Archive for Buck Britton

Minor League Recap: July 14-July 20

Posted in Minor Leagues, Offense, Pitching with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 23, 2014 by oriolesprovingground

It’s been a while since the last minor league recap (almost two months!), but I can promise you that I have some really good excuses. The first excuse is that I was out of country on my honeymoon. Yes, it’s true that I have been married for a little while now (apologies to all of those single ladies who read this blog on a regular basis, I know there are a lot of you), but we hadn’t had the opportunity to go on one until this past June. I was then tied up with my actual job that pays me way more money than I get for operating this site, so, you know, priorities. I had thought about doing one giant minor league update, but quickly reconsidered when I realized just how much work that would entail. So I decided it was best just to not cover the last 6 weeks of Orioles minor league baseball. Let’s face it, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter.

In actual Orioles minor league baseball news, the big story of last week was the promotions of 1B Christian Walker and recent Futures Game representative OF Dariel Alvarez to AAA, as well as the promotion of OF Mike Yastrzemski to AA. That’s great news for them, as they’re one step closer to their major league dreams. But don’t go thinking that they’re actual prospects all of a sudden. With the respective All-Star games last week, it was a short one, so let’s get on to the recap… Continue reading →

Leave a comment »

Minor League Recap: May 19-May 25

Posted in Minor Leagues, Offense, Pitching, Prospects with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 28, 2014 by oriolesprovingground

If you’re reading this, then you already know…the minor league recap is a day late this week. Blame it on the holiday weekend, where my time was spent doing really important things that didn’t involve baseball. Don’t believe me? I didn’t even know that the Orioles traded for Nick Hundley until he made that throwing error against the Brewers in the bottom of the 9th inning on Monday night (I started watching the game only a couple of minutes before that). I’m not proud of that, but it’s the truth. In other news this week, the talents of Heath Bell were on display in Norfolk this past week. We looked at what the Orioles may expect from him last week. Obviously it’s only been a week (small sample alert), but the results in AAA have been worse than expected, as he gave up 4 earned runs in 3.2 innings, giving up 7 hits while walking 4. Yet somehow, he didn’t have the worst performance by a Norfolk pitcher.

Weekly Summary

Norfolk (AAA): 3-3 (W-L), 43 RS, 28 RA

Bowie (AA): 5-2, 44 RS, 33 RA

Frederick (High-A): 1-5, 16 RS, 25 RA

The Good:

Hitters

Norfolk (AAA): OF Quintin Berry – 8/21 (H/AB), 2 2B’s, 1 3B, 1 HR, 2 BB’s, 3 SO’s

Berry had such a good week that he was named International League Player of the Week…

Wait, he wasn’t? I think the voters got that one wrong. Peguero had a great week and was very deserving of “my” award, but I think Berry was slightly better by hitting for slightly more power (Peguero’s extra base hits consisted of 3 doubles) and walking twice, compared to Peguero’s zero walks. So if Peguero makes fun of Berry for NOT winning the International League Player of the Week award last week (which I’m sure will happen if it hasn’t already), Berry can point to this blog post and reply with a witty comment.* Continue reading →

Leave a comment »

Minor League Recap: April 7-April 13

Posted in Minor Leagues, Offense, Pitching, Prospects with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 16, 2014 by oriolesprovingground

First, apologies for the minor league update coming to you a day late. No excuses from me, so I won’t tell you some intricate story how the cat knocked over a glass of cranberry juice (no, it was beer, yeah that’s what it was!) just as I was about to hit the post button. Better late than never, right? Also, as an FYI, I can already tell you that it’s going to be AT LEAST a day late next week too.

Other than it being a pretty tough week for all 3 affiliates, I don’t have much more to say, so let’s get right to it.

Weekly Summary

Norfolk (AAA): 2-4 (W-L), 25 RS, 32 RA

Bowie (AA): 3-4, 25 RS, 27 RA

Frederick (High-A): 1-5, 18 RS, 35 RA

The Good:

Hitters

Norfolk (AAA): OF Julio Borbon – 7/21 (H/AB), 1 2B, 1 3B, 1 HR, 7 BB’s, 5 SO’s

Borbon was picked up by the Orioles in the minor league portion of this past winter’s Rule 5 draft, giving them some much needed outfield depth in AAA after losing Xavier Avery and L.J. Hoes in two separate trades.  Probably the most impressive line from Borbon’s week is the fact that he walked 7 times (career 5.7% walk rate in more than 850 major league PA’s). Continue reading →

Leave a comment »

Minor League Recap: August 26-Spetember 2

Posted in Minor Leagues, Offense, Pitching, Prospects with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 5, 2013 by oriolesprovingground

Welcome to the second and final installment of the Minor League Recap for the 2013 season, coming to you a day later than normal to include the final game, which was played on September 2.  None of these teams advanced to their respective league’s playoffs, so their seasons are no over.  Maybe next week I’ll attempt to do a full season minor league recap for Norfolk, Bowie, and Frederick, but then again, maybe I won’t.  As always, the following is based on performance only, and is not to be considered a list of prospects.

Weekly Summary

Norfolk (AAA): 6-3 (W-L), 34 RS, 27 RA

Bowie (AA): 4-5, 51 RS, 33 RA

Frederick (High-A): 4-5, 40 RS, 52 RA Continue reading →

1 Comment »

Minor League Recap: August 19-25

Posted in Minor Leagues, Offense, Pitching, Prospects with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 27, 2013 by oriolesprovingground

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.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment »