Tag Archives: allmississippibaseball

17 Nov

fall finish

Braxton Lee, the ex-Ole Miss star from Picayune, went 3-for-5 in Thursday’s regular season finale to finish at .347, good for seventh in the Arizona Fall League batting race. Playing for Salt River, the Miami prospect had eight steals, which ranked fourth in the league. … Peoria takes on Mesa in Saturday’s AFL championship game (2 p.m., MLB Network). Peoria, managed by 2017 Mississippi Braves skipper Luis Salazar, features a bunch of M-Braves alumni, most notably ex-DeSoto Central High star Austin Riley and uber-prospect Ronald Acuna. Riley hit .300 with six homers. Acuna batted .325 and led the loop with seven bombs. Spencer Turnbull and Zac Houston, both Detroit farmhands, are on Mesa’s roster. Turnbull, a Madison Central product, went 2-2 with a 3.74 ERA as a starter. Houston, a Mississippi State alum, had a stellar AFL campaign: no runs allowed on four hits with 18 strikeouts and one walk in 11 1/3 innings. … Ex-Southern Miss star Cody Carroll (New York Yankees) was also outstanding: 0.00 ERA, league-best four saves and 18 K’s in 11 2/3 innings for Scottsdale. … Former Harrison Central standout Bobby Bradley, at 21 one of the younger players in the league, mostly scuffled, batting .230 with two homers and 32 strikeouts for Glendale. Bradley is one of Cleveland’s top prospects. … Meridian Community College alum Wade Wass (Los Angeles Angels), a late add to Scottsdale’s roster, went 1-for-24.

16 Nov

land of the free

Free agency should be good to Zack Cozart. The former Ole Miss star, a good-hit/good-field shortstop, is rated No. 11 on the list of 184 available free agents by sports.yahoo.com. He is coming off a career year, having made his first All-Star Game. He earned $5.3M in 2017. The one issue, the Yahoo writer suggests, might be Cozart’s age: 32. Not exactly ancient, but for a shortstop … . Oddly enough, on a recent MLB Now segment on MLB Network, Cozart was mentioned as both the “most underrated” and “most overrated” player on the market. UM product Lance Lynn, who bounced back strong in 2017 after Tommy John surgery, was No. 13 on Yahoo’s list, Mississippi State product Mitch Moreland No. 47, ex-Southwest Mississippi Community College star Jarrod Dyson No. 52 and former Rebels standout Seth Smith No. 73. Other Mississippians on the market (as minor leaguers) are Tyler Moore, Alex Presley, David Goforth, Scott Copeland, Joey Butler and Cody Satterwhite as well as Chris Coghlan, Desmond Jennings and Louis Coleman, erstwhile big leaguers released during the 2017 season.

15 Nov

making a case

Former Madison Central High standout Spencer Turnbull, trying to make a case for a spot on Detroit’s 40-man roster, is having mixed results in the Arizona Fall League. The right-hander, who would be eligible for next month’s Rule 5 draft if not protected, is 2-2 with a 3.74 ERA in six starts for Mesa. He worked 3 2/3 innings on Tuesday, yielding three runs on six hits and two walks while taking the loss. A 2014 second-round pick out of Alabama, Turnbull has endured two straight injury-plagued seasons (shoulder, elbow). He was 7-3, 3.05 at Class A Lakeland in 2017, then went 0-3, 6.20 in six Double-A starts at Erie. MLB Pipeline rates Turnbull as the No. 28 prospect in the Tigers’ system. Reports say he has big league stuff — he just needs to stay healthy. P.S. Meanwhile, down in Mexico, David Goforth is hoping to catch someone’s attention with his showing in the Mexican Pacific League. A minor league free agent, the Neshoba Central High and Ole Miss alum has a 1.96 ERA in 16 appearances for Culiacan, with a win and two saves. Despite solid numbers in Triple-A in 2017, Goforth, 29, only got one big league appearance with Milwaukee. He has pitched in 31 MLB games overall – all for the Brewers — since 2015. In 2014, with Huntsville in the Southern League, he put up 27 saves.

07 Nov

precocious talent

Blaze Jordan, the phenom from Southaven, is the centerpiece in a Baseball America story (posted today on the magazine’s web site) about the issue of early – or, more precisely, very early — commitments in the college game. It’s a good read. Jordan is a freshman at DeSoto Central High. He committed to Mississippi State as an 8th-grader. Jordan reportedly has prodigious power, having won a national home run contest in January – at age 14 — with a 504-foot blast at Marlins Park in Miami. He hit two homers in 13 games for the DeSoto varsity last season. He also impressed coaches and scouts during last month’s Perfect Game World Wood Bat Association World Championships in Florida. Jordan’s coach at the event compared him to Mookie Betts, Boston’s star right fielder. Keep in mind, the 6-foot, 215-pound first baseman is in the recruiting – and pro draft – class of 2021. … Also quoted in the BA piece are Hattiesburg High senior Joe Gray, another highly recruited player who committed to Ole Miss last January, and Rebels coach Mike Bianco.

06 Nov

numbers to crunch

Seth Smith, the ex-Ole Miss star from Jackson, is a free agent and could sign with a new team as early as today. Smith, 35, batted .258 with 13 homers for Baltimore in 2017. If you’re keeping track, the Orioles are the fifth different organization Smith, a .261 career hitter, has played for since breaking into the big leagues in 2007.
As we plunge into the off-season, here are some other numbers of interest for other Mississippians in the majors:
Brian Dozier: 106. The ex-Southern Miss standout topped the century mark in runs for the fourth straight season with Minnesota, while also hitting 34 homers and driving in 93 runs.
Drew Pomeranz: 173.2. The former Ole Miss star worked a career-high in innings in his first full year in Boston and posted a 17-6 record with a 3.32 ERA.
Corey Dickerson: .241. That was the Meridian Community College alum’s batting average after the All-Star Game, which he played in. He hit .312 before the break for Tampa Bay.
Zack Cozart: 55. The Ole Miss product, a free agent, set a career-high for extra base hits, including 24 homers and seven triples during an All-Star campaign in Cincinnati.
Lance Lynn: .605. That’s the career winning percentage for the big right-hander out of Ole Miss. A free agent, Lynn is 72-47 in six years with St. Louis.
Mitch Moreland: 34. The Mississippi State product, a free agent, notched a career-high for doubles and also belted 22 homers, one off his career-best, in his first season with Boston.
Adam Frazier: 7. That’s the number of positions (including DH) the ex-State standout played in 2017 for Pittsburgh. He batted .276 with six homers, 53 RBIs and nine steals in 121 games all told.
Jarrod Dyson: 204. The Southwest Mississippi CC alum, a free agent, topped 200 career steals last season and has 26 or more in each of the last six seasons, despite being a part-time player. He set career-highs for at-bats, runs, home runs and RBIs with Seattle in 2017.
Billy Hamilton: 0. Remarkably, the former Taylorsville High star has yet to win a National League stolen base title, despite stealing 56, 57, 58 and 59 bases over the past four seasons for Cincinnati.
Hunter Renfroe: 14. The former State star played 14 games in the minors in 2017 after being abruptly sent down by San Diego in August. He hit .509 with four homers at El Paso; he batted .231 with 26 homers for the Padres with 140 strikeouts and 27 walks.
Tim Anderson: 13. The East Central CC product walked only 13 times in 606 plate appearances and struck out 162 times. On the positive side, he hit .257 with 17 homers and 52 RBIs in his second season with the Chicago White Sox.
Alex Presley: 5,693. The former Ole Miss standout hit the home run, on Sept. 19, that tied the MLB single-season record for total bombs. That was one of the three homers he hit last season for Detroit.
Anthony Alford: 1. The onetime Mr. Baseball from Petal got his first – and, to date, only – career hit with Toronto on May 23. Alford’s MLB stint was interrupted by injury after four games, and he spent the rest of the season in the minors. He’ll likely vie for a starting job in the spring.

02 Nov

boys of fall

Alas, ex-Harrison Central High standout Bobby Bradley did not win in the fan voting for the final two rosters spots in Saturday’s Arizona Fall League Fall Stars Game. Bradley, a top-rated Cleveland prospect with 87 home runs in four pro seasons, is batting .273 with two homers in 11 games for Glendale. … DeSoto Central High alum Austin Riley and fellow Mississippi Braves alum Ronald Acuna, who are in the Fall Stars Game, homered for Peoria on Tuesday, the fourth for each. That’s one off the league lead, which belongs to M-Braves alum Alex Jackson. Riley is batting .342, Acuna .377 with an amazing 18 runs in 15 games. … Ex-Southern Miss star Cody Carroll, who is not in the Fall Stars Game, leads the AFL with four saves for Scottsdale. The New York Yankees prospect has not allowed a run in nine innings of work and has 14 strikeouts. … Mississippi State product Zac Houston, a Detroit farmhand, struck out three batters in 1 1/3 innings for Mesa on Tuesday, running his AFL total to 11 in 6 1/3. He has yielded three hits and no runs. … Former Meridian Community College standout Wade Wass was a late addition to the Los Angeles Angels’ AFL team and is 1-for-9 in two games for Scottsdale. Wass, a catcher, hit .257 with 11 homers for Double-A Mobile this past season but was injured in late July and didn’t play again.

02 Nov

to the victors

Winning a World Series ring as a member of the Houston Astros should propel Brian McCann a little farther down what the MLB Network guys call “the Hall of Fame Highway.” McCann was the first Mississippi Braves player to earn a promotion to the big leagues back in 2005 and will almost certainly be the first M-Braves alumnus to make the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The 33-year-old catcher has a lifetime average of .264 (1,481 hits) with 263 home runs, 950 RBIs and a 30.2 WAR. He has hit 20 or more homers in 10 seasons and smacked 18 for the Astros in 2017. He is a seven-time All-Star and six-time Silver Slugger winner. He is also pretty good behind the plate. … Big props to Charlie Morton, M-Braves Class of 2007, for his World Series work: 10 1/3 innings, two runs allowed in two appearances. Notching the Game 7 win with four innings in relief puts Morton in select company. … The Jackson Generals were the Astros’ Double-A affiliate from 1991-99, and one connection to that era was in a Houston uniform on Wednesday night: hitting coach Dave Hudgens, who served in the same capacity for the Gens in 1993, when the team won a Texas League championship. … Houston was in the postseason six times between 1997 and 2005, and a large number of ex-Generals were on those teams, including the likes of Bobby Abreu, Lance Berkman, Billy Wagner and Richard Hidalgo. Mississippi natives Roy Oswalt, Jay Powell, Dave Clark and Charlie Hayes also suited up the Astros during that time, which preceeded some lean years, including a 10-year playoff drought. … It has to be noted also that the first manager of the Houston franchise, born the Colt .45s in 1962, was Harry Craft, a native of Ellisville who managed the team for three seasons. He died in 1995. … Mississippi native Tony Sipp will get a ring, his first in a nine-year MLB career. Though he wasn’t active for the postseason, the Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College product pitched in 46 games for the Astros this season, his fourth with the club.

30 Oct

star attractions

Need a break from football on Saturday? Check out the Arizona Fall League’s Fall Stars Game, which will air at 7 p.m. on MLB Network and features several Mississippi connections. Former DeSoto Central High standout Austin Riley, who spent part of 2017 with the Mississippi Braves, is on the West roster, along with fellow Braves prospects and M-Braves alums Ronald Acuna and Touki Toussaint. Riley is having a great AFL campaign, batting .345 with three homers and 13 RBIs; the third baseman hit for the cycle in game for Peoria last week. Braxton Lee, an Ole Miss product from Picayune, is on the East roster. Lee, a Miami prospect and Southern League All-Star this past season, is batting .333 in 10 games for Salt River. Also making the East squad is 2017 Biloxi Shuckers infielder Jake Gatewood, a supplemental first-round pick by Milwaukee in 2014.

29 Oct

one for the history books

Before Game 4 gets too far behind us, let’s make sure the record shows that Charlie Morton vs. Alex Wood – a matchup of onetime Mississippi Braves pitchers – was one of the great pitchers’ duels in World Series history. Neither went past the seventh inning — that’s the nature of baseball today – so it doesn’t quite measure up to, say, Morris-Smoltz from 1991 or McNally-Drysdale ’66 or Sain-Feller ’48. But for five innings Saturday night at Minute Maid Park, Houston’s Morton and Los Angeles’ Wood were spectacular, evoking references to the game’s greats. Left-hander Wood, who starred for the M-Braves in 2013, his second pro season after being drafted out of Georgia, didn’t allow a hit through five, becoming the first Dodgers starter ever to do that in a World Series game. Righty Morton, who reached Double-A Mississippi in 2007 (see previous post), his sixth pro year, yielded one hit – a leadoff single – through five and had seven strikeouts to that point. It was still scoreless in the sixth when Wood finally was touched for a hit – George Springer’s two-out home run that sent Wood to the bench. Morton left in the top of the seventh after yielding a one-out double to Cody Bellinger, who later scored the Dodgers’ first run. The Dodgers’ five-run ninth-inning outburst, which carried them to a 6-2 victory and 2-2 Series tie, somewhat obscured the brilliance of Morton and Wood. It was the first time in World Series history that both starting pitchers allowed four or fewer baserunners, according to mlb.com. There’s a chance we won’t see either of them again in the series, so let’s not forget the shining moment they shared. P.S. Props to Craig Kimbrel, another ex-M-Braves pitcher, for winning the Mariano Rivera American League Reliver of the Year award. Kimbrel is Boston’s closer.

24 Oct

power in a pinch

There is a special nook in baseball’s Hall of Neat Feats for players who have stroked pinch-hit home runs in the World Series. Only 21 guys are in this club. Bobby Kielty, an Ole Miss standout in the 1990s, is one of them. Ten years ago this month, Kielty, playing for the Boston Red Sox, connected off of Colorado’s Brian Fuentes, a solo shot in the eighth inning of Game 4 at Coors Field. It gave the Red Sox a 4-1 lead and turned out to be a big run when the Rockies scored twice in the bottom of the eighth. Boston held on to win and sweep the series. That turned out to be Kielty’s last at-bat as a big leaguer. He played seven years in the majors all told, with four different teams. He hit 53 home runs, as many as 13 in one season. He hit one homer in 20 games for Boston in 2007 but made the postseason roster – and then made a little history, as well. The World Series pinch-hit homer club also includes Yogi Berra, Johnny Mize, Elston Howard, Bernie Carbo (who did it twice, also for the Red Sox), and, of course, Kirk Gibson. Who can forget the hobbled, first-pumping Gibson circling the bases after taking Dennis Eckersley deep for a walk-off blast in Los Angeles’ Game 1 win against Oakland in 1988? Many say it propelled the underdog Dodgers to the world championship. Kielty’s pinch-hit bomb wasn’t nearly as significant – but it was special all the same.