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Greg Allen is a speedy very good fielder but didn't realize dude has an arm too.

Indians Prospective ‏@indiansPro 5 minutes ago
#Indians minor league leaders in (OF) assists
Greg Allen 10
Collin Cowgill 9
Ka'ai Tom 8
Connor Marabell 7
Joey Butler 6

Cleveland Indians top pitching prospect Triston McKenzie promoted to Class-A

Short-season baseball was not enough to challenge the 19-year-old phenom.

By Matt R. Lyons @mattrly Aug 3, 2016, 10:39a

Cleveland Indians pitching prospect Triston McKenzie has been promoted to the Class-A Lake County Captains, as first reported by Indians Prospective.

The 19-year-old, who was drafted in the supplemental round of the 2015 draft, has had no troubles whatsoever in Low-A ball with the Mahoning Valley Scrappers this season. In nine starts (49.1 IP) he has allowed just three earned runs while striking out 55 batters and issuing 16 walks. That all equates to a 0.55 ERA, a 2.65 FIP, and a 20.3 percent strikeout-to-walk ratio.

McKenzie will be the youngest pitcher on the Captains staff by almost a year with the next youngest being Sam Hentges, who just turned 20 last month. He will also be joining a staff that has struggled this season, allowing the second-most runs in the Midwest League.

MLB Pipeline currently has McKenzie listed as the Indians' eighth overall prospect (third overall pitching prospect), but that should change once it updates to reflect the losses of outfielder Clint Frazier and pitcher Justus Sheffield.

Carolina notes: Switch-hitting fuels Mejia

Streaking Hillcats catcher honing his skills from both sides of the plate

By Damien Sordelett / Special to MiLB.com

08/03/2016 10:00 AM ET

There were a couple of weeks remaining before the 2012 international signing period opened, and Rafael Castillo, a manager at Dominican Republic baseball academy La Academia, took Francisco Mejia aside and gave him some pertinent advice.

Castillo's message was simple. He instructed the 16-year-old to begin learning how to hit left-handed. Mejia was already proficient as a right-handed hitter, and Castillo's instructions were to learn how to hit from the other side of the plate so he would have a better opportunity to advance in baseball.

Mejia immediately began learning how to hit from the other side of the plate. That advice is certainly paying off four years later for the catcher.

The switch-hitting Mejia is worked his way through the Cleveland Indians farm system and has made a big splash this season during his two stops. The 20-year-old has a 44-game hitting streak that started with Class A Lake County and continues with Class A Advanced Lynchburg of the Carolina League.

"That was from my manager," Mejia said of the decision to start switch-hitting. "He said, 'You have talent for hitting on both sides of the plate. You can swing on both sides of the plate.' He pushed me because he said, 'If you're a switch hitter, you've got a better chance to get hits and you've got a chance to be a better player.'"

Mejia's hitting streak is the longest in Minor League Baseball since James McOwen hit in 45 straight games in 2009 with Class A Advanced High Desert of the California League. The streak began May 27 with a 2-for-4 performance for Lake County against Fort Wayne.

"I never expected it like that, but with baseball, you never know what happens when you go up to bat every single day," Mejia said. "You have to get a good pitch, get a good swing on the ball."

The Indians' No. 4 prospect spent the offseason and Spring Training working on a new approach at the plate that reduced the amount of movement in his body and head. It has resulted in better timing so he can see the ball deeper in the zone and use the entire field.

"I learned that baseball's hard, so you have to play every day," Mejia said. "These guys are on another level here. It's hard to play a couple of teams here, so you've just got to know what to hit, where you want to hit. It's hard to hit here."

Mejia's hitting prowess has come under the tutelage of Larry Day, who was his hitting coach last season in Lake County and during his brief time so far with Lynchburg. Day has spoken fondly of Mejia's right-handed batting stance with his posture and ability to connect his upper and lower halves through his core.

The key to getting Mejia better at the plate was through the continual development as a left-handed hitter.

"Left-handed, he starts a little more upright but does a good job of creating good posture with his load," Day said. "Then maintaining good posture has kind of been what we've been working on and that's been our message as an organization to him and my message to him on a daily basis in the cage left-handed is to create that good posture when he loads up and gets ready to hit, and then when he swings, to maintain that good posture."

Mejia, who played on the World team in the All-Star Futures Game, said he wasn't concerned when his name popped up during trade talks this past weekend.

Instead, he has maintained the same focus he's had this season to remain locked in on the task at hand -- and that's getting better every day so he can fulfill his dream of playing at the Major League level.

"It doesn't matter what Cleveland wanted to do," Mejia said. "I play baseball every day to get better, no matter what is said outside of the stadium and the field."

In brief

Back to a familiar spot:

Bobby Bradley had gone more than a week without a home run, and in that same time frame, the Indians' No. 3 prospect had not driven in a run. He sure picked a good time to remedy both those droughts. Bradley hit his league-high 20th homer and moved into a tie for first with 79 RBIs -- equaling teammate Anthony Santander -- to help the Hillcats top Potomac, 5-4, on Monday night.

By the way, Zimmer's homer last night was an opposite field blast. No cheapie either. Over half way up the bleachers in left.

