Weather blows more than Torres

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.


**************************
Minor league roundup:

  • Rochester 7, Charlotte 6
    • Keith Ginter, Daryle Ward and Josh Kroeger each hit solo homers.
    • Eider Torres went 2-for-5 with an RBI.
    • Cole Armstrong raised his average to .146 with a hit, but airmailed a throw into center field.
    • Derek Rodriguez was touched up for his first run, and Jimmy Gobble took the loss.
  • Birmingham 6, Montgomery 4
    • C.J. Retherford went 2-for-4 with a triple and two RBI, raising his average to .337.
    • Robert Hudson mimicked Retherford’s line, except he doubled.  He played for Gordon Beckham, currently dealing with an abdominal strain.
    • Dave Cook hit a two-run homer.
    • Aaron Poreda threw six shutout innings before running into trouble in the seventh.  All three runs he allowed scored that inning.
  • Lake County 10, Kannapolis 5
    • Charles Leesman was roughed up for the second straight outing (5 IP, 8 H, 3 BB, 5 ER).
    • Sergio Morales doubled twice.
    • Drew O’Neil allowed a run over two innings, and Dan Remenowsky gave up two runs on three hits over an inning of work.
Take a second to support Sox Machine on Patreon