Joseph Zarr

Aquino's slider looks absolutely fantastic to start this season. Just so much life to that pitch. Consider me very impressed through two innings.

Meanwhile, Biloxi and Mississippi are in a weather delay already. Boooo!

Matt Wood's turn: hits into a DP. Just after a SS error avoided Barrios' DP ball. LOL. Adams moves to 3rd base. Two down.

INF Luke Adams' first High-A hit was about a 20 mph topped dribbler up the 3B line. Fielded by the catcher...but Adams outran the coverage. It will go down a single regardless! Mark it down!

Aquino starts 2024 off with his off-speed tools looking filthy. Lotta vertical and horizontal movement. He just picked up a K followed by a high pop up off the mound on two dirty looking off-speed offerings. 0-0 on to the 2nd in South Bend.

All I am seeing across the system so far is hitting into DP's! LOL. O'Rae leads off in South Bend with a single to CF. Lara hits smack dab into a DP even with O'Rae running for 2B.

My guy Nicasia breaks the six consecutive Mudcats mowed down (4 K) by hitting a hard grounder up the middle. A man on base! Woot woot! All for naught as Briceno tops a groundball directly to the charging SS who completes the DP. The Wood Ducks starter has so far faced the minimum as we head to the 4th and the Muddies trailing 3-0.

Just hung a dead center cut fastball on an 0-2 count and nearly paid for it as it went deep to the RF wall but about a foot foul. He is not locating consistently. He has stuff that plays but he is consistently not locating and suffering for it.

Rodriguez has been fine - 3 K - BUT he is just hanging and errantly locating way too many off-speed pitches. Just dead center hangers. And, to a pitch, each one has been smashed deep. he just gave up a long ball over the LF wall on another dead center hanging breaking ball. Mudcats trail 3-0.

Nick Stanley's faith in his lefty bats versus a lefty starter is certainly not paying dividends early. Lotta strikes swinging and looking. First time through the order and the lefty dominant bats are overmatched.

A very nice recovery 1-2-3 2nd inning for Rodriguez. He got hit deep to the CF wall where Rodriguez ran it down but also got a weak pop to LF and a K. Settle in, young man. Keep it going.

Down East RF'er Marcus Smith just made a heck of a play on a hard hit Baez lead-off ground ball down the right field line. He scooped it in deep foul territory and fired an absolute dart to the second base mitt tagging Baez in a bang-bang effort. Just an incredible throw. Mudcats trail 2-0 here in the bottom of the first.

First look at RHP Manuel Rodriguez. One thought early: he is hanging sliders. Two blasts deep off the Right CF wall resulted in a triple and a double. Also: Yophery Rodriguez is learning how to play those long balls. He over ran the first blast (a hanger slider mistake - Garcia asked for outside corner it went dead center cut) by a good 15 feet and it resulted in the three bags. These XBH's all came after a fast two outs for Rodriguez. It all came to the meat of the order. Will be quite interesting to see what happens should he make it a 2nd and 3rd time through the order.

So far we will be seeing RHP Patricio Aquino for Wisco, RHP TJ Shook for Biloxi, and RHP Janson Junk for Nashville (he'll be looking to rebound from a sub-par debut after his return from illness). As of this am, we are still TBD for Carolina's opener vs Down East.

Carolina having the top 3 youngest players and 4 of the top 10 of the Carolina League is certainly something.

These annual Carolina vs. Down East series are becoming significant in the past several years no matter what time of the season they occur. Let's hope the Mudcats keep it rolling.

AND we are on the verge of another 3-of-4 Minor League afternoon. I could get very used to a 0.750 Win %😁

Nashville leads 8-1 late as their lockdown bullpen continues dominancing. Very impressive group - I've been saying it all week but it is worth mentioning again. Also, Wiemer HR number 1! You love to see it! Keep grinding young fella. My goodness:

This just in: There's a lil bit of talent on that Mudcats roster. OF Yophery Rodriguez 3-for-4 as he notches 2 dubs. Baez w a triple. Nicasia went yard. Mudcats lead 10-2 as they near a three game sweep at Salem. I'll have to check in on 1B Tayden Hall who appears to have left the game after one AB. Noticeably absent after yesterday's inside heater to the hand area is C Satchell Norman.

This just in: Australia? Biloxi? RHP Sam Gardner can still cook. You just love to see it.

It has been this way the entire Saints series so far. Poor video and audio game 1. Bad audio throughout the rest. The highlight clips are a reflection of this (IF you crank those clips up full blast you can barely hear the call).In-game we've had to crank it up full blast to barely hear Jeff Hem's call. Sometimes it is completely staticky. And, the radio call is two pitches ahead😅. Not good for an opening home series!

The Yeison Perez (as a Brewer) era has ended. I pour one out digitally to commemorate the great joy he gave us all during the 2022 DSL season. It was near daily doses of wow he gave us with those XBH's and OPS points. Baseball can certainly be a cruel game. These new roster reductions are going to take some serious tolls on some seriously talented young mens' baseball journeys. Sigh.

