Monthly Archives: July 2017

24 Jul

new frontier

Passed over in draft after draft by MLB clubs, Tre Hobbs will launch his pro career in the independent Frontier League. The former Delta State star reportedly has signed with the Southern Illinois Miners, who are based in Marion, Ill. Don’t be surprised by any success Hobbs might have. The 5-foot-10 left-hander from Greenville won 22 games over two seasons at Delta State, posting 15 complete games and tossing four shutouts. He was a consensus All-America pick in 2016, when he went 13-2 with a 3.18 ERA. He wasn’t as dominant this year but still won nine games with a 4.18 and 90 strikeouts in 92 innings, helping the Statesmen reach the NCAA Division II World Series. He threw a brilliant three-hitter in a CWS elimination game. … The Frontier League, which has been around since 1993, claims a large number of alumni who have signed with affiliated teams and made the big leagues, including former Ole Miss pitcher Matt Duff and ex-Mississippi Braves hurler Brandon Cunniff.

24 Jul

around the horn

Only one player in the majors was hotter than Alex Presley over the last seven days. The former Ole Miss standout went 13-for-25, including a 3-for-5 on Sunday, for Detroit. His .520 average was second to Chris Taylor’s .542 for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Journeyman Presley, who is with his fifth major league team, is batting .344 on the year for the Tigers, who appear to have waved the white flag on 2017. … Ex-Taylorsville High star Billy Hamilton was hot, too, batting .385 over the last seven days for Cincinnati, another scuffling team. “Billy is hitting the ball on the screws again,” Reds manager Bryan Price said in an Associated Press story. Hamilton (.258 on the season) had three hits and stole two bases on Sunday; he leads the majors with 43 bags. … Southern Miss product Brian Dozier is riding a nine-game hit streak for Minnesota, still contending in the American League Central. He hit his 16th homer on Sunday, his third during the streak. … Former Ole Miss star Bobby Wahl, on a rehab assignment with Oakland, has fanned six batters in two innings of work at Class A Stockton. He has eight K’s in 7 2/3 MLB innings this year; he has been on the disabled list since May 24. … USM alum Dylan Burdeaux, a 20th-round pick by Detroit last month, is batting .294 in four games at Class A West Michigan; the first baseman hit .319 in 13 games at the short-season A level. Burdeaux led NCAA Division I in hits this season with 102 (six more than Mississippi State’s Brent Rooker). … Kirk McCarty, also drafted out of USM in June (seventh round), has a 0.59 ERA in six appearances for Cleveland’s short-season Mahoning Valley club. Left-hander McCarty tossed three hitless innings on Sunday. … Ex-State star Jake Robson, a second-year pro, is batting .340 in 24 games at high-A Lakeland in the Detroit system. The lefty-swinging outfielder is hitting .432 over his last 10 games. … Highly rated Atlanta prospect Kolby Allard yielded a grand slam and a three-run bomb in the Mississippi Braves’ 7-0 loss to Biloxi at Trustmark Park on Sunday. Allard (5-9) has allowed six homers in his last three starts and seen his ERA jump from 2.88 to 3.75. … Ole Miss’ Ryan Rolison got the win with a 1-2-3 inning in Saturday’s Cape Cod League All-Star Game. Rolison, 4-0 with a 1.86 ERA for Orleans this summer, also got rave reviews from Baseball America, which reports that the left-hander is looking like a first-round pick in 2018.

22 Jul

when it’s working

Where’d that come from? It has been an uneven season for Conor Fisk, the Southern Miss product now in the Toronto system. Entering Friday night’s game for Class A Dunedin, the 25-year-old right-hander had a 4-9 record and a 4.13 ERA. Then came his performance against Lakeland, one he’d surely like to bottle. Fisk retired the first 12 batters he faced and the last 12 sandwiched around one hit. He struck out six in his eight-inning effort, leading the Blue Jays to a 1-0 victory. “It was just one of those games where things were working,” Fisk told milb.com. Fisk, drafted in the 24th round out of USM in 2014, has a 3.73 career ERA working mostly out of the bullpen. This is his third stint at high-A Dunedin; he went 10-3, 3.25 for the D-Jays in 2016. While this season has been a trying one for Fisk, over his last seven appearances, all starts, he has been relatively sharp. He has a 2.09 ERA in that span, with only a couple of wobbly outings. He may have made a good case Friday for a move to Double-A. … Ex-Petal High star – and onetime USM quarterback – Anthony Alford, who was with Dunedin for several days on a big league rehab assignment, is now at Double-A New Hampshire. He went 1-for-4 on Friday.

