John Gil broke a long homerless drought with a long shot for the Emperors, though his three RBI were not enough to lead Rome to a win. Patrick Clohisy had yet another multi-hit game for the Stripers and Sean Murphy had a hit in his rehab.
(55-50) Gwinnett Stripers 8, (48-57) Durham Bulls 0
- Patrick Clohisy, CF: 2-5, 2 RBI, .417/.470/.717
- Sean Murphy, C: 1-3, RBI, .302/.356/.358
- Ha-Seong Kim, SS: 1-4, .219/.324/.297
- Drue Hackenberg, SP: 3.2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 5 K, 5.40 ERA
- Blake Burkhalter, RP: 2.1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 0.00 ERA
(55-51) Gwinnett Stripers 2, (49-57) Durham Bulls 4
- Patrick Clohisy, CF: 0-4, .417/.470/.717
- Ha-Seong Kim, DH: 0-3, .219/.324/.297
- Anderson Pilar, SP: 4 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 1 K, 3.56 ERA
Gwinnett opened up August with a double-header and Patrick Clohisy opened up the month with another multi-hit game. Yet for Clohisy it wasn’t a particularly good day. His two singles weren’t hard hit balls and he went hitless in game two,
his third hitless game out of his past five. Clohisy’s singles did come at fortunate times and he drove in two of the runs in Gwinnett’s blowout game one win which was headlined by Drue Hackenberg’s good start and the continuation of Sean Murphy’s rehab. Murphy has been hitting quite well in his games of rehab with Gwinnett so far, adding a hit in this one to make it four straight with a hit while playing all seven innings behind the plate. Murphy had a strikeout in the first inning and a couple of poorly hit balls the next two times up before finishing off his day with a single in the sixth inning. Drue Hackenberg has had an interesting time in Gwinnett, with flashes of success but the same lingering control issues that have always impacted him. Hackenberg’s stuff looks better this season now that he is healthier and his cutter/curveball combination is really giving Triple-A hitters fits, but he has not been in the strike zone near enough to give any indication he will be ready for a big league look anytime in the future. His walk rate is high, but even then he’s been reliant on getting a ton of chases out of the strike zone and in this game he had an abysmal 30% zone rate. He’s yet to have a single start with an average in-zone rate and only had five called strikes this entire outing. Getting hitters to chase out of the strike zone is certainly a skill and Hackenberg’s two best pitches are good enough to elicit chases, but he has to command the ball better to make use of those two offerings against better hitters.
Ha-Seong Kim played both games of the double header, and it was more of the same in what has been a rough stretch of games at the plate during rehab. He started out pretty well but hasn’t been hitting the ball squarely for the past couple of series and that extended to the double header where he didn’t have any real solid contact. His lone hit on the day was a 68 mph single in game one and he finished his rehab without ever having a multi-hit game. Gwinnett as a whole was no hit through four innings of the second game, only breaking through on a DaShawn Keirsey Jr. single that kicked off a rally for them. They had three hits in the inning and scored two runs to tie the game, but in the seventh inning wasted a golden opportunity that immediately came back to haunt them. Jair Camargo laced the hardest hit ball of the day for the Stripers, crushing one off of the top of the high left field wall in Durham that bounced in hard enough that the slow-footed Camargo couldn’t get more than a single out of. Luke Williams followed that up by lining one into left field and clearing the left fielder, but again it came off of the wall too hard for Camargo to have any chance to score, but with two runners in scoring position and one out Gwinnett was still primed to grab the lead. Cal Conley hit a grounder right to the pulled in second baseman for the second out, and Clohisy closed the door on a grounder to first base for the final out of the seventh. In the bottom of the frame Joel Payamps, forced into his longest outing of the season, gave up a walk-off two run home run.
Swing and Misses
Drue Hackenberg – 17
Joel Payamps – 10
Rolddy Munoz – 5
Anderson Pilar – 4
(45-51) Columbus Clingstones 2, (51-49) Rocket City Trash Pandas 3
- Luke Waddell, SS: 1-4, HR, 2 RBI, .204/.295/.320
- Dalton McIntyre, LF: 1-4, 3B, .258/.367/.398
- Shay Schanaman, SP: 2.1 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 5.76 ERA
- Isaac Gallegos, RP: 3 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 2 K, 2.51 ERA
It was not a banner day at the plate for the Clingstones. They managed just three hits as a team and despite a lot of great bullpen work couldn’t overcome an early deficit set by Shay Schanaman. Schanaman has been mostly a solid arm for Columbus out of the bullpen, but when pressed to start has not been successful in that role as he doesn’t really have the stuff to get through a lineup multiple times. He pieces his way through two innings with one run allowed, coming through with two clutch strikeouts to end the first inning and strand two runners in scoring position, but the game collapsed when the lineup flipped. He allowed two hits and a run in the third inning and was quickly pulled from the game, and Riley Frey allowed the inherited runner to score on a seeing-eye single up the middle. Trailing 3-0 Columbus needed a stop to the bleeding, and the bullpen really stepped up in that regard. Frey pitched well allowing only one more hit as he took the Clingstones through the fifth inning, and Isaac Gallegos was brilliant in a long relief role. Gallegos didn’t have the strikeout stuff he usually shows out of the bullpen, but kept the ball in the strike zone all day and got ground ball after ground ball on his sinker and slider to work three scoreless innings with only one hit allowed.
