Batter's Box Interactive Magazine - Arencibia Awakens While the Cats Sleep

The 51s romped while the Fisher Cats were one-hit by a top prospect in a 2-1 day for the affiliates.

nSacramento 1    Las Vegas 9

As if the Jays needed any more hats in the starting pitching ring, Fabio Castro continued to impress in AAA with his second straight scoreless start, going six innings and allowing just three hits and a walk. He also struck out two. Castro has now made 7 starts combined between New Hampshire and Las Vegas and has put up a 3-0 record with an ERA of 1.13. Through 40 innings, he has allowed 25 hits and 9 walks against 34 strikeouts. Not too shabby.

Davis Romero finished things off with three innings of one-run ball. Romero is sporting a 3.72 ERA in 9.2 innings of work as he continues to work back from injury.

The real story today, though, was catcher J.P. Arencibia who, after showing some positive signs over the past few games, broke out of his season long slump with authority going 4-for-5 with a HR, 2B, 3 RBI and three runs scored. Arencibia's line is now up to .231/.265/.417.

Buck Coats picked up four hits of his own including two doubles. Not to be outdone, Brett Harper had two doubles among his three hits. Harper has been ridiculously hot lately, going 12 for his last 23 with 5 HRs, 2 doubles and 9 RBI. For the year, he's now hitting .327/.364/.619.

Randy Ruiz, Aaron Mathews, and Kyle Phillips all chipped in two hits for the 51s who had 17 total.

Connecticut 3    New Hampshire 0

From 17 hits at AAA to just one in New Hampshire. The Fisher Cats were completely flummoxed by San Francisco Giants' top prospect Tim Alderson who, in making his AA debut, struck out 10 in 6.2 innings. A whole bunch of guys, including David Cooper, struck out twice for New Hampshire. The only hit came off the bat of Al Quintana which makes sense as he's 12 for his last 18.

Nathan Starner started for the Cats and pitched fairly well but took the loss nonetheless. Starner went four innings and allowed a run on five hits and two walks. He struck out one.
Leon Boyd allowed two runs in the ninth to put things completely out of reach.

Dunedin- Scheduled day off

Beloit 3    Lansing 6

A nice day for the Lugnuts as they scored 6 times on just 8 hits in knocking off the Beloit Snappers. Five pitchers combined for the win for Lansing including starter Charles Huggins who threw 4.2 shutout innings on only two hits. He did, however, walk five against four strikeouts. Frank Gailey was roughed up a bit, and gave way to Yorman Mayora who blew a save but picked up the win. He was picked up by Hunter Moody and Matthew Daly who recorded his fourth save.

Balbino Fuenmayor was the offensive star for the Lugnuts in going 2-for-3 with his first homer of the year. Fuenmayor is now hitting .205/.205/.260 in his first taste of full season ball.

A whole whack of guys added hits for Lansing but nobody really stood out aside from Johermyn Chavez whose single drove in two.

Three Stars:

3rd Star: Buck Coats; 4-for-6, 2 2B

2nd Star: Fabio Castro; Win- 6 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 2 K

1st Star: J.P. Arencibia; 4-for-5, HR, 2B, 3 RBI, 3 R

Posted by braden on Monday, May 11 2009 @ 06:28 AM EDT.

Arencibia Awakens While the Cats Sleep | 16 comments | Create New Account

The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.

Sano - Monday, May 11 2009 @ 07:57 AM EDT (#199746) #

Anyone else notice the amount of starting lefties the Jays are developing? I wonder to myself if it's a good thing, Castro, Mills, Cecil, Zep, Purcey, Romero. Are there any stats showing the relative success of teams with a lot of starting lefties?

Chuck - Monday, May 11 2009 @ 09:12 AM EDT (#199747) #

Anyone else notice the amount of starting lefties the Jays are developing? I wonder to myself if it's a good thing,

When rosters had 10-11 pitchers rather than 12-13, teams had much more latitude to platoon and protect their LHB from LHP. This would make the lefty pitchers with large platoon splits vulnerable to RH-laden lineups.

