Tag Archives: East Mississippi Community College

25 Apr

whatever happened to …

Ti’Quan Forbes, in his fourth pro season but still only 20 years old, has come out swinging at Class A Hickory. The former Mr. Baseball from Columbia is batting .353 with five home runs and 12 RBIs through 17 games in the South Atlantic League. He already has more homers than he got all of last season, when he hit four in 120 games with the same Hickory club. He didn’t go deep in either of his first two minor league seasons. Forbes, 6 feet 3, 180 pounds, was a second-round pick by Texas in the 2014 draft. A shortstop at Columbia High, he is now playing third base, a power position. Forbes hit just .251 last year with 24 extra-base hits. If he continues to rake at his current pace, he could get a midseason promotion to high-A Down East in the Carolina League, where former East Mississippi Community College standout LeDarious Clark is now playing. They were teammates in Hickory in 2016.

29 Dec

making his case

There are five outfielders scattered through mlb.com’s chart of the top 30 prospects in the Texas system. LeDarious Clark is not one of them, but the former East Mississippi Community College star from Meridian is building his resume in the Australian Baseball League. Clark, drafted by the Rangers in the 12th round in 2015, went 2-for-5 with a homer and four RBIs today in Adelaide’s 8-3 win against Brisbane. Clark is batting .357 over his last 10 games and is at .277 with two homers, 17 RBIs and 13 stolen bases in 20 games for the season. In his two minor league campaigns, the 5-foot-10, 185-pound Clark has hit .256 with 21 homers and 55 steals. The onetime football standout presents an intriguing power-speed combination. P.S. Back in the States, it’s been a slow go for free agent Mississippians. There has been no hard news since Dec. 19, when Ole Miss alum Alex Presley signed as a minor league free agent with Detroit, one of the two MLB clubs he played for in 2016. The lefty-hitting outfielder, 31, is a .253 career hitter with 26 homers and 25 steals over parts of seven big league campaigns. Mitch Moreland (Boston), Jacob Lindgren (Atlanta), Tyler Moore (Miami), T.J. House (Toronto) and Scott Copeland (Miami) also have signed, the latter three on minor league contracts. Still out there are Chris Coghlan, Louis Coleman, Desmond Jennings, Joey Butler, Aaron Barrett, Jonathan Papelbon and Julio Borbon.

10 Dec

g’day mate

Friday was a good day for baseball in Perth, where the temperature at game time between the Adelaide Bite and the host Heat was 73 degrees, according to the Australian Baseball League box score. It was a good day for LeDarious Clark, too, according to the same box score. The former Southeast Lauderdale High and East Mississippi Community College standout, batting leadoff and playing left field for Adelaide, went 2-for-6 with a couple of RBIs and a run in the Bite’s 8-2 win. Clark, a Texas Rangers prospect, is batting .214 with eight RBIs, seven runs and seven steals in 13 games in the ABL. A 12th-round pick in 2015 out of West Florida, Clark hit .276 with eight homers, 24 RBIs, seven triples and 29 runs at the short season level that summer. He smacked 11 homers and stole 24 bases in low Class A this past season but batted only .242 and fanned 99 times in 314 at-bats. … The other Mississippi native playing Down Under, former Stone County star D.J. Davis, is struggling. Davis, a former first-round pick by Toronto, is batting .095 in 11 games for Canberra.

03 Aug

finishing kick?

The Hickory Crawdads tapped into some Magnolia State power sources in a Class A South Atlantic League victory against Delmarva. Meridian’s LeDarious Clark and Columbia’s Ti’Quan Forbes, both seeking a strong finish to a lackluster 2016 season, homered in the same inning for the Texas Rangers’ low-A club on Tuesday. It was the seventh bomb of the year for Clark and the third for Forbes. Clark, a 12th-round pick by the Rangers last year, went 2-for-5 with four RBIs, boosting his season stats to .222 and 40. Forbes, a second-rounder in 2014, also had two hits and is at .253 with 28 RBIs. Former East Mississippi Community College and Southeast Lauderdale High star Clark had a good debut season, batting .278 with eight homers, seven triples and 29 steals in short-season A-ball. This season has been tougher sledding for the 5-foot-10, 185-pound outfielder, who has done time on the disabled list. With seven hits, including two homers, in his last six games, Clark is showing signs of heating up, as is Forbes. The 6-3 third baseman, the state’s Mr. Baseball at Columbia High in 2014, is hitting .405 over his last 10 games. Neither Forbes nor Clark currently shows up in rankings of the Rangers’ elite prospects, but both have obvious talent. And, at 19 and 22, respectively, both still have time on their side.

14 Aug

beating the bushes

Bobby Bradley ain’t goin’ away. The former Harrison Central High star homered Thursday for the second straight game and now has 22 for the season at Class A Lake County. The lefty-hitting first baseman, Cleveland’s No. 7 prospect (by mlb.com), is hitting .275 with four homers and 17 RBIs in his last 10 games, boosting his season stats to .254 with 74 RBIs. And remember, he’s 19 years old. … Kansas City, which already has a great bullpen, also has Louis Coleman humming along at Triple-A Omaha, apparently ready if needed. The former Pillow Academy star and Greenwood native has seven saves, seven wins and a 1.84 ERA in 33 games. Coleman, 29, has 148 big league appearances but none in 2015. … Starkville native Julio Borbon is batting .483 over his last 10 games for Norfolk, Baltimore’s Triple-A club, and is at .281 with 20 steals for the season. Like Coleman, onetime big leaguer Borbon isn’t on the 40-man roster, but it would seem he could help the Orioles as they fight to stay in the American League playoff race. … DeSoto Central product Austin Riley, the first Mississippian picked in this year’s draft, is back from a short stint on the disabled list and hitting .325 with two homers and seven RBIs for Atlanta’s rookie-level Danville club. … West Lauderdale alum Blake Anderson, the first Mississippian picked in the 2014 draft, is on the DL at short-season Class A Batavia. The catcher, a first-round supplemental pick by Miami, is hitting .220 with two homers and 11 RBIs in 22 games. … Wade Wass, former Meridian Community College slugger, has seven homers at Class A Burlington in the Los Angeles Angels’ system. Wass, a catcher who signed out of the Cape Cod League last summer, is batting .256 with 35 RBIs in 75 games. … Ex-Murrah star Zack Bird took his first Double-A loss on Thursday for the Mississippi Braves. The right-hander lasted just two innings against Mobile, yielded five runs and walked five batters; M-Braves pitchers walked 11 all told in the 9-1 loss. Bird is 1-1 with a 4.26 ERA, 12 walks and eight strikeouts in 12 2/3 innings over three starts. … East Mississippi CC alum LeDarious Clark’s scorching start (see previous posts) is a fading memory. He went hitless in seven straight games from late July into August, and despite a current five-game hit streak, is batting .135 over his last 10 games at short-season Spokane in the Texas system. His average is down to .298. For the season, Clark’s numbers look good: eight homers, 21 RBIs, 37 runs and 19 steals in 45 games. But he hasn’t homered since July 22 and has one RBI, five steals and 22 strikeouts since that date.

03 Aug

cream of crop

Mississippi high school products dominated MLBPipeline.com’s Prospect Team of the Week for July 27-Aug. 2. The 10-member team includes DeSoto Central’s Austin Riley (who hit .393 with three homers and 13 RBIs for Atlanta’s Gulf Coast League team) at third base; Harrison Central’s Bobby Bradley (.381, four, nine in A-ball for Cleveland) at first base; and Richton’s JaCoby Jones (.409, three, eight in Double-A for Pittsburgh and Detroit) at shortstop. Also on the team is former Mississippi Braves star Jose Peraza (.435, six runs in Triple-A for Atlanta and the Los Angeles Dodgers) at second base. P.S. Ole Miss product Christian Trent and East Mississippi Community College alum LeDarious Clark will be on opposing sides in Tuesday’s Pioneer League-Northwest League All-Star Game at Spokane, Wash. This is the first All-Star matchup between the two short-season Class A leagues. Trent, a left-hander picked in the 24th round in June by Milwaukee, is 2-1 with a 4.01 ERA in seven appearances for Helena of the PL. Outfielder Clark, a 12th-rounder by Texas, is batting .307 with eight homers, 20 RBIs and 19 steals for Spokane of the NWL. Clark, currently in the throes of a 2-for-36 slump, was pulled from a game last week for not running out a pop-up but was back in the lineup the next day.

23 Jul

upwardly mobile

Gloom has gathered over the Chicago White Sox’s season. Fans of the last-place club needing something to brighten their day can look to Double-A Birmingham, where shortstop Tim Anderson is having a star-quality season. Rated by some as the organization’s top prospect entering 2015, the East Central Community College product appears close to being big league-ready. Anderson, 22, the Southern League All-Star Game MVP, is batting .311 with seven triples, 35 RBIs, 53 runs and 35 steals for the Barons. An athletic 6 feet 1, 185 pounds, he is hitting .298 with 69 steals over his three pro seasons. If there is a negative in his offensive numbers, it’s that he doesn’t walk much (15 times this season while serving primarily as a leadoff batter). Reports indicate that Anderson’s defense is steadily improving; in fact, some of the reports are glowing. Anderson made his Double-A debut, with a bang, at Pearl’s Trustmark Park last August. The Barons come to the TeePee again this August (18-22). Of course, by then Anderson might be in Triple-A. P.S. Thirty games into his pro career, LaDarious (aka LeDarious) Clark, the East Mississippi CC alum from Meridian, paces the short-season Class A Northwest League in homers (8, including two on Wednesday), average (.377), hits (49), slugging percentage (.685), runs (32), triples (5) and total bases (89). He also has 20 RBIs and 14 stolen bases for Texas’ Spokane club. Promote him, already. … After roughly a month in the high Class A Florida State League, former Petal High star Anthony Alford is batting .333 with a homer, nine RBIs and 18 runs at Dunedin. Toronto promoted the 21-year-old outfielder, playing his first full pro season, after he hit .293 with 49 runs and 12 steals in 50 games at low-A Lansing.

21 Jul

more field notes

Auston Bousfield, the ex-Ole Miss standout, extended his hitting streak to eight games on Monday with a single for Class A Lake Elsinore in the San Diego system. Bousfield, batting leadoff and playing center field for the California League club, is at .294 for the season with three homers, 30 RBIs, 45 runs and 18 steals in 79 games. He was a fifth-round pick by the Padres in 2014, one of the nine Rebels drafted that year. … Mississippi State product Hunter Renfroe, another Padres farmhand, saw his six-game hit streak end on Monday but, with 10 hits in his last seven games, has boosted his average to .269 at Double-A San Antonio. Renfroe, the first Mississippian picked in the 2013 draft, has 10 homers and 38 RBIs in 86 games. Renfroe, an outfielder, finished the 2014 season with San Antonio, hitting .232 with five homers in 60 games. … Bradley Roney, the former Southern Miss closer, has allowed just one run while notching three saves in his last five appearances for Class A Rome in Atlanta’s system. Roney, a 2014 fifth-rounder, missed a month with an injury. He has a 4.07 ERA and four saves in 16 combined games at rookie-level Danville and low-A Rome. … Jovany Felipe, Jackson State’s catcher in 2015 who signed as a free agent with Tampa Bay, is 3-for-16 with an RBI in seven games for the rookie Gulf Coast League Rays. He hit .317 with five homers and 54 RBIs for the Tigers. P.S. East Mississippi Community College alum LaDarious Clark is surging again with 10 hits in 24 at-bats over his last five games. Clark, a 12th-round pick this year by Texas, is playing at short-season Class A Spokane, where he is batting .367 with six homers, four triples and 14 steals.

06 Jul

so far, so (very) good

LaDarious Clark can play. He put up star-spangled numbers at Southeast Lauderdale High, East Mississippi Community College and West Florida – and now he is doing it in pro ball. Clark (whose first name is sometimes spelled LeDarious) is on a 21-for-46 tear over his last 10 games for Spokane, the Texas Rangers’ affiliate in the short-season Class A Northwest League. The 5-foot-9 outfielder is batting .394 with three homers, 12 RBIs and seven steals for the season. Clark, also a standout football player in high school and at EMCC, has always inspired raves about his tools. But there seemed to be questions about his attitude. He was the top-rated juco draft prospect in the state in 2014 but wasn’t picked. He went to NCAA Division II West Florida, where he batted .329 with eight bombs and 21 steals and was All-Gulf South Conference this past season. The Rangers plucked him in the 12th round. He went 0-for-3 in his debut but has hit safely in every game since, 15 straight. He can play. But it takes more than physical tools to climb the baseball ladder. Maybe Clark has learned that.

07 May

game of thrones

The state championship is a nice catch, to be sure, but the four junior colleges participating in the MACJC tournament in Raymond might have one eye on a bigger prize: the region crown. The double-elimination state tourney starts today at Moss Field with East Mississippi Community College playing Northwest Mississippi and host Hinds meeting Meridian. Three of the four – the team that goes 2-and-out is done — will advance to the NJCAA Division II Region 23 Tournament at Eunice, La., from May 14-17. The region winner goes to the juco World Series. Hinds did not win the state title last year but did win the region and then went all the way to the championship game of the World Series. The Eagles, 38-5 and back up to No. 1 in the country, are loaded again. Jordan Washam (.385, six homers, 33 RBIs) leads a lineup full of mashers, and the Eagles have arms (Randy Bell, Houston Case, Austin Sanders, et. al) in abundance. EMCC, Northwest and Meridian finished 2-3-4 in the regular season standings, and all are now ranked in the Top 20. But they were a collective 0-6 against HCC. P.S. Waiting in the wings for the three surviving Mississippi schools is No. 2 LSU-Eunice. The Bengals are 41-9, 24-3 at Bengal Stadium. Freshman Steven Sensley is batting .373 with 17 homers and 63 RBIs. Mitch Sewald is 11-1 with a 2.04 ERA, and lefty Ben Braymer is 6-1, 2.51 with 113 strikeouts in 71 2/3 innings. Beating that bunch at their place for the region championship could be a tall order.