I was at a game in Manchester last week, watching Henderson Alvarez light up the stadium radar gun, when I made an idle comment on Twitter about how hard the 21-year-old Venezuelan was throwing. A couple minutes later, a friend responded to explain that while Alvarez’s fastball can indeed approach triple digits, his secondary stuff needs work and he’s been hit a little bit in the Eastern League and throwing hard by itself doesn’t...
(Note, 4-7-12: Went back and rechecked the leader boards. Turns out I missed a couple seasons in the early 1980s, which means both Donell Nixon and Vince Coleman had back-to-back 100 steal seasons, the only players to do so according to Baseball-Reference. Rickey Henderson‘s minor league high? 95.) I was doing a little poking around at Baseball-Reference earlier, looking for info on minor league stolen base leaders (more on that in a minute), when...
Last week, I sat down with New Hampshire Fisher Cats outfielder Anthony Gose prior to a game against the New Britain Rock Cats. We spoke about how a native Californian handles the New England weather, how it feels to be one of the youngest players in the Eastern League, and the benefits of having a former major league catcher as your manager. I did not ask him if he’s ever heard, “There’s two o’s...
The season is young, but I’ve already made my way up to New Hampshire for two of the team’s five games. When I stay home and spend time with my family, the team is 3-0, including a defeat of Yankees #3 prospect Dellin Betances. When I’m in attendance? Things go very, very wrong for the home team. The Fisher Cats lost to the Reading Phillies tonight, 13-1, behind a 5-5 performance by first baseman...
Just to the west of Clearwater, along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and on the northern reaches of the Tampa Bay area lies Dunedin, birthplace of the voice of Space Ghost and home to the Dunedin Blue Jays, Class-A affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays. Last Saturday, I made my second trip to Dunedin. Although I was there a few years ago for a spring training game, this past weekend I made...
2012 05 14 Scranton Wilks Barre/ Empire State Yankees vs Pawtucket Red Sox
