Down in the Dominican: Indians/Brewers July 14th-27th

Jose Baez2

The Dominican Summer League Indians/Brewers combo squad continues to compete with the DSL Nationals for worst record in the league and they used a 1-10 run over the last two weeks to stay one win ahead. They have, however, played more games so they have three more losses and a .001 worse winning percent. Of course, these two teams aren’t in the same division, so there is really no competition for last place in the DSL North (25.5 games back).

They started the run of ten consecutive losses against their step-brothers, the DSL Indians. While they were outblasted fairly easily 8-4, 17 year old Panamanian infielder, Alan Meza, had his first career three hit day along with his second two steal game. He would, however, add just three more hits in his next eight combined over the next two weeks and is currently hitting .175/.280/.204.

On July 18th against Dodgers Schumaker, Jose Baez had himself a multi-hit game after rejoining the Indians/Brewers following a short stint with the DSL Indians. The 16 year old brother of Indians 3B Jose Ramirez has really picked things up of late, hitting safely in seven of his last nine games with two doubles and six walks in that span. Since July 14th, he has raised his batting line from .210/.343/.222 to 234/.363/.261.

Also on the 18th, 18 year old left handed reliever David Flores went three scoreless, hitless innings in relief with five strike outs and one walk allowed. This lowered his season ERA to 0.84, although two rough outings since them have bumped that number to 2.52. Overall, he has struck out 26 in 25 innings with just nine walks this year.

The next day against Rays 2, it was Henyer Gomez who had the multi-hit game while the rest of the line-up managed just five between them. One of those hits was a triple, making this one of his most productive games this year. He hit another triple on July 25th and had two doubles in this span as well, increasing his slugging percent from .238 on July 18th to .262 today.

Yeury Gervacio started this game against the Rays and allowed one run over four innings. He matched this again his next time out against Pirates 1 and has now allowed one or fewer runs in five of eight starts. It has been an uphill battle for Gervacio, who allowed six runs in his first six innings, but he now has his ERA down to 3.21 with 30 strike outs in 33.2 innings (16 walks).

There wasn’t much else positive the rest of the week, although Ronald Parra did have a nice outing out of the pen on July 23rd against Cubs 1. He has been on and off all year, either being nearly perfect or absolutely awful, and this was evident in his last two appearances. On July 18th, he walked five in 0.2 innings and allowed two runs. On the 23rd, he went 2.1 perfect innings with three strike outs. He now has seven outings where he recorded at least one out and didn’t allow a hit, but just one of his five other outings where he allowed a hit and didn’t allow a run.

The Indians/Brewers had a close call with victory on July 24th, losing by just two runs to the Rangers 1, but both Baez and Meza did their best with two hits apiece.

Gervacio nearly had the Indians/Brewers first win in two weeks with his start on July 26th, but a pair of Brewers relievers and the defense blew this one in the 8th, leading to a 6-5 loss. Incredibly, this was just their 6th one run loss of the season out of 35 as they have regularly been blow out.

They flipped that score around on July 27th for their first win in two weeks. Gomez doubled and scored in the game while Baez doubled and knocked in a run. Otherwise, this game was all Brewers.

Arguably the Indians top prospect on the team, Junior Sanquintin has had a rough go of it of late. He showed good power in extended spring training and early on in the DSL, but pitchers have learned to take advantage of his big swing and he has struck out 35 times this year to 11 walks. He hasn’t reached twice in the same game since July 5th and has thus seen his OBP drop from .323 then, to .287 today.

 

Arrow to top