21 Jul

fun with numbers

Numbers tell us something, though not everything, about a player. When you see that a pitcher has 129 strikeouts in 95 innings as a pro, you’re intrigued. That tells you he has swing-and-miss stuff. Batters have hit just .217 with only four home runs against him. Again, good stuff. Other numbers associated with Demarcus Evans are also telling. The former Petal High star, pitching for Hickory in the low Class A South Atlantic League, has walked 19 batters and hit four others in 22 2/3 innings this season. That tells you he has command issues and at least partially explains his 5.56 ERA. A 25th-round pick by Texas in 2015, right-hander Evans, only 20 years old, goes 6 feet 4, 240 pounds — more numbers to like. He had a 2.95 ERA over two levels of rookie ball in 2016, earning a jump to the SAL. He spent several weeks on the disabled list this season, only returning to Hickory on Wednesday, when he worked a clean inning in relief and notched his 34th punchout. Four of his nine appearances this season have been starts. Obviously, Evans has a long way to go and many more numbers to put up. It could be fun to chart his progress.

21 Jul

back with a blast

Hunter Renfroe announced his presence with authority for San Diego on Thursday night. In his first at-bat since coming off the disabled list, the former Mississippi State star from Crystal Springs hit a home run at San Francisco. Renfroe’s 17th homer, which came off Madison Bumgarner no less, moves the rookie slugger into a tie with Meridian Community College alum Corey Dickerson for the lead in the All-Mississippi Home Run Derby. Renfroe, who was on the 10-day DL with a neck problem, had not homered since June 29. All-Star Dickerson, who has been fighting a slump, last went deep on June 24 for Tampa Bay. The home run race has tightened up during that time. Ex-Southern Miss star Brian Dozier now has 15, MSU product Mitch Moreland 12 and former Ole Miss standouts Zack Cozart and Seth Smith 11 each. Renfroe, described by cbssports.com as a “low-end fantasy asset,” is hitting just .231 but has 41 RBIs and 35 runs in 86 games. Dozier is the top RBI man among state players with 47. Dickerson has 42, as does Moreland. P.S. USM product Taylor Braley made his pro debut Thursday, pitching a scoreless inning for the Gulf Coast League Marlins. Braley, a two-way star for the Golden Eagles, was drafted as a pitcher in the sixth round by Miami last month. Also appearing in that rookie league game for the Marlins was Blake Anderson, the converted catcher out of West Lauderdale High who has now worked two innings as a pitcher (see previous post).

20 Jul

whatever happened to …

JaCoby Jones, the former Richton High star, is, for the foreseeable future, stuck at Triple-A Toledo in the Detroit organization. After the Tigers traded J.D. Martinez on Tuesday and needed another outfielder, Jim Adduci got the call, not Jones, the Tigers’ ninth-rated prospect. Detroit manager Brad Ausmus told the Detroit Free Press there “was no thought” given to bringing Jones back up. “We want JaCoby to play every day down there at Triple-A, get at-bats on a regular basis,” Ausmus said. Jones is hitting .239 with eight homers and 30 RBIs for the Mud Hens. The 25-year-old fifth-year pro began the season as Detroit’s center fielder and was the first Mississippian to homer in the big leagues in 2017. That was on April 4. That remains his only homer in 22 MLB games this year. He was batting just .150 in late April when he was struck in the mouth by a pitch and went on the disabled list. A rehab assignment at Toledo became a regular assignment; he was recalled briefly in late May, going back down on June 6. Jones, 6 feet 2, 205 pounds, has shown power (55 homers) and speed (64 steals) in his minor league career, which began in the Pittsburgh system. He also has versatility, capable of playing shortstop and third base. But the Tigers seem to feel he needs more – and better – at-bats at Toledo to rate another shot at The Show.

20 Jul

worth noting

Billy Hamilton and Zack Cozart were a combined 7-for-12 in Cincinnati’s 4-3, 11-inning win over Arizona on Wednesday. Taylorsville’s Hamilton scored the game-winning run and stole his MLB-leading 40th bag, while Ole Miss product and 2017 All-Star Cozart hit his 11th home run. … Ex-UM star Drew Pomeranz won his fourth straight decision and 10th game overall as Boston beat Toronto 5-1. He has trimmed his ERA by almost two runs to 3.51 over his last 12 outings for the first-place Red Sox. … In the minors, former Mississippi State standouts Kendall Graveman and Brandon Woodruff made rehab starts in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League. Oakland’s Graveman, on the DL since May 29, allowed four earned runs in 2 1/3 innings for Nashville. Milwaukee’s Woodruff, out since his aborted big league debut on June 13, yielded three runs in 3 2/3 innings for Colorado Springs. … The Mississippi Braves won at home for the first time in the second half, beating Biloxi 3-2 on Kade Scivicque’s walk-off hit in the ninth. The M-Braves are 1-10 at Trustmark Park and 7-18 overall in the Southern League South. Former Southwest Mississippi Community College star Scivicque is batting .270 with three homers and 23 RBIs. DeSoto Central High product Austin Riley went 2-for-4 in his home debut for the M-Braves, and Mike Soroka struck out 12 in seven innings. … Ole Miss alum and Picayune native Braxton Lee leads the Southern League in hitting at .326 for Jacksonville. Traded from Tampa Bay to Miami a few weeks back, Lee is hitting .348 in 18 games for the Marlins’ affiliate. … Errol Robinson, another UM product, has climbed from low-A ball to Double-A this season in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ system. The shortstop, in his second pro season, is batting .307 in 18 games for Tulsa in the Texas League. … Ex-Itawamba CC star Tyreque Reed, a .500 hitter for the Indians this year, continues to rake in the rookie Arizona League. The eighth-round pick by Texas homered on Wednesday and is at .317 with three bombs and 18 RBIs in 17 games.

