The Columbus Clingstones are the most exciting team in the system and Tuesday night lived up to the billing in full. Cam Caminiti has had little trouble in making the jump to Double-A, with a couple of incredible starts consecutively and a pitch mix that has popped off of the page. Alex Lodise is having no trouble with the move either and has carried the momentum he had in Rome up a level thanks to his improvements in making consistent contact.
(63-63) Gwinnett Stripers 8, (57-68) Louisville Bats 1
Box Score
Statcast
- Patrick Clohisy, LF: 0-3, 2 BB, .357/.440/.512
- Jim Jarvis, SS: 1-3, 2B, 2 BB, .313/.409/.463
- David McCabe, DH: 2-4, 2B, RBI, .417/.357/.833
- Owen Murphy, SP: 5 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 3 BB, 1 K, 3.42 ERA
- Blake Burkhalter, RP: 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 2 K, 1.29 ERA
It was an off day for Owen Murphy, and
in allowing only one run he had to feel fortunate after he left this outing. Murphy had a lot of trouble landing his fastball up in the strike zone, and across his arsenal he left way too many pitches in hittable locations. Murphy gave up a lot of loud contact, but Louisville didn’t get him squarely too often and he survived on fly outs for five innings. The one exception came in the second inning when Murphy through a middle-middle fastball that got tattooed for a 447 foot home run. This was quite a departure from where Murphy typically is on the mound and I’m inclined to chalk that up to a bad day for now. Over the past couple of months Murphy has been solid with his fastball location and has held his velocity deeper into games, so it could have just been an off day. He could also finally be reaching the ceiling of his stamina for the year, given that he’s well past his career-high and has made ten more appearances this season than in his prior two combined. Murphy’s velocity early in the game recovered a little bit from his prior starts but he couldn’t maintain that the second time through the order, and when combined with a drop in spin rate and command I’d suspect that fatigue wall to be coming up on him. Regardless of where the rest of the year takes him this has been a resounding success. He’s been healthy for most of the year and improved drastically, and anything beyond this point is icing on the cake. The biggest focus is keeping Murphy healthy, and I don’t see any reason to believe the Braves would take a risk if does start to wear down.
Gwinnett’s lineup has surged back to relevancy with the transactions over the past couple of weeks, and an eight-run opening to this series is nothing to sneeze at. Lizandro Espinoza put the exclamation on the game with a three-run home run to push his OPS over 1.000, though it wasn’t the most impressive of shots. He curled in a wall-scraper in the left field corner and otherwise had a bit of a rough day out there, but there is little to complain about what Espinoza has done so far. He’s definitely aggressive at the plate and is going to have to cool it a bit, but he’s shown the ability to adjust at the lower levels and I think he’s shown he can already handle being a depth piece as a utility player. David McCabe hasn’t played too many games since coming back but he has been a monster at the plate. He had two hits and four more hard hit balls in this game. The whiffs are there in a bad way and he just doesn’t seem to have enough overall value as a player to be valuable to keep at the major league level, but he has a good enough power/approach combination to keep some value as depth in the minor leagues. I’m also liking some of what we’re seeing from Patrick Clohisy. He’s not doing much damage on secondary pitches but has been a lot better the past week with his playte discipline and that showed with two more walks in this game. He’s shown a history in his career of being streaky with his power, but as long as he can make the adjustments to get on base and play defense as well as he does he’ll have a long professional future ahead of himself even if he’s never a starter-caliber option.
