Justin Garza may just be worth watching. He was considered a good prospect at draft time but came down with injury and missed a lot of time. He's slowly returning to form and this is his first time as a rotation starter. His 5 shutout innings in his season debut could be a sign of good things to come

The batting averages other than in Lake County are nearly all pretty bad. Mejia, Bradley, Chang, Castro, Capel all are doing little. Eric Haase is having a nice start for Columbus.

I need to look up JormaRod's background.

Well first of all, he's kind of old for the Midwest League, turned 22 during spring training. He's been playing professionally since way back in 2013 as a 17 year old in the Dominican League. last year on three teams his line was a combined 205/265/292. OK I know enough.

Going in to yesterday's game, Columbus had hit 2 home runs in 8 games. Yesterday they hit 3: firsts of the season for Mejia, Nellie and Barnes.
Mejia also singled, lifting his avg to 229 OPS 660. NRod added 2 singles, he's hitting a team best .292 OPS 737. Chang is at 133/402. Diaz 267/653: as usual he's managed 1 double in 35 plate appearances, along with 8 singles and 4 walks.

Potential replacements for Belisle: Evan Marshall one perfect inning, 2K. Jeff Beliveau 1 perfect inning 3K. Ben Taylor 2 perfect innings 4k

Going into yesterday's game Lynchburg hadn't hit a homer in 9 games. Conmer Capel broke the spell. He's hitting 226 with 729 OPS and 4/5 steals. Mitch Longo doubled He's at 192/613. The third OF Jodd Carter is hitting a team high 276 but OPS is merely 620

As I hoped might happen Justin Garza with another masterpiece, again 5 shutout innings, 2 hits, 1 walk, 5 K. Maybe we are adding some pitching depth with good work early on by Tully, Hockin and Garza to supplement Bieber, Civale, Hentges and Morgan.

RubberDucks played 4 innings, with good starting work here, too, by Sean Brady, 1 run allowed; then a long rain delay; Milbrath 2 shutout innings, but 2 walks. The Ducks lose 1-0. Bradley hitless is batting 067. Mathias is 192. Krieger 100. Tom 148. Castro had the day off he's hitting .172

Captains were rained out.

So far everyone's listed as rained out except Lake County and their 1:30 game time doesn't seem to have started at 2:42

Cleveland Indians: 3 Tribe prospects off to slow starts

https://believelandball.com/2018/04/15/ ... ow-starts/
by David Gasper13 hours agoFollow @dgasper24

The minor league season is over a week old and some Cleveland Indians prospects have not gotten off to a great start in 2018.
After going over some of the Tribe’s high performing prospects so far this season, now we take a look at some of the ones with underwhelming starts to the season. Although this is very early in what will be a long season, a hot start can be a great boost and give the Cleveland Indians a good first impression on a prospect’s season.

Bobby Bradley
The first week has been abysmal for the highly touted first baseman. The Tribe’s third best prospect according to MLB Pipeline is in Double-A with the Akron Rubberducks and it’s not looking good.

Through eight games, Bradley has 30 at bats with only two hits. That makes for a .067 batting average. One his two hits is a home run, so there’s that, but he’s a big power, low batting average kind of guy. But not that low. He’s struck out 12 times in his 30 ABs, enough for a 40% strikeout rate.

Bradley is slow and doesn’t bring much value defensively. He’s one of those three true outcome corner infielders. He will hit home runs, strike out a lot, draw a bunch of walks, and hit for a low average. Unfortunately for Bradley, that type of player is getting valued less and less in today’s game. Although it’s early in the season, it’s not a positive sign of things to come for the 21 year old.

Willi Castro
Castro is also in Double-A Akron and has gotten off to a slow start, albeit a better one than Bradley’s. The 20 year old switch hitting shortstop is the team’s fifth best prospect and has a bright future ahead of him.

