Lynchburg Is For Lovers

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This past weekend my father and I lived out the American Dream. No we didn’t go house shopping in the suburbs, we took a road trip to the home of the Cleveland Indians’ newest minor league affiliate, the Lynchburg Hillcats. For those who aren’t familiar with the geography of any of the original 13 colonies, Virginia, particularly southern central Virginia, is a hilly mass of nothing, surrounded by more hilly nothingness. Yet, despite the white-breaded nature of the surrounding areas, Lynchburg is home to some of the most exciting and talented young baseball players in the Indians’ organization. Unfortunately, I was only able to watch one game and 1 inning of a second contest, but even from that small viewing I left impressed with a number of players. Bradley Zimmer didn’t play on Friday’s game so I was unable to watch him in a full game’s worth of action. He did play on Saturday and had an RBI double in the first, but the game was suspended after a downpour.

Mike Papi

Papi, the 38th pick in the 2014 draft, has had a tough go of things in his brief professional career. As of June 27th he has a .217/.370/.302 slash with 1 home run and 15 doubles. Right now the strength of his game lies in his patience at the plate, evidenced by 48 walks in 67 games. But it seems to me that this is also a downside at times. The few games I’ve been able to watch him play he almost never offered at the first pitch and many times didn’t offer at the second. This created a number of situations where he found himself down 0-2 and forced to swing at anything close, leading to a lot of strikeouts or weakly hit balls.

Friday’s game may have been a step in a new direction for Papi, he went 2 for 5 with a double and a run scored. He nearly hit the game-tying home run in the bottom of the 9th but his deep drive to right caught a little too much wind and died. In the only inning of play on Saturday he hit a broken bat bloop single that scored a run. On Sunday he hit his first home run of the season. Papi has loads of talent, hopefully this is the start of him beginning to put it together.

Luigi Rodriguez

Aside from Bradley Zimmer, Rodriguez may be the best hitter in the organization right now. His last 6 games he has racked up 13 hits, he’s slashing .295/.348/.528 this season with 11 home runs and 16 stolen bases. Those 11 home runs lead the Carolina League, his 16 stolen bases are 5th and he’s also 3rd in the league with 75 base hits. Rodriguez’s offense has taken major leaps this season and will be the reason he may find himself in Akron later this season. Rodriguez just looks like a hitter. While that may be a vague and ambiguous statement, his approach, his swing, his demeanor at the plate all scream “great hitter.” Luigi was a highly-regard prospect only a few years ago, after this season it is likely that he will be near the top once again.

Clint Frazier 

Watching Frazier it is immediately apparent he has loads of talent, but still has a long way to go before he reaches his full potential. In Friday’s game, the Hillcats faced Winston-Salem’s Robinson Leyer, a young flamethrower whose fastball sat around 95-96 all night long. Many of the Hillcats were unable to catch up to that kind of velocity, Frazier being one of them. Considering the fact that most A+ pitchers aren’t throwing major league fastballs, it’s alright that Frazier had troubles this one time. While Frazier still strikes out a far too high a rate, he has tremendous power when he connects. He teed off on a ball to left-center on Friday’s game that would have landed a few rows up the bleachers at Progressive Field. He now has 8 home runs on the season, good for 4th in the league. The good thing about Frazier is he’s just 20 years old and he’s more than holding his own against older competition, he has plenty of time to work on the low points of his game before he’ll ever be needed at the big league level. He’s  also visibly added muscle since last season and looks like a miniature version of Yoenis Cespedes, I’d expect his power to become the centerpiece of his game as he matures.

Nellie Rodriguez

Nellie Rodriguez reminds me a lot of Carlos Santana as well as Giancarlo Stanton. While the former comparison is not very flattering at the moment, it’s still a positive one. Like Santana, Rodriguez has a knack for working counts and drawing walks. Rodriguez has drawn 33 free passes this season, 4th best in the Carolina League. The unfortunate aspect of the similarity is that Nellie also strikes out a lot, 81 times in 69 games to be exact, the most in the league. The similarity to Stanton can be seen when he swings. Like Stanton, Nellie gets his money’s worth on every swing, almost as if he’s trying to hit the ball out of the stadium. For those that haven’t seen Nellie in person, he’s a big guy. At 6’2″ 225 with tree trunk thighs, it’s easy to see where he generates the power for his 9 home runs this season.

Mitch Brown

Mitch Brown started the game on Friday but didn’t have the success he had hoped for. Brown pitched 5 innings allowing 5 hits, 6 runs (5 earned), walking 4 and striking out 6. Brown’s control was shaky all game but he has very good stuff, which you can tell from his 6 strikeouts, a number of which completely fooled the Winston-Salem batters. The problem was that he wasn’t consistent from batter-to-batter. Brown looks like he has the potential to be a mid-rotation starter, but he has some work to do.

Justin Brantley

Michael Brantley‘s cousin Justin was the most impressive pitcher that I saw on my trip to Lynchburg. The right-handed reliever is having a tremendous season so far, he’s pitched 42.1 innings, striking out 41 batters while posting a 1.91 ERA. He has a 93-94 mph fastball to go along with a plus looking breaking ball that sat around 84 mph. He has great mechanics, there’s no excessive movement in his delivery and he seems to throw with relative ease. Brantley had a very good season in Lake County last year and has built upon it so far this season. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in Akron soon if the Rubberducks need bullpen help.

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