Most of the excitement from Saturday’s Charlotte Knights game was drained when Tyler Flowers left the game in the second inning. He took a foul tip to his throwing hand, and after visiting the mound to buy some time, the training staff took a look at him.
Tyler Flowers gets his hand checked out. (Sox Machine)
He remained in the game until the end of the half-inning, and Cole Armstrong pinch-hit for him in the bottom of the second.
Fortunately, Armstrong filled in admirably, hitting a three-run homer as the Knights rallied back from a 5-0 deficit for a 7-5 win. Josh Fields’ third homer in as many days made the difference.
(It seemed like Flowers’ hand issues weren’t serious. He warmed up pitchers in the bullpen later in the game, and he didn’t have any kind of padding/splint/bandage on his throwing hand, that I (or my camera) could see, anyway.)
A few observations from the game before I pack up to head home:
*Armstrong had a poor day throwing (two throws went into center field, including one that allowed a run to score), until catching Michael Aubrey at second on a busted hit-and-run. My dad noticed a weird hitch in his release. It’s a distinct three-step motion — he pulls his arm back, cocks his wrist downward, and then comes forward with it all. Kinda like Gavin Floyd, and people steal on him, too.
Through his first two innings on Friday night, I figured I would see how Daniel Hudson ended up with his unimpressive line in his Triple-A debut on Sunday (4 IP, 8 H, 4 ER, 1 BB, 2 K). He fell behind hitters, and couldn’t really come back with anything besides his fastball.
And then he found his slider.
Hudson finished by retiring 16 of the last 17 Norfolk batters he faced. The only batter to reach did so on a bloop single over the head of the second baseman, and he was erased on a 5-4-3 double play.
Here’s the video of his night.
Some things I noticed (and you might, too):
*Through the first three innings, Hudson’s fastball registered between 91-93 on the radar gun. Over the last four, he was around 89-90, with an occasional 91.
Dan Hudson (Sox Machine)
However, I believe (I’m pretty sure, but didn’t keep count) that a majority of his strikeouts came on the fastball, even later in the game. The aforementioned effectiveness of the slider helped keep hitters off-balance.
He looked like he used to a two-seamer (85-87), a change (82ish) and a slider that he added to and subtracted from. The slowest one I saw clocked in at 78, the harder ones 81-82.
*He’s seen a decrease in groundoutsduring his ascension, and Friday was no exception: just three groundouts to 12 flyouts.
*When he misses, he misses down. He didn’t work up in the zone that often (although he managed to pump three fastballs above the belt past a batter later in the game). That might explain how he’s given up just four homers over 134 1/3 innings this year.
Really, there wasn’t a single ball hit hard against him all night. The Norfolk lineup produced several legitimate flies, but none that caused a heart to stop. He induced more pop-ups, flares off the end of the bat, etc., than anything resembling a well-struck ball.
*He works pretty quickly. He also does a muted Ryan Dempster-type glove waggle from the stretch.
The $64,000 question: Can he contribute to the Sox this year?
I would hesitate to say he would hit the ground running. Given his unimpressive debut and his slow start on Friday, I don’t know if we can judge Hudson’s progress for one more start. He lacks a “wow” factor — at least until he gets rolling — and most major-league lineups probably would’ve punished him for working from behind in the count and missing his best off-speed pitch. At least for more than one run, which was unearned thanks to an Andy Cannizaro error (on his first chance, to boot).
Still, Hudson definitely put on a show — one that will certainly keep his name in the conversation after another Jose Contreras meltdown, and could possibly get him penciled in to the 2010 rotation before the month is over.
At least as a hitter. Defensively, he looked raw in two of the three times he was tested. He played a grounder off his chest (but recovered in time to throw out the runner at first), and then took an awkward route on a chopper in which a fraction of a second would’ve helped. He did snag a rocket, gloving it across his body.
At the plate — the guy is a beast. You can tell Viciedo apart from the rest of the hitters on the field at Five County Stadium merely by the sound of the ball against his bat. Even his choppers have an echo, and that’s what tells me that I didn’t just see him on a good night.