But so far this year, in 29 at bats over 8 games, Castro has a .172/.250/.207 slash line. He’s drawn five hits and has struck out 14 times. That gives him a 48% strikeout percentage. That’s basically half his at-bats so far he hasn’t even been able to put the ball in play.

It’s early I know, but that’s a very high percentage of strikeouts. He projects to have an above average hit tool in the major leagues with not as much power. So that should balance out eventually. He’s also speedy and can play a pretty good shortstop. Although the odds of him finding a starting job in Cleveland at that position are not very good right now with the presence of Francisco Lindor.

RELATED STORY: Predicted cost of a Lindor extension
Yu-Cheng Chang
Chang is the Tribe’s sixth ranked prospect and, like Castro, is a shortstop. Chang is starting the year in Triple-A with the Columbus Clippers, and his start is similar to what Castro is going through, although with less strikeouts.

Through eight games, Chang has a .133/.235/.167 slash line over 30 at bats with only four hits to show for it. He’s struck out nine times, which is less than Bradley and Castro, but is also a 30% strikeout clip, which is not good. He struck out at a 26% clip in Double-A, so these numbers might not fall back all that much.

He has solid power but doesn’t hit for a high average and is a decent defender. But once again, with Lindor entrenched at shortstop, Chang is going to have to either move positions or change organizations. With the stacked infield depth the Cleveland Indians currently have, it will be tough to find a long term spot for Chang, even if he turns things around this season.

Where's the good news story? "After going over some of the Tribe’s high performing prospects so far this season"
It would have to be Bieber, Morgan, Benson, O.Gonzalez, Clement, and if he's on the radar Garza.

It's official. All our teams are weathered out.

Here's the good news half of the 10 Days In story:

The Cleveland Indians minor league season is underway, and after their first week of play, which prospects are already jumping off the page?

The Tribe’s farm system isn’t very highly regarded. Outside of Francisco Mejia and Triston McKenzie, most of the rest of the prospects on their Top 30 list have a bunch of question marks around them.

But these three prospects are trying to answer those question marks and prove to the Cleveland Indians organization that they deserve to be in the big leagues.

Outfielder Will Benson is the Tribe’s 7th rated prospect and has started the year in A-ball with the Lake County Captains. He was the team’s first round pick in 2016 and he’s set out to prove he was worth every bit of that first round pick.

In his first seven games of the season, Benson has hit two homers, with five RBIs, five walks, and a .318 batting average. All of that is to the tune of a 1.119 OPS so far.

Benson has above average power, so the home runs should just keep coming. He also has above average speed and a good throwing arm from the outfield. He’s still just 19 years old, so he may not be making any waves in Cleveland this year, but he has all the tools to be a valuable player for the Tribe in the future.

Aaron Civale is starting the year in Double-A with the Akron Rubberducks and is the team’s 10th rated prospect according to MLB Pipeline. Civale came out of the same draft that saw Will Benson selected in the first round in 2016. But Civale was taken in the third round out of Northeastern University and could reach the big leagues quicker.

Through two starts this season, Civale has a 0.93 ERA over 9.2 innings pitched with 11 strikeouts and allowing only two walks. Opponents are hitting just .220 against him. Civale has a devastating fastball-slider combo. His changeup and curveball could use some more refinement, however. The quickest path for Civale to get to the big leagues is as a reliever. He’s got two plus pitches in his arsenal. He needs either his changeup or curveball to develop into a regular offering for him to stick as a starter. For now, the Indians want to stay the course with him as a starter and let him develop.

Sam Hentges

Hentges is with the High-A Lynchburg Hillcats to start the 2018 season and is the Indians 17th rated prospect. Drafted in the fourth round in 2014 out high school, Hentges has been one of the youngest players on the minor league circuit. Now 21 years old, he’s ready to begin a fully healthy season after undergoing Tommy John surgery that took out most of his 2016 and some of his 2017 season.

