Bus Leagues Express: April 23

Top stories

Trout hit by pitch; leaves game: In the 4th inning of Sunday’s game, Salt Lake’s Mike Trout was hit on the wrist by a pitch. He stayed in the game for one inning, coming around to score and then taking the field for a half inning. In the 5th, Doug Deeds pinch hit for Trout. There’s no additional information available at this time. Wrist injuries can always be troubling for hitters, and obviously the Angels are hoping it’s not serious. If healthy, a call up to the majors is probably imminent.

Harper hits first AAA home run: In the first game of Sunday’s doubleheader against Buffalo, Syracuse’s Bryce Harper finally hit one out of the park in AAA. It took 61 at bats as the super prospect has continued to struggle in the upper levels of the minors. It’s not cause for concern, and in fact it might help Harper in the future because he now has a chance to learn how to rebound from failure. His OBP is only .300 so far this year, but one positive note is that his strikeout rate isn’t out of control.

Carter socks three dingers in Sacramento win: His prospect stock has basically become nothing over the last two seasons, but Chris Carter is still slugging for Sacramento. Two short major league stints have exposed Carter’s weaknesses, and now he appears to be a powerful hitter with a bad approach and no position. Yesterday he smashed three home runs against Reno in a hitters’ paradise. He became the third minor leaguer to do that this season, and they’ve all happened within the last week. He’s now batting .288 with six home runs on the season.

Storms wipe out games on the Eastern seaboard: 16 games across four leagues, including the entire Carolina League slate of six, were postponed or suspended Sunday as storms pounded the east coast from Maine to the Carolinas for the second straight day. A number of doubleheaders were scheduled Sunday due to rainouts the previous day, so several teams went the entire weekend without actually playing. Rochester and Empire State (in Batavia) were both scheduled to host doubleheaders, but they were only able to play single games. It’s expected to continue raining in the northeast through Tuesday.

Bakersfield stuns San Jose in sweep: The Giants entered the weekend series on a nine game winning streak that included a sweep of the Blaze, but Bakersfield sent them home packing with nothing to show for the four game series. The series was close; each game was decided by an average of less than two runs, and the Blaze came out on top in each of them. Each of the first two games were walk-off wins for Bakersfield, and Friday’s was particularly exciting with Billy Hamilton almost single-handedly winning the game by singling, stealing twice and scoring on a short sac fly. San Jose still leads Bakersfield in the North division by 1.5 games.

Pitching rules the day in Midwest League: The Midwest League typically plays as a pitchers’ league, but that was a bit extreme today. 16 teams combined to only score 38 runs, or 4.75 combined runs per game. That includes Clinton and Burlington each scoring seven runs. Four teams threw shutouts, and that includes Kane County’s 1-0 win over Lake County. Edwin Carl, Drew Gagnon and Patrick Francescon were some of the best individual performers for Kane County, Wisconsin and Peoria respectively. Only three home runs were hit in the entire league.

On tap today

MiLB.TV schedule

Aaron Cook continues audition to reach the majors again

Dallas Keuchel looks to remain on fire

Edwar Cabrera makes first start since near perfect game

Jason Adam hopes to keep up his momentum

Jenkins, Markel meet in quality MWL matchup

If you know of any player performances or articles that should be shared, please let me know on Twitter at @5runrally so I can check it out!