Swing and Misses
Owen Murphy – 7
James Karinchak – 3
(57-59) Columbus Clingstones 6, (53-68) Chattanooga Lookouts 7
Box Score
- John Gil, 2B: 1-4, 2B, BB, .293/.379/.413
- Eric Hartman, LF: 1-4, 2B, .247/.375/.370
- Alex Lodise, SS: 3-5, 2B, RBI, .286/.355/.429
- Owen Carey, RF: 1-5, .250/.325/.417
- Cam Caminiti, SP: 5 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 3 BB, 7 K, 2.33 ERA
If you’re not excited about what Cam Caminiti is doing you might be dead inside, because this has been an outstanding sequence of games from him. He has immediately kept pace with the Double-A level without even blinking, and has found a way to integrate his entire arsenal better and better with each start. The command issues were still apparent in this game and that will remain a running theme for him, but it’s so much better than it was at the start of the season. That was something that was expected coming in from Caminiti but the process is working and the hope is that eventually his athleticism will take over and allow him to find more consistency. It’s absolutely a point of emphasis and he will need to bring his walks down before he’ll get a shot at the Triple-A level, but the pitch quality itself is already good enough to make the jump. It’s rare to find a 20-year-old with confidence in three different pitches and even if there is plenty of room for development there has already been a massive improvement. Caminiti is taking all of the steps necessary to be make it yet another quick ascension for a young Braves pitcher.
Alex Lodise keeps doing his thing, and it’s massively impressive to watch. Lodise had some hard hit balls in this game and came away with three hits, but even though he faced a number of two-strike counts he never struck out. Lodise hasn’t had much chance to draw walks since being called up as pitchers are attacking him in the strike zone, but Lodise has handled it much better than he did early in the season. He’s showing that he’s not going to chase sliders below the zone nearly as often as early this season, and when he does get a tough pitch in the zone he is fouling them off instead of swing through them. Lodise has only 11 strikeouts in his past 24 games, which is a phrase I would not have thought possible even a month ago. I like where Eric Hartman is still, and of course the two home runs last week helps that evaluation quite a bit. Hartman is overly aggressive on secondaries out of the strike zone and needs to pare that back, but he’s getting to hard pull-side contact again and that’s the key to his profile. Owen Carey has gone the other direction as of late and is struggling with his swing. He’s had an inconsistent path to the ball highlighted by a tendency to dive in with his back shoulder, and it’s robbing him both of the ability to get the barrel on the ball consistently and the bat speed to hit the ball with force. It’s nothing he can’t work through quickly and he has shown flashes of good play, but dialing back the aggression and keeping himself on balance will help flip my views of his recent plate appearances. I have zero complaints on John Gil right now. His approach has been top notch and he is turning on pitches well the past few games. He had a hard hit double this game and has been exactly the image of an on-base first hitter with enough power to keep himself in an everyday lineup. Gil’s biggest nit is that he has been wildly inconsistent throughout his career, but 20 year olds are just like that sometimes. He’s undergone a number of swing changes that have made keeping a consistent level across multiple years difficult but he’s in his best form at the moment even if the numbers are lagging a half step behind his actual talent and progression.
Swing and Misses
Cam Caminiti – 18
LJ McDonough – 1
(57-61) Rome Emperors 5, (53-65) Greenville Drive 6
Box Score
- Carter Beck, CF: 1-5, 2B, RBI, .231/.333/.346
- Conor Essenburg, RF: 1-5, .226/.410/.306
- Luis Guanipa, LF: 1-3, BB, .220/.234/.374
- Zach Royse, SP: 6 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 4 K, 3.86 ERA
Rome lost this game in tough fashion with a blown save and walk off in the ninth inning, though it’s hard to say they hit well enough as a team to deserve this game. The starter for Greenville had very little in the way of control and to Rome’s credit they did capitalize and put up three runs early thanks to his mistakes. They ended the game in a rut, however, as they weren’t finding solid contact in the strike zone. Connor Essenburg is in a small rut as of late with the walks and power drying up on him, though the command at the plate hasn’t gone away for him. He’s chasing a bit more in two-strike situations and that’s hurting him, but with as deep as he works into counts strikeouts are always going to be there. He isn’t elevating the ball on his pull side right now, which I really see as just sample size fluctation for him as he knows who he is as a hitter and will end up hitting for power in Rome. There was only a small flash of good news for Luis Guanipa last week, but that doesn’t mean that flash wasn’t backed up by real progress. Guanipa has had more good swings than bad, and even if that isn’t always coming with hard contact I think he’s still on the way. He’s been more forceful with his swings on mistakes in the strike zone and has been a bit more willing to let borderline pitches away from him go early in counts, and it’s leading to more swings that look like a Luis Guanipa who can have impact power. He’s due for one silly at bat every game it seems like, but I don’t think he’s stuck in the mud and he’s making the kind of adjustments that led to him going on a run in Augusta this season. Guanipa is getting a ton of breaking balls and he is not barreling them when they’re left in the strike zone, but I don’t see that as a pattern for Guanipa rather simply a fluctuation. He’s shown the ability to hit mistake breaking balls in the past and there is no reason to believe he won’t eventually start making High-A pitchers pay for bad locations.
