Despite both of Lakeland’s games getting canceled today, Detroit’s minor league affiliates and their opponents scored 47 runs across three games.
That’s a lot to cover, and I tend to be verbose. Guess the word count now, and I’ll put the total at the bottom.
Toledo Mud Hens 13, Rochester Red Wings 4 (box)
Toledo scored 71 runs this week, reaching double digits in four of six games in Rochester. The Mud Hens put up a baker’s dozen on the Red Birds to cap off the dominant 5-1 series.
Things started off tame. Both teams went scoreless in the first,
but a 67-minute rain delay ended Sawyer Gipson-Long’s day early. He fanned two of the three batters he faced, though. Jose Urquidy took over after the tarp came off. Despite giving up a couple of runs over two innings, Urquidy picked up his first win with Toledo.
He got through the second just fine, but a leadoff chip shot into left field caused some trouble in the third. J.T Arruda made his way around the bases, scoring on an infield-in single up the gut. Kevin Newman made a nice play at short, checking the runner before throwing to first. A sharp turn around third took Nasim Nunez too far, and Newman got him at third.
The Mud Hens never trailed. Justyn-Henry Malloy singled through the right side in the third, and Toledo put up a crooked number in back-to-back frames after that.
Max Anderson, Newman and Trei Cruz opened the fourth with consecutive singles to load the bases. Rochester’s relief man, Andry Lara, just didn’t have it, which is weird because starter Riley Cornelio did a great job staying fresh and focused through the rain delay.
Lara walked Eduardo Valencia on four pitches to put the Mud Hens out in front, and a balk brought another in. Even Stubbs, the catcher, was looking over to the dugout, hoping the manager would come out to make a change. Rochester came out to check him for an injury, and several Red Wings got active in the bullpen. Lara stayed in and got to two outs, but not before Hao-Yu Lee notched a 2-run base knock.
One more walk got Lara the hook, but the damage was done.
Toledo added two more in the fifth. The trio of Anderson, Newman and Cruz got it done again, with a walk, single and double, respectively. Cruz continued to see the ball well in Triple-A, and it’s hard to knock a guy with an OPS approaching 1.000 through 34 games. I know many of you who read this don’t view Cruz as a serious piece for Detroit’s future, but I continue to believe in him as the next utility man to make more noise than we expect.
Valencia actually got to swing this time and drove in Newman with a sac fly to left. More runs should have crossed in the inning, but Cruz got caught swiping third. Lee doubled later in the inning, which Cruz might have scored on. It was pretty shallow, though.
Urquidy came back out to hit his pitch count in the fourth, and Jordan Balazovic took over after a leadoff walk. A double and ground out tacked the run onto Urquidy’s final line, and Balazovic gave up a run of his own in the fifth. He bounced back with two strikeouts before getting out of the inning.
If you’re scoring at home (and even if you’re alone), that’s 7-3, Toledo, after five.
Nothing really happened in the sixth, but that’s partially a good thing. Alex Lange worked around a two-out single for a clean frame. Bailey Horn took the seventh, but it wasn’t nearly as pretty. A leadoff ground-rule double and 1-out walk meant that Yohandy Morales got to hit, and he drove one up the middle to cut into Toledo’s lead.
How do the Mud Hens respond? With six runs in the eighth, of course!
The first six Toledo batters of the inning reached base, with Malloy delivering the big blow in the form of a 3-run homer.
Cruz got another RBI on an easy pop-up behind short that got lost in the sun. Rochester still got the force out at third because all the runners froze, but that’s the kind of series it’s been — random runs finding a way to cross home.
The Red Wings waved the white flag and put in a position player to pitch. Gage Workman bullied him for a 2-run triple to the triangle in left center. A little league coach would be fuming — congrats on the LLWS, Chinese Taipei — but this is the pros. Run it all the way up, boys!
Tanner Rainey went 1-2-3 in the eighth, and RJ Petit struck out three of four batters faced in the ninth. That’s the way to put a bow on the series.
Lee: 3-6, 2B (18), 1 R, 2 RBI
Malloy: 3-5, HR (8), 2B (17), 1 R, 4 RBI, 1 BB
Jung: 1-5, 1 R, 1 BB
Anderson: 2-5, 2 R, 1 BB, 1 K
Cruz: 2-4, 2B (9), 2 R, 2 RBI, 1 BB
Harrisburg Senators 12, Erie SeaWolves 2 (box)
Erie was the odd man out on Sunday, giving up double-digit runs instead of plating them, but it’s still a series win unless we count the makeup game from July played on Wednesday.
Harrisburg scored multiple runs in four of the first five innings. Funny enough, the leadoff single Garrett Burhenn allowed didn’t score in the first, but just about every baserunner after did. Eliezer Alfonzo and Burhenn didn’t seem to be on the same page from the jump, and trouble started in the second.
Cayden Wallace crushed a solo home run over the 36-foot wall in left. Viandel Pena caught a sinker left up in the zone and took it over the right-center wall. Burhenn came back out for the third and it was more of the same. Wallace got him for another homer, this time with two men on base and to center.
Burhenn might have been robbed of a good pickoff, which might have kept Wallace from coming to the plate. That’s seven homers in three starts for the 2021 ninth-round pick.
Yosber Sanchez took over in the fourth. An infield hit and a double put him into trouble quickly, and Brendan Boissiere drove both in with a 1-out double. Everything was hit to a gap.
Disaster struck in the fifth. Sanchez put another two on and then walked off the mound in frustration after sending a 93-mph fastball to the plate. The tick down and velocity and Sanchez pointing to his throwing arm are very bad signs, but we will wait for official word to come out before diagnosing him.
