Tag Archives: Red Sox

04 May

there’ll be better days

Ole Miss product Bobby Wahl made his big league debut Wednesday night. He is no doubt anxiously awaiting his second opportunity. Mississippi State alum Kendall Graveman suffered his worst start of the season for Oakland and Wahl offered little relief in a 7-4 loss to Minnesota. Graveman gave up six runs in 3 1/3 innings, yielding four walks and five hits, including Kennys Vargas’ three-run homer. Wahl, recalled from Triple-A Nashville earlier in the day, came on in the sixth inning and lasted just four batters. He hit one (ex-Southern Miss star Brian Dozier) and allowed two hits and a run. Wahl, a fifth-round pick in 2013, had a 1.93 ERA and three saves this season at Nashville. Rated the A’s No. 26 prospect by MLB Pipeline, the right-hander was added to the 40-man roster over the winter. Over 116 games in the minors – working mostly in relief – Wahl, 25, has a 3.79 ERA, 27 saves in 31 chances and 205 strikeouts in 171 innings. His fastball has touched 100 mph. P.S. Former Ole Miss standout Drew Pomeranz seems to be putting to rest any concerns about his left arm. He improved to 3-1 with a 4.00 ERA by throwing 5 1/3 strong innings on Wednesday in Boston’s 4-2 win vs. Baltimore, yet another controversy-filled game in their series. Pomeranz has made three of his five 2017 starts against the Orioles, beating them twice.

17 Apr

big league chew

Apparently, Brian Dozier’s bruised knee is just fine. After sitting out Saturday’s game, the former Southern Miss star smacked an inside-the-park home run on Sunday, producing the only run Minnesota would score in a 3-1 loss to the Chicago White Sox at Target Field. It was Dozier’s 119th career homer but first inside-the-parker. “I put it in a different gear,” he told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Dozier’s recent power surge has overshadowed the fact that he can run a little bit. He has five steals already this season and has swiped 12 or more bags in each of the last four seasons. … Mississippi State product Mitch Moreland continues to deliver big hits for Boston, going 2-for-3 with three RBIs on Sunday. He had the go-ahead hit in the seventh inning of the Red Sox’s 7-5 win over Tampa Bay at Fenway Park. Moreland is hitting .356 with a homer, five RBIs and seven runs in his first season with Boston. “It’s been a smooth transition,” he told The Associated Press. … Jarrod Dyson, inserted as a pinch hitter, sparked a ninth-inning rally for Seattle with an infield hit and a stolen base, his fourth of the year. “We are down one (run), and I am on base with no outs? I am looking to go — and go early,” McComb native Dyson told the Bellingham (Wash.) Herald. He scored the tying run in the Mariners’ 8-7 win against Texas at Safeco Field. Dyson is batting just .200 with five runs in 12 games for his new club. … Ex-State star Adam Frazier, Pittsburgh’s super utility man, went 3-for-4 with homer – his first – and three RBIs as the Pirates completed a sweep of the Chicago Cubs with a 6-1 victory at Wrigley Field. Frazier is batting .343. … Ole Miss alum Chris Coghlan, who’s due a World Series ring from the Cubs, got his first hit and first RBI for Toronto, but the scuffling Blue Jays fell to Baltimore 11-4 at Rogers Centre. Coghlan was called up from Triple-A last week as a replacement for injured Josh Donaldson.

01 Apr

happy anniversary

Making the cut for the Hall of Fame is tough, as it should be. Some have suggested – in jest – that there should be a Hall of Very Good. There is an abundance of players who would fit very well in such a shrine. One of them is Vicksburg native Ellis Burks, who will celebrate the 30th anniversary of his big league debut this month. Burks registered over 2,000 career hits, 350 homers and 1,200 RBIs. He was a two-time All-Star, and in 1996, as one of Colorado’s Blake Street Bombers, batted .344 with 40 homers and 128 RBIs, earning third place in the National League MVP voting. Burks broke in in ’87 with Boston, which had made him a first-round pick in 1983 out of a Texas junior college. He played 18 years in the big leagues. He was Very Good. … Other debut anniversaries of note this year include the 100th for Batesville’s Sammy Vick, the 90th for Tupelo’s Andy Reese, the 80th for Ellisville’s Harry Craft, the 60th for Longwood’s Frank Barnes, the 20th for McComb’s Adrian Brown and Vicksburg’s John Thomson and the 10th for Jackson’s Seth Smith. Vick, a Millsaps alum, is the answer to a great trivia question: Who was the New York Yankees’ right fielder before they acquired Babe Ruth? Craft, a Mississippi College alum who earned two distinctive nicknames during his career (Popeye and Wildfire), played and managed in the majors and was the first skipper of the Houston Colt .45s. Brown was a 48th-round draft pick by Pittsburgh out of McComb High in 1992. He defied the odds to become the Pirates’ regular center fielder eight years later, batting .315 in 104 games that year (2000). His son, also named Adrian Brown, now plays for William Carey University. Smith, an Ole Miss product, debuted 10 years ago with Colorado as a September call-up and then made the team’s postseason roster. He made the final out of the ’07 World Series, fanning against Boston’s Jonathan Papelbon, the ex-Mississippi State star.

