we don’t have a very complete list.]

Perhaps the strongest performance last week was from the Lansing Lugnuts’ Taylor Cole, who struck out 7 and blanked the Lake County Captains over 6 innings for a win. But not far behind Cole was the veteran Mitch Talbot, currently with the New Orleans Zephyrs, who notched a win in 5 innings, also without giving up a run. And reliever Bryan Harper (Bryce’s older brother) earned a 0.00 era in 1 1/3rd innings of relief last week.

Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t normally begin my write-up talking about a minor league player, but this week the stellar pitching of Taylor Cole with the Vancouver Canadians (A short season) kind of demanded front billing. Cole came close to baseball’s ultimate performance, a pitching performance over 7 2/3rds innings marred only by a teammate’s error. Still, Cole was pitching a no-hitter for his 6th win of the season when he was pulled from the game against the Yakima Bears. The Northwest league’s regular season has ended, Cole finishes the year with a stunning (and league-leading) 0.81 era. He will likely pitch in the Canadians’ post-season games, which start today.

Read the rest of this entry »

A reader has alerted me to another Mormon playing professional baseball, Lance Pendleton, who is currently with the Durham Bulls in the Tampa Bay Ray’s organization. After he was drafted by the Yankees out of Rice University, Pendleton has spent 6 years in the minors, rising to even the major leagues, debuting on April 15th of last year. Unfortunately, his numbers aren’t very strong this year — a 4.49 era so far — so a return to the majors seems unlikely at the moment.

Read the rest of this entry »