Nowadays, with such short benches, teams have very little lineup flexibility, particularly if they carry a lot of LHB, meaning that LHPs are far less vulnerable to the opposition tinkering their lineup. That the Jays have so many LH pitchers in their system is thus far less a concern now than it would have been in the past.

This past series with Oakland illustrated just how vulnerable the LH-heavy Athletics are to LHP. Yesterday, Cecil faced a lineup with 5 LHBs (!!), not all of whom should be in a major league starting lineup against a lefty (Hannahan and Kennedy, were, admittedly, injury replacements).

The Jays, who carry just 3 LHBs in total, have the flexibility to platoon at two positions. The A's, particularly with Ellis and Garciaparra injured, are reduced to deer in the headlights against southpaws. The only RHP they should ever see is a ROOGY to face Holliday.

The days of the John Wockenfusses and Cliff Johnsons are gone. Players used to be able to make a living doing nothing more than crushing LH pitching. Unless they can play a few positions, there's not much room for them any more, making life a whole lot simpler for LH starting pitchers.

Mike Green - Monday, May 11 2009 @ 09:37 AM EDT (#199748) #

Wockenfusses

The bane of existence for parents of toddlers.

The Yankees have absolutely creamed LHP, but have been human against RHP, so far this season. With Posada out and A-Rod in, this pattern figures to be more extreme in the series coming up. Jason Frasor, Brian Wolfe and Brandon League, your time to shine is here. It is sweet that the rotation lined up so that there were 2 lefties starting in Oakland and 3 righties starting against the Yankees. Shall we guess that this was the result of some planning 10-14 days ago?

davidcanavan - Monday, May 11 2009 @ 10:30 AM EDT (#199751) #

chris_jays - Monday, May 11 2009 @ 11:01 AM EDT (#199754) #

Mike i believe Tallet is going on Thursday so we do in fact have 1 lefty starting.

LouisvilleJayFan - Monday, May 11 2009 @ 11:31 AM EDT (#199763) #

I would love to see the jays start to deal some of their left handed pitching depth. Castro is probably above his normal value given his hot start, and could be a good filler piece in a package. Brad Mills is someone who if he gets hot coming up to the trade deadline could be moved, maybe for a Jeff Clement with a C prospect going to the Mariners as well. The idea of Clement and Arencibia sharing catching time until one proves to be the starter is intriguing for next year.

I do think Mills will end up as part of a trade down the road if the Jays are still contending by the All Star Break and I do like Clement. Castro's already on his 4th organization. Pretty unusual for a guy of his caliber. I wonder what (if anything) is up with that.

Maldoff - Monday, May 11 2009 @ 11:49 AM EDT (#199765) #

I think we need to temper our excitement over Castro a little bit. At age 24, he was on the older side for a prospect at AA to start the year. In addition, while his ERA has been good at AAA, there are some worrisome areas, namely his poor GB-FB ratio (0.83 in AAA, 0.70 in AA). Also, his overall K% is only 22.5%, nothing to write home about. He's also 5'7", and the scouting reports on him have been fine, but not amazing. While he could be a useful contributor, I definitely do not think he is anywhere near the league of the Cecil's, Romero's, Zep's or even Ray's.

85bluejay - Monday, May 11 2009 @ 12:09 PM EDT (#199767) #

Castro's already on his 4th organization. Pretty unusual for a guy oh his caliber. I wonder what (if anything) is up with that.

I think that Castro's development has been hurt badly because he was a rule v pick who got kicked around in the ml as the mop up guy instead of pitching

regularly in the minors.

Denoit - Monday, May 11 2009 @ 12:27 PM EDT (#199768) #

I doubt Mills is going anywhere, this team drafted him twice, and are pretty high on him. If anyone gets traded, it will probably be a guy with some Major League service time under his belt to keep things cheaper. A guy like Tallet would be first on my list.