Through Hentges’ first two starts, he has a 0.90 ERA over 10 innings with nine punchouts and two walks. He’s been able to stymie opposing hitters and keep them at a .171 batting average. The 6’6″ lefty has a ton of potential in his big frame and the Cleveland Indians are definitely excited about his development this year. He has a really good fastball-curveball combination, but his changeup and his command needs a little more work. He could end up being special down the road if everything falls into place.

BA's first Prospect Hot Sheet and believe it or not but Shane Bieber was deemed sufficiently hot to rate No. 6 [how could be someone be hotter? well he's the second-rated pitcher behind a kid who's pitched scoreless ball since he started his minor league career last summer.

Shane Bieber Indians RHP

Notes:
Team: Double-A Akron (Eastern)
Age: 22
Why He’s Here: 1-0, 0.00, 13 IP, 6 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 17 SO, 0 BB, 0 HR

The Scoop: After a successful turn in Double-A toward the end of last season, Bieber returned to Akron this year and picked right up where he left off. He’s earned a reputation as an extreme control artist and has lived up to that billing in his first two starts, during which did not surrender a walk [or a run. He and fellow Indians prospect Aaron Civale should compete all year long for the title of best control in the minors.

No one rained or snowed out today. lake County scheduled off. Games in progress:

Columbus up 5-4 in the 4th. Since they have no starting pitchers there who have any chance of impacting the Indians [Morimando and Plutko are the only sub 30 year olds in the rotation] but lots of prospect position players, I think nice high scoring games like this one are the best we can hope for. Mejia has hit his 2nd homer, and 2nd in two games; Chang has 2 hits; Yandy a guess what single but he struck out once-- maybe a good thing; he was perhaps trying to get under a pitch and loft it?? The great college hitter Mike Papi hits 9th in the order and is down to .154.
Chang with his 2nd error of the month. Yandy his 4th, maybe he wants to be converted back to the outfield? Or looking for a career as a single hitting DH?

Since Akron has some very good prospect pitchers and virtually no hitting of note, we can expect low-scoring games for the Ducks and behold:
they are trailing 1-0 after 5.

I heard Tom Hamilton and an Indians official raving together in ST about how good Bobby Bradley looked; lost a lot of weight; must have lost mostly muscle. He's hitless in 2 tries today and his line is now 063/150/160
Single for Conor Marabell, in 2 games here he's hitting .400. Single for catcher Daniel Salters, he's hitting .417. No one else in the lineup over .188.
One of the weaker links in the Akron rotation, Shao-Ching Chiang, is working today. He's needed only 72 pitches for 6 innings; does not have a swing and miss pitch so he probably will not be making it to Cleveland but he's doing just fine in AA. today's line so far: 6-5-1-1-2-2 0.82. That puts him only 0.82 higher than Bieber.

Lynchburg is kind of low on pitching and hitting. Will be our weakest link this season, probably. 4-6 start isn't bad considering. They are up 2-0 in the 5th behind one of oldest pitchers in Class A Jake Paulson a 26-year old 6-7 righty
Mitch Longo and Gavin Collins both with rbi doubles; both could break out as prospects. Let's hope.

After a couple rainouts, Lake County and the whole Midwest is off today; good thing, probably too cold and wet to play anywhere between Ohio and Iowa today. Captains started out with a winning streak, but I see they are now 4-5. Jones is back to join Benson and Gonzalez and Wade all of whom have started out hot. Pitching has been more erratic but Morgan has been great 12-9-2-1-0-17 and Karinchak and Hockin and some others are possibles.

Clippers finish with a win. final numbers include 3 singles for Chang; Diaz two walks and two singles and a steal; Mejia single and homer.

Akron win too; Loopstok triple and walk; Castro with 2 walks, which is unusual for him;

And Lynchburg completes the sweep with a shutout: Micah Minard 3 shutout innings of relief to finish it; solid defender Logan Ice with 2 singles to boost his average to 250