8/18 Gameday Thread: Salem Plays 2, Showdown in Lowell

Might as well give him a taste of the bigs

Says more about the baseballs being used than anything imo

It’s like the days of the early 2000’s. These low 4 ERA’s are actually good

Jiminez with two more hits.

Was at this game, a few thoughts for whatever they're worth:

-Stankiewicz looked better than expected, reawakening my hope of at least the ceiling of an MLB 7th/multi-inning reliever. Fastball was 91-93 according to the stadium gun and was effective, getting a lot of strikes and several balls hit into the ground. He threw almost all fastballs in the 1st and looked dominant. In the 2nd he threw almost all offspeed and got hit hard, although a lot of the loud contact went for outs. After that he started mixing things and was generally effective. The offspeed stuff was 83-85 - I was up the first-base line and couldn't judge horizontal movement at all, but most of the more effective offspeed pitches that had batters fooled *appeared* to be sliders.

-Deiner Lopez made a lazy play on a cut-off throw after a single in the 2nd, taking a sidearm swipe at the throw and letting it go by him into foul territory and send the runner to 3rd, leading to Toledo's first (unearned) run. It was brutally hot out there and its tough to blame players for not being max-effort, but it wasn't a good look and fans around me were not happy.

-Chatham looked good at the plate, swung early and often but had a lot of solid line-drive contact and a couple hits. No noteworthy plays either way defensively that I saw.

-Mejia looks even worse than his ERA, I had trouble figuring out how he was able to get anyone out. Fastball was 90-92 with little command, although hitters did look a little off-balance on his mid-80's slider.

-Gorkys Hernandez has a rocket arm.

-Dalbec didn't look impressive at the plate today, although in his first AB he got way under a pitch and hit what looked like a routine pop-up that carried to the wall in right-center - it was probably a mix of his power, the juiced ball, and the wind aiding it. In his next AB he was badly fooled by and swung over a breaking ball to strike out swinging, and threw his bat in apparent disgust. I missed his walk, and in his last AB he swung late on a fastball up but got the bat on it and hit a hard single through the right side. From the three plate appearances I saw he never looked to be in control of at bats and had some late reactions, but obviously is still very new to the level. In the field, he had one noteworthy play at third, a slow roller necessitating the "charge, barehand, throw on the run off-balance" routine - he performed it cleanly, although wasn't super-quick. The throw was very strong and got the out, although it was a little off-line and clearly appeared to pull Witte off the bag early. It was a solid play but my reactionary first thought was "well, not everyone can look as smooth as Devers does this year."

-Houck was dominant, "only" one K but batters had no chance, contact was weak and into the ground. Fastball was 94-95 and got some ugly swings. Again I had trouble judging horizontal movement, but batters couldn't do anything with his pitches.

-Kelley matches his scouting report on this site and what others' live impressions have been. Other pitchers with a side-arm delivery like his have been able to get by with his velocity by making a tweak to a breaking ball or something similar, but something will have to change for him to progress further.

It was my first time seeing Chatham so I don't have anything to compare it to, but yes from what I recall. Nothing that seemed exaggerated or that called particular attention, but he wasn't standing completely straight.

Again take with a grain of salt because it's not something I was paying close attention to, but I believe he looked about like he did in that video. Wasnt completely straight upright but not an exaggerated crouch either.