John Northey - Monday, May 11 2009 @ 01:16 PM EDT (#199773) #

Thinking about pitching trades...
First the 'staying here' crowd
Rotation locks, no (#*! way is he being traded
Halladay
Young, great, GM favorite - need lopsided deal to get him
Cecil, Romero
Doing well, but others probably doubt thus low trade value
Richmond (29 in first full ML season)

Trade possibilities
Prime trade bait
Tallet, entire pen except the guy we'd like to trade (BJ), Castro (not a lot of value yet)
If healthy and has a couple good starts could be gone quick
Litsch, Janssen
Young but not doing the Jays any favours
Purcey, Mills (19 bb vs 20 k's in AAA), Ray could go here too (6 ERA)

That is how I see it at the moment. Tallet, Litsch, Janssen would be the guys the Jays would make available first due to all of them being at the expensive stages of their careers, assuming Richmond/Cecil/Romero are for real. Tallet is my #1 choice for a trade as he is pitching very well as a starter and as a left hander has extra value.

Btw, BB/9: 1.2 vs 1.3, SO/9 7.6 vs 7.7 = Halladay vs Cecil. Thought those two starts looked familiar in the box score :)

R Billie - Monday, May 11 2009 @ 01:30 PM EDT (#199775) #

Castro seems to have changed his approach the last couple of starts and is getting fewer K's but is lasting an extra inning or two and not allowing many baserunners. I think it's too early to determine how useful he can be but from reports I've seen his stuff seems to be legit and he's made big strides this year to control righthanded batters. The fact that he's 5'7" and still getting these results only seems to add credence that this is due to good stuff and not some kind of trick delivery that hitters haven't figured out (as in the case of guys like Chacin). To me he seems like no worse an option than Tallet and probably challenges the younger Jays' lefties in terms of potential.

You also have to take into account he's getting pretty good results in Vegas, a park that so far Mills and even Cecil struggled to pitch well in, one that ranks up there with Coor's Field in terms of park effect.

R Billie - Monday, May 11 2009 @ 01:53 PM EDT (#199777) #

And for Halladay vs Cecil I would also want to compare their groundball rate. Cecil has been neutral in his first two starts in his ratio but his minor league career suggests he can get groundballs at an above average rate.

ramone - Monday, May 11 2009 @ 02:19 PM EDT (#199778) #

R Billie, I was looking at the box scores for Cecil's two MLB starts, he had a groundball to flyball ratio in his first start of 7-4 and 12-5 in his second start. This gives him a GO/AO ration of 2.22.

ramone - Monday, May 11 2009 @ 03:08 PM EDT (#199783) #

Sorry for the double post, just wanted to update that justin jackson has been placed on the DL, as I know some posters were wondering why he's been missing games lately. It was updated on Baseball America's minor league transaction page, it doesn't mention the type of injury though. Also in my post above it should read "ratio" not "ration", I would love an edit function on this site.

Mike Green - Monday, May 11 2009 @ 03:51 PM EDT (#199786) #

They're playing an afternoon game in Las Vegas. It's 12-7 Sacramento in the middle of the sixth (the 51s quarterback has been thoroughly reamed for falling down in the end zone for the third time this year). Arencibia homered again, while Brian Burres took most of the damage in the PCL trademark slugfest.

R Billie - Tuesday, May 12 2009 @ 05:11 PM EDT (#199832) #

ramone, you are right about Cecil's groundball ratio. I was going off of ESPN's player page which seems to have the groundball and flyball totals for all pitchers somewhat messed up.

At 2.22 his ratio at least in the early going compares well to Halladay's. Combine that with his ability to miss bats, keep the ball in the park and limit walks, his potential seems quite special. If he can keep this up most of the year, and more importantly carry it into next year, that's when you start envisioning a very special career for the kid. Right now I hope he gets a chance to make more starts in the majors and maybe sticks as a long reliever for late in the year if there are innings concerns.

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