He went 3-for-5, and it should’ve been 4-for-5. He roped a liner to left, but Christian Marrero couldn’t tell if it was caught. He retreated to second, but with a runner on first, it made for an easy 7-5 fielder’s choice.
Otherwise, he went to all fields: A single to right-center (preceded by an opposite-field foul ball that had home-run distance), a groundout to third, the aforementioned liner to left, a double to left-center, and a single to right that was hit too hard to go for extra bases.
You want video? Here it is!
Conveniently for me, Viciedo showcased the latest development to his game. It’s almost like he’s following a monthly schedule, because here’s how he has developed:
April: Complete hackery.
May: Improved contact.
June: More walks.
July: More power.
For a 20-year-old in Double-A who’s adjusting to a completely different professional and social culture, the progress is impressive. The power, even more so. This had to be what White Sox scouts saw to encourage Kenny Williams to give him a four-year, $11 million. The conditioning and positioning issues will present problems, but he has the ability to out-hit either, and that should be the primary focus.
Other guys:
*Jordan Danks didn’t get in on the Barons’ 18-hit attack, going 0-for-5 with a walk. He showed good strike zone recognition in his first plate appearance, falling behind 0-2 before laying off four straight pitches out of the zone, but couldn’t find middle ground between 4-3s and flyballs to left-center. The Ryan Sweeney comparisons are apt, with the pretty swing and long-striding running style.
After watching Jared Mitchell in action for the first time since joining the White Sox organization, one word comes to mind: Patience.
If I put together all the footage I had of Mitchell for the video below, 90 percent of the experience would be watching him take pitches. He struck out on a check swing, struck out looking, grounded to second, and drew a walk on a 3-2 count.
Mitchell provided far more excitement in the field, as you’ll see in the middle of that compilation. He helped out Nevin Griffith by making a diving catch to a slicing liner in right-center in the second inning, and then made another diving catch in the left-center gap to end the fourth inning.
Greensboro hitters had a field day taking balls to the gap, meaning that a lot of wallbangers were far out of Mitchell’s range. Anything he had a chance to catch, he caught.
Here’s what I saw:
Several of his Kannapolis teammates joined Mitchell in having off nights.
*Nevin Griffith was clocked at 94 with his fastball, but Greensboro hitters didn’t have any problems squaring it up. He threw a couple different curves — one in the high-70s, and one in the low-70s. He seemed to have better luck when pitching backwards.
It doesn’t look like Triple-A pitchers are scared of Tyler Flowers yet. He has just two walks over his first 65 at-bats in Charlotte, and didn’t draw one in his five at-bats on Monday.
Watching him for the first time on Monday, Flowers is responding to the challenges instead of looking for walks. The best example came in his final at-bat, he got a hanging breaking ball up in the zone on the first pitch, and just got under it.
Here’s the video of his final four at-bats:
He showed good pitch recognition for all but one pitch (an unsuccessful check swing), not flinching at any too-low and too-away offerings. If there’s one thing not working for him, it could be that he’s a little pull-happy right now. He came through in the clutch with a single over the second baseman’s head, but he had to break his bat to do it.
Two things I didn’t know about Carlos Torres: No. 1: He always pitches from the stretch.
No. 2: When in said stretch, Torres looks in for the sign with the ball in his mitt — yet he keeps the empty hand behind his back.
I don’t know if the second point is that unusual… I just don’t remember noticing that before.
Anyway, Torres had his toughest night of the season, and it’s hard to blame him. The weather turned on a dime, as the temperature dropped 25 degrees between warmups and the first pitch. The wind blew straight out at 35 m.p.h., and the rains came with it.
Torres allowed four runs over five innings, but two came in on a weak fly that the wind blew away from Andy Phillips in left. On a normal night, Phillips would’ve caught it to end the inning instead of flopping in vain. Another RBI single followed, so three of those runs should’ve been unearned.
Also, Eider Torres couldn’t handle a normally routine pop-up at short in the fifth inning, but Carlos Torres worked around it.
