HHP: Quick Hits From Today’s Game

by RZNJ

1. Aquino looked good but I don’t know that he has the command to get ahead and get out ML hitters.   The changeup is a beautiful thing when he spots in knee high on the outside part.   The slider looks good when he keeps it down.   The fastball looks ordinary.    The command, I worry about.   Mechanically, he looks pretty good.  Nothing odd about his delivery.

2. Stefan Crichton continues to impress.  His numbers at AA were ordinary although he did make a two level jump from Delmarva.   He’s 25 so he’s no kid.    He comes in a throws strikes.    His first pitch fastball to Russell Martin was smoked to CF for an out but that’s what you have to do at the ML level.   Try and get strike one.    He locates his fastball and gets a lot of movement on his two seamer.    I’m not even sure he threw a slider today but previously he looked like he had a good one.

3. Jimmy Yacabonis looked like he had a good fastball/slider combo but without the command of Crichton.   Still, he looks like a pitcher who has come a long way from two years ago when he had trouble throwing strikes in the minors.

4. Cedric Mullins with a sac fly from the right side.   The switch hitter pulled his hands in on an inner half fastball and hit a medium deep fly for an easy sac fly.   Only one AB but he wasn’t over anxious, accepting a 2-0 hitter’s count from the pitcher.

5. D.J. Stewart is now pretty upright with his stance with knees slightly bent.   His stance didn’t look that closed to me.   Have to watch again but it looked straight up maybe even slightly open.   Unfortunately, he took strike one and didn’t come close to making contact on two inner half pitches.   Only one AB but didn’t look good.

6. Aneury Tavarez –   Nice piece of hitting.   On an 0-1 count, served a line drive to the LF that a guy like Trumbo takes a single.   A guy like Machado thinks about going for two but probably sticks at 1st if the LF comes up with the ball cleanly.   There was never a doubt that Tavarez was going for two and he made it easily.    He might not be a pure base stealer but he is FAST.

7.  Joey Rickard –  Not much with the bat today but a pretty nice catch covering a lot of ground and getting close to the wall in LF.

8.  Chance Sisco –  I think he got 1 of 2 base stealers today.   Looks like he’s getting rid of the ball pretty fast.   Both throws looked strong.   First one was off to the 2nd base side but right into the runner.   Not a great throw but got the job done.   I think he had no chance on the 2nd throw which was actually more accurate.   At the plate, he looked helpless against a LHP and too passive with a man on 3B and less than 2 outs in his last AB.   3 AB’s.  3 strikeouts.   I will say that after taking a hitters pitch (IMO) the pitcher made two excellent pitches on him his last time up.     He had trouble hitting LHP’s last year.  Something to keep on eye on.    Otherwise, he must have done a good job catching because I didn’t notice him behind the plate for the most part.   I did notice Aquino shaking him off quite a bit though.