30 Mar

false alarm …?

One imagines a bit of panic swept through Red Sox Nation when the news first broke. Drew Pomeranz will start the season on the disabled list, joining fellow pitchers David Price and Tyler Thornburg. Oh, wait … there’s more. Reportedly, former Ole Miss star Pomeranz has only a flexor strain in his left arm and might still be able to start on April 9, the first time Boston will need a fifth starter. Surely a big sigh of relief rippled through Boston when that was revealed. Pomeranz looms as an important piece for the Red Sox, especially with Price’s status for the season up in the air. Pomeranz, who had a stem cell shot in his elbow in the off-season, has had an uneven spring. He is 0-2 with an 8.25 ERA in 12 innings. He also had an uneven 2016, going 3-5, 4.59 for Boston after coming over in a trade with San Diego. He was 8-7, 2.47 and an All-Star for the Padres. A first-round pick by Cleveland out of UM in 2010 and a tantalizing talent, Pomeranz has been traded four times. Boston, pegged as a World Series contender, is hoping he can settle in and bolster the back end of its rotation.

07 Mar

new faces, new places

It has been a quiet spring for Seth Smith. Too quiet. The Jackson native and ex-Ole Miss star is 0-for-9 in four games with his new club, the Baltimore Orioles. But with the team’s World Baseball Classic participants heading out, Smith is expected to play more regularly in the coming days. The O’s host the Dominican Republic team today in Sarasota, Fla. Believe it or not, Smith is 34 and entering his ninth full season in the big leagues. The lefty-hitting outfielder, a .261 career hitter with 113 homers, has gone from Colorado to Oakland to San Diego to Seattle to Baltimore, which traded for him in January. Smith is coming off a productive year: He hit 16 homers and drove in a career-high 63 runs for the Mariners. He batted just .249 but put up a .342 on-base percentage. Smith likely will platoon in right field for Buck Showalter’s O’s, who made the postseason in 2016. … Mississippi State product Mitch Moreland, who also changed teams this year, is also having a quiet spring. Now with American League East heavyweight Boston after seven years in Texas, Moreland is 2-for-11 in Grapefruit League play, with three RBIs. … Jarrod Dyson, the Southwest Mississippi Community College alum, has been more impactful with his new club, Seattle. Dyson, who won a ring with Kansas City in 2015, is 6-for-17 (.353) with two RBIs, two runs and a stolen base for the M’s, who haven’t made the playoffs since 2001.

23 Feb

that’s the ticket

In his first game in a Boston uniform, Mitch Moreland hit a three-run homer today during an exhibition game in Fort Myers, Fla. The Amory native and former Mississippi State star, signed as a free agent in the off-season, went deep against a pitcher for Northeastern (the school swept by Southern Miss in Hattiesburg last weekend). Moreland is one of the players the Red Sox are counting on to fill the void left by retired slugger David Ortiz. Lefty-hitting first baseman Moreland smacked 22 homers for Texas in 2016 and has 110 in his seven years in The Show. He also won a Gold Glove last year. P.S. On a disheartening note, former Terry High star Van Pope, once a highly rated Atlanta prospect, is wanted for burglary in two Mississippi counties, according to a Mississippi News Now report. Pope was a power-hitting third baseman with a big arm who played two seasons for the Double-A Mississippi Braves, including the 2008 Southern League championship year. He was released by Atlanta in 2010 and played independent league baseball for a time thereafter.