Given the conditions, I honestly can’t say if Torres could’ve given a representative sample of his skills. But here’s what I did learn:
Torres throws four pitches. He’s got a fastball that’s anywhere from 91-94 m.p.h., and I thought I saw him cut it against a lefty. His slider is around 85, he threw a changeup around 81, and he’s got an overhand curve around 75.
But he’s largely a fastball-slider guy. I only saw a handful of changeups all night, and while he could throw his curve for strikes, it didn’t seem to fool anybody. There wasn’t a lot of snap to it.
He didn’t allow many hard-hit balls, perhaps because he nibbles. He masks his inefficiency by working fairly quickly, but the pitches pile up just the same. He seemed to have problems finishing off Jose Morales in particular, losing him with four straight balls after getting ahead 0-2.
I don’t want to make too many judgments off a terrible night for baseball, which caused some terrible defense behind him. But he’s had problems getting past five innings even in better conditions, so it’s hard to see him being considered rotation help at this point. He looks to be more like D.J. Carrasco insurance.
Video’s below — the first clip gives you some idea how bad the rain was.
Below is Clayton Richard’s start against Richmond tonight condensed into roughly three minutes and 45 seconds.
When Charlotte Knights manager Marc Bombard said that Richard worked faster than anybody he’d ever seen during his last start against the Triple-A Braves affiliate, I doubt he was exaggerating. When the elements are right — that is, when the batter doesn’t step out after taking a pitch — about six seconds pass from when the ball hits the catcher’s mitt to when Richard releases the ball again. He does not dick around. The video ends with a three-pitch strikeout that I condensed slightly, but in real time, he disposed of the hitter in 23 seconds.
It appeared that the Braves tried to knock Richard off his game early by stepping out or calling time in the box and making Richard wait on the rubber — which he will do. He looks a little like Paul Byrd, rocking back and forth on the mound while waiting for the batter to set. In fact, it’s the only way he looks like Byrd.
They fazed him not, unless you consider Richard walking his first batter in 21 innings at Triple-A a victory. He walked the leadoff batter in the second inning, and got into a little subsequent hot water when he gave up a double to the next batter, but worked around it with a soft lineout, strikeout and pop-out.
He looked to be a three-pitch pitcher — two-seam fastball, curve and a change. His sinker had a lot of movement on it, and he appeared to do a nice job of keeping his change away from right-handers, while using the curve against lefties. There were four hard-hit (fair) balls on the night — three are on the video, and the other was a liner that ended up in Javier Castillo’s mitt at third. He induces plenty of weak contact, which is why he’s confident enough to be efficient as all get-out. He needed only 72 pitches over six innings.
The only pickoff move Richard made appeared to be a show-me version that you’ll see on the video. He has to have a better one — at least I’m hoping. The same small sample size can be applied to his defense. He fielded three chances cleanly, but his soft throws looked a little awkward. One of them pulled Royce Huffman off the bag, and he barely got back in time for the out.
The biggest caveat is that Richmond’s lineup was not stacked with hot prospects or even AAAA hitters. But given that context, he did exactly what he had to do. Outside of one bad fastball that resulted in a two-run homer, he didn’t let bad hitters beat him.
*Jason Bourgeois had two triples on the night, but one should’ve been a lineout to center. The problem is that in Richmond’s stadium around 7:10 p.m. (he was the first batter of the game), the center fielder is looking directly into the sun on balls hit right at him, while right field and left field are in the shade. He lost a hard-hit but catchable ball off contact, and Bourgeois made it to third easily.
The second triple, however, was all his bat and speed. He smoked some liners today.
*Cole Armstrong made his Triple-A debut and went 5-for-5. I thought he only had four hits, because a liner to second that was effectively dropped was initially ruled an error. He had three solid liners and one seeing-eye single through the hole on the left side.
*I have video of Chris Getz and David Cook, and will get to them when I get home. Cook hit two warning-track shots the opposite way, while Getz got two cheap RBI early and then made better contact later.
