Baby Jays Recaps - Thomas Hatch throws 5 scoreless

Buffalo (32-21) - Win 3-2 over Rochester

Buffalo waited until the 9th inning to get started Tuesday night against Rochester. After Kevin Smith reached and then moved to 2nd on a throwing error by the 3B, Alejandro Kirk singled to score the first Herd run. After a Riley Adams flyout, Tyler White hit his 2nd HR of the year, a 2-run shot to put Buffalo ahead. For the Day, White also added a single. Adams had a single earlier and Logan Warmoth also singled.

Thomas Hatch had his best start of the year, going 5 shutout innings, allowing only a single and 3 walks. Hatch struck out 6 over 82 pitches. Jeremy Beasley had a scoreless inning of relief, allowing a double. Curtis Taylor gave up 2 earned on 3 hits in an inning of relief. Hobie Harris struck out 2 in his inning of scoreless relief, but did give up a hit and a walk. Kirby Snead pitched the 9th to get his 3rd save, striking out 2.

New Hampshire (23-29) - Loss 3-2 to Binghamton

Johnny Barbato started for New Hampshire and gave up 3 runs (1 earned) over 6 innings, allowing 6 hits and a walk. Barbato was hurt by errors which led to 2 of the runs. In the 1st, Kevin Vicuna dropped a third strike throw, allowing the leadoff double to move to 3rd as well. A wild pitch brought in that run. After giving up a double and a single in the 5th, Austin Martin committed an error picking up a ball to short, which allowed a run to score. Personally with no one out, I think that the 2 runs in the 5th should be earned, but that’s not my call. Fitz Stadler pitched the final 2 innings, allowing no base runners and striking out 4.

On offense New Hampshire scored 2 runs on 2 solo HR’s. Otto Lopez hit his 3rd in the 4th inning, while Tanner Kirwer had his 2nd in AA in the 7th. That was all the scoring for the Cats. Chavez Young had 2 singles. Vinny Capra, LJ Talley & Chris Bec each had a single. Austin Martin had a walk and was hit by a pitch. Jordan Groshans had a walk and a strikeout and then left the game.

Vancouver (28-27) - Win 9-3 over Spokane

Vancouver got off to a quick start in this one, putting up 3 in the 1st and 4 more in the 2nd. Rafael Lantigua led off with a single, Tanner Morris doubled Lantigua to 3rd and then Sebastian Espino hit a ground-rule double to score both. After an error, Luis De Los Santos hit a sac fly to score Espino. The second began with an Eric Rivera walk. Lantigua walked behind him and then Morris had his second double of the game, scoring 2. After 2 outs, De Los Santos scored Morris. De Los Santos then stole 2nd and scored on a Johnny Aiello single.

Lantigua finished the day with 2 singles, 2 walks, 3 runs scored and a stolen base. Morris went 3-5 with 2 doubles and 3 RBI’s. Espino had a single to go along with his double. De Los Santos had 2 singles and the sac fly. Rivera added a single to his walk.

On the mound, Adam Kloffenstein started and looked better than he has recently. Kloff went 5 innings, allowing 2 earned on 4 hits, 2 walks and a hit batter. He recorded 5 strikeouts and was around 60% strikes over his 92 pitches. Alex Nolan followed with 2 scoreless innings of relief, allowing a single, a double and a walk. Conner Law pitched the final 2 innings, allowing a run on 2 hits and 2 walks, while striking out 4.

Dunedin (21-32) - Rained out

FCL (1-3) - No game

Today’s Probables

Buffalo sends Zach Logue (1-0, 2.70 ERA, 3.24 FIP, 4.56 xFIP in AAA) to the mound.

New Hampshire takes on Binghamton again, no starter has been listed

Vancouver is starting Luis Quinones (2-3, 3.42 ERA, 4.99 FIP, 5.11 xFIP) to the hill.

Dunedin is scheduled to play Tampa at home, no starter is listed.

The FCL Club has already had their game for today postponed due to rain. Make up is scheduled for July 19

Quick Update from Last Week

MiLB announced this week that there would be playoffs in a few of the leagues. In AA, High-A & Low-A there will be a best of 5 series for the top 2 teams in each league. The complex leagues will not have playoffs. The AAA loops will award the championship to the team with the best record in their league. The one change for AAA is that the leagues were extended another 2 weeks, to the start of October. That adds 10 games for each club.

Buffalo went 4-2 in their series against Lehigh Valley. The hot hitter last week was the recently departed Rowdy Tellez. John Axford debuted with 2 appearances, including 2 saves. The first was smooth, the second took some work. Overall, Buffalo has moved to 32-21 to sit half a game back of Worcester for 2nd in the division. Buffalo has gone 7-3 in their past 10 games and are sitting with a +68 run differential. This week, Buffalo takes on Rochester, the Nationals AAA club, who are 22-32, so hopefully Buffalo can continue to make up ground. They trail Scranton/Wilkes-Barre by 4 games.

Last week saw New Hampshire go 2-2 against Portland as weather wreaked some havoc. That week saw no change for the standings, as the Cats are continuing to chase Portland for 2nd. After last nights game, NH sits 11.5 games back of Somerset for 1st, and 6 games back of Portland for 2nd. What’s worse is we learned that Gabriel Moreno is out for an extended period of time with a broken bone. It was also announced that Simeon Woods Richardson will be joining the US Olympic team in Tokyo, so the Cats will be without his services for a period of time. Ultimately, New Hampshire is a better club than they have shown, as evidenced by their +13 run differential, but these bumps are not going to help give the club the opportunity to show it. The Fisher Cats go on a two week road trip against the two teams below them in the divisional standings, starting with Binghamton, the Mets AA club.

Vancouver had a rough week with league leading Everett last week, as they were unable to make up any ground going 1-5 for the week. The week saw Vancouver remain in the top 3, but dropped them back to .500 and 7 games behind Everett, and 6.5 back of Eugene. Although Vancouver has played the top 2 teams more than half their games so far, they will need to find a way to close that gap, and should hopefully get to it soon. This week sees Vancouver take on one of the teams below them in the standings, as they welcome Spokane to their “home” away from home in Hillsboro. Spokane is the High-A affiliate of the Rockies and are the team closest to Vancouver in the standings, only 3 games back after last nights C’s win.

Dunedin continues to struggle as they went 1-5 last week against Palm Beach. This week doesn’t get any easier as the league leading Tampa Yankees arrive for a series. Dunedin is 3-9 against Tampa so far on the year, and trail the Yankees Low-A club by 15.5 games in the standings. Dunedin has shown a league average offense, but their pitching has struggled, allowing the second most runs in the league - strangely having just lost 5 of 6 against the one club whose pitching has allowed more runs. Dunedin is 2-8 over its last 10 games, and has struggled at home, though part of that could have been playing away from home for the start of the year.

The Florida Complex League club has had some struggles with rain so far as the league begun last week. The FCL Jays went 1-3 with 2 postponements. The FCL club has allowed 1 more run than it scored, although allowing more than 7 runs a game isn’t ideal. MiLB has made it tricky to find information on the FCL stats beyond the box scores, so the real highlight that I have seen was a 5 inning debut from 2003 born Dahian Santos. Santos was a 2019 J2 signee, and in his first game he went 5 scoreless, striking out 6.

Another piece of news is that the Dominican Summer League will get underway on July 15th, which should give the 2020 J2 signees a chance to get into some games.

Sorry for the delay, between the long weekend and taking a day off last week, this week has been crazy so I wasn’t able to get much done from last weeks games, though the results weren’t overly pretty.