Trevin Michael took over after the injury delay. He got a quick out, but the Senators tacked on three more with back-to-back doubles. All three balls were hit hard before a strikeout stopped the bleeding. Michael was much cleaner in the sixth, working around a 1-out walk.
Richard Guasch was next out of the bullpen. It took some work to strand a pair of baserunners, but Guasch wasn’t as fortunate in the eighth. Wallace hit his third extra-base hit of the day and later scored behind Sam Brown off the bat of Maxwell Romero Jr.
Blair Calvo delivered the only 1-2-3 inning of the day for Erie in the ninth. Too little, too late, buddy, but nice work.
Kevin McGonigle was the only Erie batter to reach the first time around, on a four-pitch walk at that. McGonigle walked again in the fourth, setting up Justice Bigbie to deliver the first SeaWolves hit of the game. Ben Malgeri kept the hits rolling with a base knock of his own, and Roberto Campos walked to get Erie on the board, finally.
Erie didn’t have another baserunner until McGonigle walked for a third time in the sixth. Pitch to him, cowards. Nothing came of that, nor did anything come from Alfonzo’s 1-out double in the seventh. Malgeri and Alfonzo both doubled in the bottom of the ninth, with the latter driving in Erie’s second run of the day.
At least it’s only a 10-run loss, right?
Clark: 0-4
Liranzo: 0-4, 3 K
McGonigle: 0-1, 1 R, 3 BB
Burhenn (L,11-3): 3.o IP, 4 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 2 BB, 2 K; 73 pitches (44 strikes)
West Michigan Whitecaps 16, Lansing Lugnuts 0 (box)
I guess we saved the best for last. West Michigan slapped the Lansing Lungnuts around, 16-0, on Sunday to complete a 6-game sweep.
The Whitecaps scored 15 of their 16 runs in the first four innings, including an 8-run second and 6-run fourth. It all started with a wind-assisted Woody Hadeen solo shot in the first, but the true fireworks were yet to come.
West Michigan sent 13 to the plate in the second, recording seven of their 17 hits on the day in one frame. Brett Callahan and Garrett Pennington led off with back-to-back singles.
Jackson Strong walked to load the bases for Patrick Lee, who struck out, but Archer Brookman drove in two with a liner up the gut. Jack Penney made it 4-0 with a ground-rule double over the right-center wall.
Brookman came around on a Hadeen single, Hadeen stole second and Izaac Pacheco reloaded the bases with a walk. Andrew Jenkins kept the cycle of striking out with the bags juiced going, even after a pitching change, and a wild pitch brought Penney home. Callahan probably wishes Penney had stayed put, so he could have hit a grand slam. But settling for a 3-run shot isn’t too shabby.
9-0, West Michigan. Stay with me.
Garrett Pennington and Strong both reached after the Callahan homer, but neither scored. The Whitecaps went down 1-2-3 in the third, but they were far from done scoring on the day.
Pacheco welcomed the new Lansing pitcher, Tom Reisinger, in the fourth with a leadoff homer. Jenkins singled, and Callahan walked to set up a three-run shot from Pennington. Still searching for his first out, Reisinger gave up a third homer to Lee, with Strong on base, making it 15-0. Woof.
Reisinger finally recorded an out, but the Lugnuts were just waiting for someone to get warm in the bullpen. Hadeen lined a single up the middle in between the second and third outs of the inning, and West Michigan’s offense settled down after that.
The only other two hits from the Whitecaps came from Callahan, a single in the fifth, and Strong homering in the eighth. There’s your 16th run.
In a game like this, the pitching staff is going to be overlooked, but that shouldn’t be the case. Six different arms combined to throw a 2-hit shutout, and both of those came against the starter, Lucas Elissalt. Fun fact on Elissalt: he’s from my neck of the woods (South Florida) and apparently I covered his final high school start.
Elissalt is one of the more interesting arms in the lower minors, but he struggled with command at times on Sunday. Four walks aren’t ideal, but leaving all of them on base is a feather in the cap.
He came out of the game in the fourth after putting a second man on base with a walk. Carlos Pacheco took over and made sure neither runner crossed home.
Moises Rodriguez got the fifth and sixth. He faced the minimum, but needed an inning-ending double play to get there. Marco Jimenez delivered his own 1-2-3 frame, securing a pair of punchouts. Matt Stil hit the first batter he faced in the eighth before retiring the next three in a row, and Joe Adametez closed it out with another 1-2-3 inning.
Maybe the best performance of the season from the winningest team in baseball.
Hadeen: 3-5, HR (1), 2 R, 2 RBI
Pacheco: 1-4, HR (15), 2 R, 1 RBI, 1 BB, 3 K
Callahan: 3-4, HR (7), 3 R, 3 RBI, 1 BB
Pennington: 3-4, HR (2), 2 R, 3 RBI
Strong: 2-3, HR (2), 3 R, 1 RBI, 2 BB, 1 K
Lee: 1-5, HR (4), 1 R, 2 RBI, 4 K
Elissalt: 3.1 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 4 BB, 3 K; 71 pitches (43 strikes)
Canceled/Postponed: Lakeland Flying Tigers vs. Dunedin Blue Jays
Wet ground led to another day of no baseball in Lakeland. Saturday’s makeup game is cancelled, and the scheduled game for Sunday is technically postponed. With two weeks left in the regular season, that one might not get made up either.
The Flying Tigers are at the St. Lucie Mets all of next week.
If you read all 2,127 words here, you’re a real one.
