Minor league notes: Danny Jansen does not hit for the cycle

Let's review Danny Jansen's night yesterday:

First AB: hit a 1-1 curveball just over the fence in left field for his second AAA home run.

Second AB: smashed the first pitch to the opposite field (right-centre) gap, legged out a triple. Two hardest parts of the cycle down.

Third AB: ground ball up the middle for a single.

Fourth AB: Needs just a double for the cycle, coming up trailing with one out in the 9th. This is doable. First pitch is lined hard to left field...right over the shot wall and leaping outfielder for a game-tying home run (video).

The hope for the cycle was still alive at that point with the possibility of extras, but Christian Lopes put that to bed a few minutes later with a 3-run shot. It's no cycle, but I guess 12 total bases isn't bad. It also came the day after Connor Panas flirted with a cycle but bad weather denied him the shot. He needed a home run, and was due up as the first batter of the 8th inning, but the game was called in the middle of the bottom of the 7th on account of rain and a wet field.

That brings him to a .500/.591/.917 line in 40 AAA plate appearances, on the heels of .369/.422/.541 to start the season in Dunedin and a meager .291/.378/.419 in 210 AA plate appearances.

Will we see him in September? Jansen has to be added to the 40-man this winter, but with Martin (hopefully), Montero and Maile, things would be pretty crowded. But perhaps, as a reward for performance. With five players on the 60-day DL who will have to be activated when the season ends, there will be a brief mini-crunch on the 40-man before free agents are declared in early November (and before the Rule 5 deadline of 11/20). That could be a reason not to add him until then, but it's probably not a big consideration one way or the other.

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Speaking of players likely to come up in September, Carlos Ramirez pitched the last 2.1 innings in perfect fashion with one strikeout. He actually wasn't as electric as he's been in his previous Buffalo outings, giving up some decent-to-good contact but fortunately in the right places, but nonetheless it's August 22nd and 33 innings into his season he's yet to give an earned run.

Speaking of players mashing the stuffing out of the ball, Jansen has a rival in Vladimir Guerrero Jr. He homered in three straight games Thursday to Saturday, running his Dunedin line to a cool .336/.456/.492. Not bad for a guy who in a difference world graduated high school two months ago.

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Ryan Borucki put together another nice start on Sunday, allowing 2 runs on 5 hits and 2 walks in 6 innings, with 5 strikeouts. And really, it could or even should have been 6 shutout innings, as the two runs scored in the 4th on a hard two out double, but the inning only alive because of a routine fly ball that the wind pushed around and Anthony Alford missed allowing it to be a single. Early in the game he kept the ball on the ground, with more balls in the air later. He piled up 11 swinging strikes (76% contact), a lot of them early on his changeup.

That's six good AA outings in a row over the last month, a 2.29 ERA over 39.1 innings with an 8 walks and 35 strikeouts.

Finally, and this is very belated considering his next start is tonight, but Joe Biagini continued to ramp up, throwing 73 pitches over 4 shutout innings last Thursday. It wasn't the cleanest line, with 3 walks in addition to two singles allowed (and 4 strikeouts). However, all the contact was weak-to-routine, he touched 97 on the stadium gun multiple times, holding 95-96 at least into the middle of the outing, and apparently his curve has pretty sharp. So those are all positives. I'm still not sold on him as a starter, but looking forward to seeing what he does in September.