First thing that stands out with RHP Ryan Birchard is his size. He's a very formidable presence on the mound. I should mention it was clearly cold in Salem - nearly every player was wearing long sleeves and several had face coverage. Birchard was wearing solely the jersey with bare arms. Clearly a man beast. He was throwing all heat early and missing - five consecutive balls to start things off. Not wild but definitely just missing the zone. After his sixth consecutive ball he dialed it in - tailing away (arm side) from a lefty bat he gets strike one on heat and then gets a strike looking on an inside breaking ball and swinging on what might have been a change-up. Really nice work. Absolutely overpowered and worked Garcia for another K (who was 3-for-4 in the opening game - dominant work from Birchard who appears to have a very tight curveball in his mix). After one inning: lot of life on the heat - batters were well behind - and a very effective breaking ball. Inning 2 he opens with a pitch clock violation. Next pitch, an oppo single to LF. Runner advances and, well, C Satchell Norman shows that arm explaining his CS % rate - let me say, a work very much in progress. He gets a Sac fly after another free pass given. INF Juan Baez shows his continually improving and impressive work at 3B by collecting a tricky two hop grounder and firing confidently to 1B while looking the runner back to 2B. He closes the inning with another K on high heat - the batters continually to be behind his heat when it is in the zone. Following this inning, btw, Pratt walked. Stole 2B and then 1B Tayden Hall ripped a 107 mph EV double down the RF line. The ball was absolutely smoked. Just a really impressive inning at the dish (aside from Yophery and Luis) - Norman and Garcia with nice knocks. Norman smoked a ball deep off the base of the LF wall. Clearly his bat carried into Low-A so far (his calling card). Three up and three down in the 3rd frame for Birchard. He K'd Garcia again to end the frame after a pop up to Norman behind home plate and a weak chopper to Birchard down the first base line. So far, it looks to me as though he is primarily working with a heater and a breaking ball mix but it's hard to tell as I'm unsure if the announcers are seeing. I 'think' he threw one or two change ups but was mainly working his heater (that was giving batters all sorts of problems) and a curveball with a slider thrown in. They didn't call it a slider but I saw two off speed movements that were distinctly different. Perhaps @Smichaelis9can chime in here as I know Birchard was one of his favorites. Side note: Rodriguez has 2 BB and 4 K. He actually has 3 BB and 3 K. The home plate ump in game 2 absolutely blew his full count call 2nd K in the 4th. Just a bad bad call. He looks to have a feel for the zone. Not getting the ball up at all in the couple of ball to bats I've seen. Mainly pulling balls on the ground down 1B foul territory. He did hit a deep fly to dead Center at the base of the 401 mark to straightaway CF. He legged it into a 3-Bagger but 'should' have been thrown out if they get a better relay mark and a better throw to 3B. As such, who cares? The young man got his first triple of Low-A ball on his first hit! Pratt followed with an absolute muscle job jam shot bloop single to shallow Left CF to score Rodriguez and it was suddenly 6-1 in the top of the 8th. All runs came with 2-down. The 1-through-4 of the Mudcats lineup with Baez, Rodriguez, Pratt, and Hall looks so dang good right now. Very tasty. 4th frame, I think I've seen Brichard's 3rd change-up of his day. Might have been a slider but I watched it a few times and still feel it was a change-up. His curve ball is just filthy so far. @damuelle: Norman was called out somehow as a K on a pitch that sailed high and in and either slammed into his throwing hand or hit the base of his bat just above his right hand. He was clearly in intense pain. I don't know how the heck you call that a strikeout. In the very least it's a foul ball OR he check swung and it smashed his fingers. 2:28:31 on the replay goes to a slo mo of the play. I think it smashed the heft of the bat above his hands but, again, it certainly could have been high heat into his fingers. In that image you can see the ball laser shooting directly toward the Mudcats dugout. You also see he has already dropped his right hand due to the impact. I think it was a bang bang massive vibration stinger but if that pitch hit his hand there could definitely be broken fingers. Hopefully it isn't akin to Wiemer's injuries previously. Anyhow, fwiw. Didn't look great. Hopefully, he dodged a bullet. Birchard left after 4 complete IP to give way to Rivero. All told, fantastic first outing. 4 IP, 1 H, 2 BB, 6 K, 0 ER? Ummm, yeah. BTW, KC Hunt has some nasty in him. He's got some really tasty off-speed breaking stuff. Throws them hard and they have late break. He struck out the side in the 9th and looked quite good doing it.

Lovely to see RHP Yerlin Rodriguez kick off his High-A campaign with a 2 K Save. Big time if he can find last year's dominant first half in a higher level of play. He can be downright filthy when he's in control. You love to see it.

The pitching has generally been solid in Nashville. The bullpen is once again fantastic. The offense? Very very much a work in progress. Lots of RISP deficiency issues at present. Not a lot of pop in the lineup to date. It's early but these trends will need to shift regardless of how early it is. Speaking of bullpen efforts - heck of a job by the Shuckers bullpen to hold the 1-0 lead. Muh man RHP Justin Yeager pitches a scoreless 9th to grab the save after LHP's Russ Smith and Justin King did the same. Heck of an effort all the way around. Surely, the Biscuits fans feel their pitching staff accumulating 15 K's while allowing a mere run deserved better.