With the bullpen excelling there was ample opportunity for a Columbus comeback, an effort which started in the fourth inning. Luke Waddell ran into a home run, his second home run in as many days, getting the Clingstones on the board for the first time. In the sixth inning Dalton McIntyre led the inning off with a triple, and while Waddell didn’t have any more thump left in the bat he had an infield chopper that scored McIntyre and brought the Clingstones within a run of tying the game. Another hit in the inning with two outs gave them a sliver of hope for a crooked number on the scoreboard, but that never materialized. Neither did any other hint of a rally. Will Verdung worked a one-out walk in the next inning, but two straight strikeouts ended the inning and set off a poor streak of hitting to close the game. The next eight Clingstones went down in order, four via strikeout, to end the game, with a pinch hit fly ball from Adam Zebrowski falling harmlessly into the glove of the left fielder for the 27th out.
Swing and Misses
Shay Schanaman – 9
Riley Frey – 5
Luis Vargas – 5
(49-49) Rome Emperors 6, (45-56) Hub City Spartanburgers 12
- John Gil, 2B: 1-3, HR, 3 RBI, BB, .242/.346/.378
- Eric Hartman, CF: 0-3, BB, .273/.364/.525
- Alex Lodise, SS: 0-3, BB, .250/.375/.250
- Owen Carey, LF: 0-3, BB, .272/.347/.480
- Cade Kuehler, SP: 3 IP, 5 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 3 BB, 0 K, 5.97 ERA
It’s been 40 days — 29 games — since the last time John Gil went deep, that is until he provided a long home run for Rome in an otherwise gross game of baseball. Gil was abysmal in July with a month-long .177 slugging percentage and an inflated strikeout total, and if it wasn’t for his 16 walks to push his OBP to .309 he would have been basically a zero factor player for the whole month. Gil’s OPS has declined month-over-month this season, following the same pattern of June and July slumping he showed last year, but this swing was the best for him in a long time and the only example in recent weeks of him getting a barrel on the ball. Whiffs and poor swing choices have piled up alarmingly, but this whole game was more a flash of the player Gil was for the first three months of the season. Even outside of his home run he didn’t have any bad at bats, and if there is anything to point to for Gil it’s that he has ten walks to eight strikeouts over his past ten games. This is a vast improvement over what we had been seeing especially regarding strikeouts since the start of June. Outside of Gil the offense was lackluster for a game that scored six runs. Rome took advantage of their chances when they had them, but they weren’t near plentiful enough to keep pace with Hub City and the top prospects on the team didn’t do anything. Hartman, Lodise, and Carey each had walks but didn’t have any impact with the bat though Hartman’s walk did extend his on base streak to 10 games. Lodise went strikeout-free this game and only has two strikeouts in five High-A games, and a total of five over his past ten total games. Lodise needs a whole lot longer stretch of making contact to prove anything meaningful, but it’s still absolutely a win for Lodise to have a stretch like this making contact at the plate while still having good days at the plate and making hard contact.
This game was fully unserious for the entire Emperors pitching staff. 11 walks, three hit batters, and only five strikeouts is just an unacceptable performance for a group at any level but especially in High-A. Cade Kuehler could do absolutely nothing right because he had no idea where the ball was going. Those three hit batters were all his, adding to the three walks he allowed, and when he did come into the strike zone he was getting pummeled. Kuehler had that stretch in May where it looked like he may cobble together a semblance of momentume for himself but it’s been 26 walks to 20 strikeouts in his past nine outings since. Kuehler losing so much development time is an excuse for him to an extent, but he’s never looked like a bat-misser as a professional even prior to being injured, and he’s backsliding after finding a brief bit of footing. The pre-draft command issues are in full force and his stuff has not rebounded, and while he should get another offseason he’s far enough away from Tommy John surgery that it isn’t really a factor in evaluations anymore. He just can’t make the pitches he needs to in order to find success and it’s unfortunate that he never really seemed to show any of the promise that was there at Campbell.
Swing and Misses
Cade Kuehler – 6
Jacob Kroeger – 6
Drew Christo – 3