Overall it turned out to be a solid start for Zach Royse. He threw a ton of strikes with his sinker, and with his velocity and the action of that pitch in the strike zone that predictably led to a slew of ground ball outs. Royse kept his momentum throughout the evening and had a never fell into bad counts, which kept the Drive having to swing at sinkers and pound them into the dirt. Royse didn’t have his slider in this game like he did last week, and it’s something I’ll have to take a closer look into because he’s been far more inconsistent with that pitch in High-A. This game he didn’t struggle to throw the pitch around the zone, but the electric bite it showed earlier this season isn’t coming through for him. That pitch is what made him an interesting relief option for me and maybe it’s just him being extremely deep into the season and showing signs of fatigue. He has had flashes of his peak form, like the seven strikeout performance last week, it’s just not a week-in and week-out spectacle like his stretch from May to June.
Swing and Misses
Zach Royse – 9
Tyler Schoff – 4
David Rodriguez – 3
(64-56) Augusta GreenJackets 4, (46-72) Myrtle Beach Pelicans 5
Box Score
- Manuel Campos, SS: 0-5, .200/.226/.300
- Juan Mateo, 3-5, HR, 2B: 0-3, BB, .258/.338/.367
- Derek Vartanian, SP: 6 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 0 BB, 7 K, 4.14 ERA
This surge from Juan Mateo has been impressive. He started off his evening with a rocket liner for a double and then bookended a moonshot home run, and if this is the sort of power production that becomes standard for him that’s going to make a huge impact on his profile. Mateo has five home runs in his past 41 games after having one in his prior 176, and even with a severely repressed BABIP he has outperformed his overall season stats for the past two months. He’s done so without sacrificing the contact ability that is the cornerstone of his profile, and it’s all an approach change to just put the ball in the air more often. Mateo is going to face physical limitations in his profile, and of course the run environment factors in here so even this sort of home run pace is something I don’t think he’s capable of sustaining. However, hitting for even moderate power will make him a tenable option outside of the unlikely chance he develops into a major-league caliber shortstop. Mateo’s ball-strike approach could use a lot of work and he needs to add weight if and when he does shift off of shortstop, but seeing any power from him already creates more confidence in his future as a prospect. It was a rough game out there for Manuel Campos, which is unfortunate because he’s in the middle of a solid stretch of play otherwise. Like we’ve seen from other guys his age getting that first taste of full season ball Campos is a bit out of his depth right now because his approach is not at the level it needs to be. However he’s got some feel for barrel control and a chance to stick at shortstop so it will just take time to see the fruits of his development.
Derek Vartanian has had trouble consistently putting together a three-pitch arsenal this season, but when it’s working for him he can hang with anyone. His slider and splitter were both nasty this game and the Pelicans had an inconsistent time getting a read on Vartanian who was able to throw both of those pitches past the whole lineup. Vartanian was just in the strike zone a bit too much and gave up some hard hit balls, most notably a second inning home run. His curveball was a major weakness this game because he could not get it out of the top half of the strike zone, and even though it does have the potential to work well off of his splitter against left-handed batters he can’t make those mistakes especially on a pitch in the high-70’s. I’m surprised Vartanian hasn’t gotten a look at a higher level given his age, as his pitch quality and fastball command are good enough to warrant promotion even with him not often bringing his best game. He’s on a nice stretch here to end the season and has been a solid find for an undrafted guy, and I do think he’s got real back-end potential if he can find a rhythm across a full season.
Swing and Misses
Derek Vartanian – 18
Kade Woods – 4
