White Sox Minor League Keys: April 19, 2018
Eloy Jimenez back with Birmingham; Blake Rutherford keeps rolling with four-hit game
Eloy Jimenez made his long-awaited Birmingham debut tonight, and he’s starting with room to improve.
The White Sox’ top hitting prospect went 0-for-3 with a run scored and an RBI in his return to minor-league action as the Barons lost to Jackson, 8-3. His four plate appearances:
- Backwards K
- 5-4-3 double play
- Run-scoring groundout to third
- Walk
Let’s go straight into the rest of the Birmingham box score.
Jackson 8, Birmingham 3
- Tito Polo went 1-for-4 with a double and two strikeouts.
- Zack Collins walked twice and struck out twice.
- Eloy Jimenez, see above.
- Seby Zavala and Jameson Fisher were both 0-for-4 with two strikeouts.
- Trey Michalczewski was 1-for-3 with a strikeout.
- Jordan Guerrero: 3 IP, 9 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 1 BB, 5 K
Winston-Salem 9, Salem 5
- Luis Alexander Basabe walked thrice, struck out twice and was caught stealing.
- Alex Call went 0-for-3 with two walks.
- Blake Rutherford is now hitting .404 after going 4-for-5. He also stole a base.
- Micker Adolfo went 1-for-4 with his third homer, a walk and two strikeouts.
- Gavin Sheets was 1-for-4 with a strikeout and an HBP.
- Yermin Mercedes, 0-for-4 with a walk and a strikeout.
- Yeyson Yrizarri went 0-for-4 with an HBP and a strikeout.
- Ti’Quan Forbes was 0-for-3 with a walk and a strikeout.
- Ricardo Pinto: 5 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 4 K
More:
*The Dash put together a highlight reel for this one:
.@BlakeRuth2 had a career night with four RBIs, Micker Adolfo flexed his 💪🏽and Winston-Salem cruised to a 9-5 victory over the Salem Red Sox. pic.twitter.com/Q7BTMUJdU4
— Winston-Salem Dash (@WSDashBaseball) April 20, 2018
Kannapolis 8, Greenville 3
- Luis Gonzalez went 1-for-4 with a walk and a strikeout.
- Justin Yurchak went 1-for-4 with two strikeouts. He already has three errors at first base.
- Evan Skoug went 1-for-4 with a K.
- Michael Hickman struck out three times while going 0-for-4.
Any ideas on how they can help Collins:
Send him to Winston Salem?
Have him strictly DH for a month?
Tell Seb! to stop making him look worse?
It’s pretty ridiculous. He’s only putting the bat on the ball in 1/3 of his plate appearances. Hard not to be really down on him right now.
When I was there last week, hitting coach Cole Armstrong was spending a lot of time with Collins trying to help his timing. It wasn’t an impressive BP session as Collins wasn’t pulling the ball.
Collins timing is off. Hopefully he gets that down soon.
Any updates on his defensive work?
He didn’t catch when I was there. His focal point is framing this season.
Could this be a situation where he’s still getting adjusted to the simplified load they were working on in the offseason?
I’d imagine that’s the excuse. But since the adjustment was supposed to enable him to make more contact, the early returns are… not impressive.
Well, I asked him about that, and as you can hear on the podcast from Monday, he’s back to hitched load because he feels comfortable with it.
Josh,
Do you know if Getz and his team have any communication with the draft dept about draft prospects’ swing mechanics?
My concern is that Hostetler’s crew are scouting college stat lines too heavily, and missing mechanical issues such as Collins’.
Maybe they can change his name to Courtney.
Seriously, he’s probably better off having Zavala pass him up as a prospect as motivation.
Adolfo flexed his elbow? Does that mean he doesn’t have to DH exclusively anymore? (bad choice of emoji)
That’s not an elbow. It’s a whole arm
White Sox affiliates are above .500 as a group. So that’s something.
Certainly a nice change of pace. Success in the minors has eluded us for quite some time, and I’d like these kids to come up knowing what winning is like.