Spend Wednesday in the Minors

and was struck by the name of the Lancaster catcher, Jordan Comadena. That’s got even better coming-to-bat-music potential than Phillip Barzilla (almost shat myself when he came out tof the bullpen to “Godzilla” by Blue Oyster Cult at Minute Maid). I can just hear the opening bars to “Funky Cold Medina” by Ton Loc when our young catching prospect comes to bat. Please Jordan, make it to the bigs. Simple pleasure guys like myself absolutely live for those moments.

minor league radio broadcasters really make you appreciate the guys and Houston. Say what you will about Brett Dolan and Dave Raymond, but I’d never heard anybody actually say “jumping jelly beans” when they weren’t reading from a script on the Andy Griffith show.

although work got in the way of the last inning and a half, which is unfortunate, cause there was a walkoff RBI single from Marcos Cabral to score Jack Shuck in the bottom of the 9th to win it for the hometown Jet Hawks.

Lancaster got the scoring started early with a two-out, two run double from Chris Minaker in the bottom of the first. San Jose notched a run in the 3rd on a home run from their CF Ford (the jumping jelly beans call), but Cabral answered in the bottom of the frame with the first of his two RBI on the day, scoring Shuck here as well. Shane Wolf had a nice outing, going 6 1/3, allowing two runs on five hits, no walks, and two K’s. He left with a man on 3rd and one out in the 7th, but Bryan Halberg was able to get out of the jam with a pop fly to shallow right that wasn’t deep enough to score the run and another fly ball to deep center. Unfortunately Halberg coughed up the lead in the next frame after a throwing error on a pickoff play advanced the San Jose SS Frias, who had walked, from 1st all the way to 3rd base. Frias scored on a broken bat single by hot prospect Buster Posey to tie it up. Halberg loaded the bases before getting out of the inning without any more runs. I wish I had more to say about the rest of the game, but I missed the last inning and a half.

Sounds like Shuck is having a nice season in his second year. Cabral and Minaker are also having nice starts to the season, but don’t appear to be prospects with very high trajectories, just based on their age in High A ball. Castro obviously didn’t start. Sounds like he got dinged up in yesterday’s game (which is why my new favorite named minor leaguer was behind the plate). That’s a shame, cause prior to yesterday, Castro was on a four-game tear hitting 9-18 with two dingers, five RBI, a double, a walk, and a stolen base. Didn’t sound too serious, and he actually pinch hit for Comadena (who was 0-3 on the day) in the 8th, grounding out (part of the game I missed), so hopefully he’ll get back on fire soon .

Anyway, thanks for the links, farm_stros. It was a (relatively… until the bottom of the 8th) slow day in the cube, so it was nice to keep half an ear on a ballgame.