Orioles Proving Ground

Recently, as I was thinking of potential topics to write about, it occurred to me that Orioles Proving Ground has not dealt much with the minor league system of the Baltimore Orioles.  This is somewhat strange considering that the name of the blog was partially meant to invoke images of players in the minors proving their worth and graduating to the major leagues.  That has not really happened to date, other than maybe a couple of posts.  In order to change this, I thought we would start a weekly feature that looks at the best and worst individual performances of Baltimore’s top three minor league affiliates (AAA, AA, and Hi-A).  Conveniently, the minor league season will be coming to a close in the next week, so there will only be two installments of this series in 2013, after which it will hopefully pick up again during the 2014 season.  For the most part this is just a recap, but some analysis may be given where appropriate.

Just a note.  As I do not have much scouting experience and have not attended many minor league games this summer, these posts will look at on field performance only and are not meant to be used as scouting reports.

Weekly Summary

Norfolk (AAA): 3-2 (W-L), 15 RS, 12 RA

Bowie (AA): 3-4, 28 RS, 25 RA

Frederick (High-A): 1-7, 22 RS, 34 RA

The Good:

Hitters

Norfolk: OF Henry Urrutia – 6/18 (H/AB), 1 2B, 1 HR, 3 SO’s, 2 BB’s

Bowie: C Caleb Joseph – 9/28, 3 2B’s, 1 SO, 3 BB’s

Joseph’s been having a great year at the plate and continued being productive this past week.  He’s hitting .295/.343/.483 on the year, spending the entire season at Bowie.

Frederick:  C Zane Chavez – 10/21, 2 2B’s, 1 HR, 3 SO’s, 2 BB’s

Pitchers

Norfolk (AAA): RHP Kevin Gausman – 8 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 11 SO’s

Gausman’s 8 innings actually came over two different starts during the week, as he went 5 innings on August 19 and another 3 innings on August 25.  It’s believed that the organization is limiting his innings to prepare him for a call-up to the major league roster in the next week.

Bowie (AA): RHP Daniel McCutchen – 7 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 HR, 4 SO’s

Frederick (High-A):  RHP Zach Davies – 12 IP, 17 H, 9 R, 11 SO’s

Davies line on the week does not look great, but there wasn’t a lot of competition.  Only 5 of the 9 runs he gave up were earned, and the 11 strikeouts in 12 IP was the main reason for his selection.

The Bad

Hitters

Norfolk (AAA): OF Eric Thames – 1/13, 5 SO’s

Bowie (AA): 2B Buck Britton – 6/29, 2 2B’s, 9 SO’s, 2 BB’s

Frederick (High-A):  2B Jerome Pena – 2/22, 1 HR, 6 SO’s, 3 BB’s

Pena may have hit a home run this week, but he didn’t do much else.

Pitchers

Norfolk (AAA): LHP Chris Jones – 3.1 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 2 SO’s, 5 BB’s

Bowie (AA): RHP Devin Jones – 12.1 IP, 10 H, 9 R, 3 HR’s, 11 SO’s, 5 BB’s

Frederick (High-A):  LHP Trent Howard – 4.2 IP, 9 H, 6 R, 1 HR, 3 SO’s, 2 BB’s

While I was tempted to put Zach Clark in this spot since he gave up 6 walks in 5 innings, the fact that he is trying to develop a knuckleball made me reconsider.  It also helped that Clark only gave up 1 hit and 1 run (unearned).  So with that in mind, Howard got the call.

This entry was posted on August 27, 2013 at 10:00 am and is filed under Minor Leagues, Offense, Pitching, Prospects with tags Buck Britton, Caleb Joseph, Chris Jones, Daniel McCutchen, Devin Jones, Eric Thames, Henry Urrutia, Jerome Pena, Kevin Gausman, Minor League Recap, Trent Howard, Zach Davies, Zane Chavez. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.