The 19-year-old, who was drafted in the supplemental round of the 2015 draft, has had no troubles whatsoever in Low-A ball with the Mahoning Valley Scrappers this season. In nine starts (49.1 IP) he has allowed just three earned runs while striking out 55 batters and issuing 16 walks. That all equates to a 0.55 ERA, a 2.65 FIP, and a 20.3 percent strikeout-to-walk ratio.

How does have FIP of 2.65 and an ERA of .5?. I do not understand.

Well as you know, Doc, ERA is an average of how many runs a pitcher gives up every 9 innings. So McKenzie averages giving up a half a run every 9 innings. Which of course is outstanding, especially for a starter.

FIP is one of those new analytical stats that I don't fully understand cause I'm an old dog and it's a new trick. But I do know anything in 2's is excellent. Anything in the low 3's is great. Average is around 4.

Good job Tristan!

This is before he MADE HISTORY:


The Indians’ catcher has hit safely in 44 consecutive games in a streak that began in late May in the Midwest League and that has continued through a promotion to the high Class A Carolina League.

LONGEST HIT STREAKS, PRO BASEBALL
Streak Player (League), Year
69 Joe Wilhoit (Western), 1919
61 Joe DiMaggio (Pacific Coast), 1933
56 Joe DiMaggio (American), 1941
55 Roman Mejias (Big State), 1954
50 Otto Pahlman (Three-I League), 1922
49 Jack Ness (Pacific Coast), 1915
49 Harry Chozen (Southern Association), 1945
46 Johnny Bates (Southern Association), 1925
45 James McOwen (California), 2009
45 Wee Willie Keeler (American), 1896-1897
44 Francisco Mejia (Midwest/Carolina), 2015
44 Pete Rose (National), 1978
Sources: Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, The Story Of Minor League Baseball, Google Newspaper Archive
Bolded entries are from Major League Baseball

That puts him one game short of James McOwen’s 45-game hit streak in the California League in 2009 for the longest minor league hit streak of the modern era of minor league baseball, which was reclassified in 1963.

Mejia’s streak will also crack the top 10 hit streaks in organized baseball history if he can get a hit tonight at home against Potomac.

Wichita’s Joe Wilhoit (Western League) holds the all-time minor league record with 69 games in 1919. Joe DiMaggio actually holds two of the three longest hit streaks in pro baseball history. In addition to his 56-game MLB record set in 1941, he also has the second-longest minor league streak with a 61-game hit streak in the Pacific Coast League in 1933.

Mejia’s streak is even more impressive in that it has continued this week even after he prepared to switch teams only to find that he was still a Cleveland Indian after Jonathan Lucroy turned down a trade to Cleveland.

Mejia is considered one of the better catching prospects in the minors right now. He ranked 70th on Baseball America’s Midseason Top 100 Prospects list.

So who was Wilhoit? He was a very good hitter taking advantage of how different the minor leagues were in the early parts of the 20th century. Wilhoit had hit .274 for the big league Giants the year before. When he was let go by the Giants, he didn’t go to the highest levels of the minors (Double-A at the time) but instead landed in the Class A Western League.

“He was good enough to have been with the New York Giants the year before and to play in the 1917 World Series,” Wichita Eagle reporter Peter Lightner, who served as the Wichita official scorer in 1919, told Whitney Martin of the Special News Service in 1941 when Joe DiMaggio was in the midst of his 56-game hitting streak.

“So he was entirely too much player for the Western League, which was known in the good days as a hitter’s paradise,” Lightner said. “After facing major league hurlers the last two years, Wilhoit had a picnic. He was about 28 then, I believe, still young enough. A fine bunter and place-hitter and a great outfielder.”

Minor league records are difficult to pin down because many stats weren’t tracked years ago to the degree they are today. Hit streaks are one stat that caught the attention of statisticians, so while it is possible that a player that switched leagues might have seen records of his combined hit streak fall through the cracks, in most cases we can feel confident that we have a solid record of hit streaks going back to the start of the organized minors at the turn of the 20th century.

as requested, but I'm going to be away for a week+ while the rest of the lists are published. I think these are available without a subscription?


http://www.baseballamerica.com/minors/t ... MOJYuqs.97

Copying it was a mess.

Our guys?

Defensive 1B: Jesus Aguilar, who'd have guessed?
Infield Arm: Erik Gonzalez
Manager: Chris Tremie

Cue up Ray Stevens cause there's a whole lot of streakin' goin' on!

Yandy extends his hit streak to 22 with a 2 run homer.

Urshela extends his streak to 17 with a double.

Civ, I was able to see the page at BA but only saw the #1 rated guy for each category. When they did it for MLB they showed the top 3, so I wondered if maybe prescribers got to see more. Guess not.

Frankie's hit to extend streak was line drive up the middle for an RBI single.

Frankie just got his second single of day too.

Thanks Hillbilly, I just realized that it was FIP and not WHIP. Too many acronyms that I just doe not understand. Thanks.

Indy scores 1 in the 11th to beat Columbus 5-4. Yandy was 2-4 with a double and a walk. Zimmer and Urshela both 1-4. Perci Garner, a reliever who has been hot lately, Pitched 1.2 scoreless and struck out 3 of them.

Lynchburg loses 4-1. Frankie finished 2-4. Bradley and Santander were both 0-4. Krieger 2-4.