4/21 MiL Gameday Thread: Berrios tries to stop Pawsox

No scratch for Johnson so we can eliminate him from Boston's Kelly plans.

Pawsox also getting no-hit by Berrios through 5, Travis with 2 K's. Swihart is the only one who has gotten on base with a walk.

PawSox streak over. They lost 5-0

Greenville down 4-2 coming to bat in the 3rd.
Gonzalez giving up a lot of hard hit balls.
Ockimey with his 4th HR

Salem down 3-1 top 3rd
Benintendi with a double came home on a Longhi single
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4-3 after 3
Chavis and Ockimey with hard hit singles. Monge had a double but was thrown out at 3rd trying to advance on a dirt ball that didn't go far enough from the catcher.

Washington with a classic off the monster assist nabbing a runner trying to get a double.
Gonzalez still getting hammered.

Washington with a scorched line drive 3 run HR (5) to left.
Drive hammering the ball as well. 6-6 Drive still up bottom of the 4th.

Salem down 6-1 bottom 4th
Ben Taylor's current game score is 19

I actually like him better than Longhi but I think I'm probably alone on that boat. The down side is that he seems to hit off his front foot a lot which might catch him at higher levels.

Washington is the sleeper on this team. Huge power, athletic, nice mechanics, decent bat speed, solid plate coverage.

I'll take Ockimey over Longhi easily

Glorius got lit up in the 9th. Faced 5 batters no-one made an out and everything was hammered. His first 3 innings 1 hit 4 strikeouts.

Somebody needs to email Cosart a map of the part of the baseball field where he's supposed to throw his fastball. At least 3 check swing strikes on bad pitches so the strike/ball ratio is a bit deceiving. He did locate a couple real nice ones though.

20 hits for Columbia. Drive coming up bottom of the 9th down 13-9.
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Game over. Ended on a nice play at second robbing x Basabe.

Fun fact, he's also better than everyone in the Twins MLB rotation.

I was seriously thinking about that today. How is he not up? Maybe a service time thing, because he's gotta be ready, at least for that team.

He's not likely to get called up until he can't accumulate a year's service time in 2016. Happens every year. That's coming very soon.

The Twins would be crazy to throw away an entire year of control over a few weeks. It's apparently also OK with the MLBPA because they keep negotiating the same set up. The only time it appears to be not OK is when the major league team offers a major league contract while the player is still in the minors just before expected callup. I believe it was Springer that had a grievance but then was called before the grievance could be filed.

Polanco also potentially had a case but that was never filed because of the specific wording on the Pirates offer (which was declined). Polanco ended up not getting called up until after super two day which comes later in the year. That same year, him and Betts were tearing up the minors and both got the call just after super two day.

Ryan Howard is still the poster boy on why teams do that. The Phillies mistake wasn't so much the contract, it was the fact that over only a few weeks service time, they had to negotiate a contract a year earlier than usual and therefore a year's less looks. For perspective, consider that Howard's 2016 salary is almost twice the salary of the entire Mets rotation.

Apparently Dombrowski was in Salem tonight.

.441 OBP, .604 SA, Chavis
.444 OBP, .608 SA, Ockimey

       2015 2016 Change
Chavis K% .308 .169 -45%
Chavis UBB% .060 .068 +13%

Ockimey K% .341 .226 -34%
Ockimey UBB% .109 .177 +63%

I wonder how long before Ockimey is pushing Longhi for that spot in Salem? A 19% BB rate indicates it's time to move up soon. We're about halfway to walk rate stabilization of 120 PAs.