19 Jul

he’s out

The news slipped by quietly. Silento Sayles retired on July 6 at age 21. The former Port Gibson High star – who garnered national attention when he stole a prep record 103 bases during his senior year in 2013 – was playing for Mahoning Valley, the Cleveland Indians’ affiliate in the short-season New York-Penn League. In seven games, Sayles was batting .143 with no steals. Drafted by the Indians in the 14th round in 2013, Sayles was projected by some as the next Billy Hamilton, the Taylorsville High product who set a minor league stolen base record en route to the big leagues. But the 5-foot-9, 185-pound Sayles stole only 36 bases and was caught stealing 18 times in his 200 minor league games. He batted .222 with a .320 on-base average. Sayles is one of those players who probably would have benefitted from playing college ball before jumping into the pros. P.S. Kudos to Brent Rooker, who was promoted to high Class A Fort Myers by Minnesota, and Hill Denson, who will be inducted into the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2018. Ex-Mississippi State star Rooker, the 35th overall pick last month, went 0-for-4 in his Florida State League debut; he was batting .270 with seven homers in rookie ball. Denson, now the coach at Belhaven University after a long tenure at Southern Miss, has more than 1,000 wins on a resume that includes many coach of the year honors and other achievements.

18 Jul

sneak preview

Austin Riley is projected by Baseball America to be Atlanta’s third baseman by 2020. The former DeSoto Central High star has climbed the minor-league ladder at a good pace, reaching the Double-A level midway through his third pro season at age 20. He’ll make his much-anticipated Trustmark Park debut on Wednesday as the Mississippi Braves open a 10-game homestand during which Riley will have a chance to display the power bat and rifle arm that enticed the Braves to draft him 41st overall in 2015. Riley, 6 feet 3, 220 pounds, is 4-for-18 for the M-Braves to date; he hit his first Double-A homer on Monday at Pensacola. He doesn’t arrive in Pearl with quite the same pizzazz that accompanied Ronald Acuna, but Riley is rated among the top 18 prospects in Atlanta’s loaded system by three different publications. He has already had a decorated minor league career, making Baseball America’s rookie-level All-Star team in 2015 and low Class A team in 2016. He was a midseason All-Star pick in the high-A Florida State League last month and was batting .252 with 12 homers for Florida at the time of his promotion. MLB Pipeline’s scouting report notes that Riley, like many young sluggers, needs to be more selective at the plate, cut down on strikeouts and draw more walks. But his raw power excites, and how that tool plays at Trustmark Park will be something to watch for. … Riley, who was born in Memphis but grew up in Southaven, joins the list of Mississippians to play for the M-Braves that includes Zack Bird, Jay Powell, Michael Rosamond, John Thomson, Van Pope and Brent Leach.

18 Jul

here and there

Seth Smith’s 10th home run of the season helped Baltimore beat Texas 3-1 on Monday. The former Ole Miss standout has reached double digits in home runs in all but one of his last nine MLB seasons, which he has spent with five different clubs. … UM alum Alex Presley had two hits for Detroit and is now 20-for-67 (.299) in 25 games as a bench player for the Tigers. … All-Star Corey Dickerson, the ex-Meridian Community College star, has gone homerless in 18 straight games for Tampa Bay. He has 17 bombs on the year. His recent slump has dropped his average to .311. … Mississippi Gulf Coast CC product Tony Sipp gave up two homers in the 10th inning and took the loss for Houston against Seattle. Sipp, whose ERA rose to 4.45, has yielded five homers in 28 1/3 innings. He allowed 12 in 43 2/3 in 2016. … There are reports that Atlanta is considering sending Dansby Swanson to the minors. The ex-Mississippi Braves star is batting .220 and losing playing time at shortstop to Johan Camargo, who is batting .322. … Mississippi State alum Dakota Hudson improved to 8-4 with a 2.69 ERA for Double-A Springfield in the St. Louis system. The 2016 first-round draftee allowed one run in 6 1/3 innings of work on Monday. … Also on that Springfield team is Ole Miss product Chris Ellis, who has trimmed his ERA to 3.82 with a couple of good outings. Ellis began the season in Triple-A but was demoted with a 7.88 ERA. … Former DeSoto Central High star Austin Riley belted his first Double-A homer on Monday for the M-Braves, who lost at Pensacola to fall to 6-18 in the second half of the Southern League campaign. The M-Braves, 0-10 at Trustmark Park this half, host Biloxi (11-14) for a five-game series starting Wednesday. … Ole Miss’ Ryan Rolison and State’s Jake Mangum have been chosen for the Cape Cod League All-Star Game, set for Saturday in Wareham, Mass. Rolison is 4-0, 1.86 ERA for Orleans (East), and Mangum is batting .337 with 12 runs and 10 steals for Harwich (West).