24 Jan

ramblings

It now appears that Brian Dozier will be staying in Minnesota. For sure he won’t be traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers, who have acquired Logan Forsythe from Tampa Bay to play second base in 2017. Dozier, the former Southern Miss standout, has said all along that he wants to stay with the Twins, though the team, which won only 59 games in 2016, isn’t likely to be a contender anytime soon. Dozier hit 42 homers – an American League record for second basemen — in 2016, to go with a .268 average, 99 RBIs and 104 runs. He is under contract for two more years. … Ole Miss product Drew Pomeranz has pronounced himself fit for 2017 and eager to win a job in Boston’s rotation. The left-hander’s ERA was 4.59 last year for the Red Sox after they acquired him from San Diego, where he had a 2.47 and was an All-Star. Pomeranz recently told reporters that he had elbow pain late last year, an ailment that has been treated with a stem cell shot. The Red Sox’s rotation is stacked at the top with Rick Porcello, David Price and Chris Sale. Competition for the other two jobs will be stiff. “In my head, I always feel like I’m competing for something,” Pomeranz said in an mlb.com article. The well-traveled Pomeranz also has experience as a reliever. … Expectations are that Jarrod Dyson will play regularly in left field and bat leadoff for Seattle, which traded for the Southwest Mississippi Community College product earlier this month. Regular time was hard to come by for Dyson in Kansas City, where, over seven seasons, he batted .260 with 176 steals and played excellent defense, something Seattle was seeking. … DeSoto Central High alum Austin Riley was rated the No. 8 third base prospect in the minors by MLB Pipeline. Riley played at the low Class A level in 2016, batting .271 with 20 homers in his first full year in Atlanta’s system. Ex-Mississippi Braves star Ozzie Albies was rated the No. 2 second base prospect and Travis Demeritte, expected to play in Pearl this year, was pegged at No. 5. Demeritte may be shifted to third base.

15 Dec

there and here

While wondering if Southern Miss alum Brian Dozier will soon be a Los Angeles Dodger, here’s more stuff to chew on: D.J. Davis, seemingly in need of some positive reinforcement, hit his first home run of the Australian Baseball League season today. The former Stone County High standout launched a three-run bomb – boosting his RBI total to seven – for Canberra in a 5-2 win against Perth. Davis, a first-round pick in 2012 by Toronto, is coming off a rough year in A-ball and is batting just .125 (6-for-48) in the ABL. … East Mississippi Community College product LeDarious Clark (a Texas farmhand) has eight hits – including his first ABL homer – over his last five games to boost his average to .250 for Adelaide. He is second in the league (to Atlanta prospect Ronald Acuna) with nine steals. … Ex-Picayune High star T.J. House has signed a minor league contract with Toronto. House, a left-hander, posted a 4.44 ERA over parts of three seasons with Cleveland, which drafted him in 2008. He spent most of 2016 at Triple-A Columbus, where he had a 3.98 ERA. A starter for most of his career, House worked out of the bullpen the latter half of last season. … Mitch Moreland played on some good teams during his seven seasons in Texas but none could compare with what Boston will trot out in 2017. “I’m super excited,” Amory native Moreland said in a recent mlb.com story. “I’ve always been a fan of Boston, the fans, the background, history of the team.” The lefty-hitting first baseman hit .233 with 22 homers and won a Gold Glove for the Rangers in 2016. He should be a good fit on a Red Sox club that shapes up as a real threat to steal the Chicago Cubs’ crown.

25 Nov

coach ferriss

If there were a Mount Rushmore of Mississippi baseball, the likeness of David Meadow “Boo” Ferriss would be on it. You could argue all day about the other three – and there are many worthy candidates – but Ferriss would be on there. Absolutely. He was a great player, but he was more than that. He was a great coach, but he was more than that. He was as nice and humble and accommodating a man as you could hope to meet. The list of lives he touched, on and off the field of play, would stretch from Southaven to Moss Point. Ferriss, or Coach Ferriss as many called him, left us on Thursday at the age of 94. He’ll never be forgotten.

15 Oct

dash away

You’ll find it on most any list of the best World Series moments: Enos Slaughter’s “mad dash” for the St. Louis Cardinals. It happened on this date 70 years ago in Sportsman’s Park in the eighth inning of Game 7 against Boston, and it produced the winning run in a 4-3 victory. Let’s not forget who delivered the hit that sent Slaughter dashing for home: Pascagoula native Harry Walker. Facing Boston’s Bob Klingler with Slaughter at first base and two outs, Walker ripped a shot into left-center field that was chased down by Leon Culberson (grandfather of current Los Angeles Dodgers infielder Charlie Culberson). As Slaughter tore around the bases, Culberson threw to shortstop Johnny Pesky, who appeared to hesitate before he threw home. Slaughter slid in safely. It was the seventh hit and sixth RBI in the 1946 World Series for Walker, the man known as “The Hat,” a .296 career hitter and two-time All-Star who would have turned 100 on Oct. 22. He passed in 1999. It’s worth noting that Boo Ferriss, the legend from Shaw, started that game for Boston, looking for his second win in the Series. He was lifted in the fifth. The final out was made by Tom McBride, who played for the Jackson Senators in the late 1930s and early ’40s. He bounced into a force out with two runners on in the ninth, and St. Louis celebrated its sixth world championship.