Red Sox Minor League Affliate Season Recaps

The Tax Man

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Jun 8, 2009
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As summer ends and labor day passes, minor league baseball comes to a close. Over the past year, Cuz has done a tremendous amount of high-quality writing to bring us his weekly minor league reports. I've never followed the minor league teams as closely as I have this year and that's because Cuz is so passionate and is willing to share his time with all of us.   
 
Today, he is embarking on another massive undertaken. The First Annual Pawtucket Red Sox Recap is the first part of a three part series on the PawSox. He'll then move on to the other affiliates. He jokes that he's hoping to finish up before 2016 starts. I've seen the way he writes, he'll be looking for more topics before Halloween. 
 

Cuzittt

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Today, we look at the offensive side in Pawtucket.

Unsurprisingly, when the team scored more runs, they won more games. But when the offense scores less than four runs in a game, which the team did in 55% of the games, it is going to lead to a large number of losses. It is only due to some really good pitching that the team actually won 16% of those games and 22% of the games that they could win.
 

Cuzittt

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And the final of the Pawtucket recaps, the pitching

With 33 pitchers and two position players taking the mound during the 144 game season, there was no obvious choice for pitcher of the year. 19 different pitchers, from Rick Porcello to Rich Hill, from Michael McCarthy to Miguel Celestino, made at least one start for the PawSox. 24 different players, from Quintin Berry and Jeff Bianchi to Noe Ramirez and Jorge Marban, were the last pitcher standing. Only two pitchers saw action in as many as 30 games, only three pitched over 100 innings.
 

Cuzittt

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Today, we begin our series on the Portland Sea Dogs

Last season, the Portland Sea Dogs won their first division title since 2005 and made their first playoff appearance since 2008, the last time the team had been over .500. The 20-game improvement from the 2013 season led the team to the best record in franchise history. However, minor league teams are not static from year to year, prospects move up to the next level and a new crop of players take their place. While the 2015 edition of the Sea Dogs had some intriguing prospects, the expectations for the playoffs were not high. But, a 35-game downturn and a franchise worst record wasn’t on the agenda either.
 

The Tax Man

really digs the Beatles
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Jun 8, 2009
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Today Cuz reviewed Portland's offense:
 
When looking at the overall line for the Portland Sea Dogs, it doesn’t stand out as horrific against the rest of the Eastern League competition. While their .251/.314/.365 is certainly on the poor side of mediocre, it pales in comparison to the Richmond Flying Squirrels’ numbers of .249/.303/.344. They were mid-pack in hits with 1194 and walks with 401, 2nd best in doubles with 264 and fourth in triples with 40. Yet, only Richmond scored fewer runs than Portland’s 539.
 
 

Cuzittt

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And in our last edition for Portland, the Pitching

Portland was amongst the two worst pitching staffs in the twelve team Eastern League, battling with the Erie Seawolves for supremacy of the bottom of the barrel. Portland finished second to last in team ERA (4.30) and WHIP (1.42), earned the second fewest team shutouts (5) and the fewest saves (23). The Sea Dogs allowed the most runs, earned (592) and total (689), walked the most batters (511, 39 more than the Richmond Flying Squirrels in second), allowed the fourth most home runs and hit by pitches and had the fewest holds (18).
 

absintheofmalaise

too many flowers
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Mar 16, 2005
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The gran facenda
The first one for Salem
 
 
 
The structure of the Carolina League makes every team a potential playoff participant each year. With two four team divisions and two halves of the season (with the division winner making the playoffs), half of the league makes the playoffs. Unfortunately, Salem could not repeat the feats of the past two seasons as a post-season berth eluded them.
 

Cuzittt

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Today we look at the Salem hitting

Salem was second in the league in both hits and doubles, but ranked tied for last in triples and third from the bottom in home runs. However, neither number was particularly low in comparison to the league. Salem was middle of the pack in walks, second in stolen bases and in caught stealing. They were in the lower half of the league in strikeouts.
 

absintheofmalaise

too many flowers
Dope
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Mar 16, 2005
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The gran facenda
And today at the Salem pitching.
 
 
 
The overall numbers for Salem showed them to be on the wrong-side of mediocre in comparison to the rest of the Carolina League. The team ERA of 3.69 was the third worst in the league, while their WHIP of 1.29 was fifth best. Their 12 team shutouts and 38 saves were also right around the midpoint of the league. The pitchers were decent at avoiding walks and hit by pitches, allowing 419 walks and 48 HBPs — second fewest in the league. The team did give up the second most home runs in the league, allowing 73 long flies. The team did have one disastrous statistic, striking out only 847 batters, 74 fewer than any other team in the league.
 

Darnell's Son

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Cuz has the recap of the most exciting minor league affiliate today:
 
How does one begin to judge the season of the Greenville Drive? Via record? By that measure, the Drive were the best full-season team in the Red Sox system, earning the only record over .500 overall. By accolades? The team had eight different players selected to the mid-season All-Star game. Yoan Moncada was named to the South Atlantic-League post-season team as well as Baseball America’s Low Class-A All-Star Team. Alex Speier named Javier Guerra as his player of the year. J.J. Cooper asserts that at the end of the season, the Drive fielded the best prospect lineup in the minors. By playoff dominance? Unfortunately, the team failed to make the playoffs, missing out by losing on the final day in each half of the season. How much should this failure override all the positives created by this Drive team?
 

Darnell's Son

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And today we have the Greenville Drive offense on tap:
 
20-year-old Yoan Moncada debuted for the Greenville Drive on May 18, going 0-for-3 with a walk. Although he would pick up his first hit the next day and his first multi-hit appearance the day after, the first month in the U.S. was a struggle. In his first 25 games, Moncada batted .200/.287/.289 with five extra base hits, four stolen bases and 28 strikeouts. There was talk of the Red Sox wasting $61 million on the young Cuban.
 

Cuzittt

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The final full-season recap is for the Drive Pitching.
 


While the Drive’s pitching staff was not quite as young as their regular lineup, their average age of 21.5 years ranked fourth youngest in the South Atlantic League, a half a year younger than the median. The youth was particularly apparent in the rotation, where 78 of the starts were by pitchers aged 21 or younger and 49 of the starts were by teenagers.
 

Darnell's Son

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The first of two short-season recaps is up on sonsofsamhorn.com today:
 
Like Boston, Pawtucket, Portland, Salem and Greenville, Lowell started off strongly, scoring eleven runs in the first two innings of their first game of the season, going on to win the game 13-7 en route to winning their first four of the year. After picking up their first loss in game five, the team would win another five in a row and ended June at a scorching hot 10-2. The start was a perfect synergy of a fantastic offense (10-0 when scoring 4 or more runs) and some good pitching (7-1 when allowing 3 or fewer runs).
 

alwyn96

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This might not be the right place to put this, but from John Sickels' top 50 hitting prospects review:
 
8) Rusney Castillo, OF, Boston Red Sox, Grade A-: Hit .253/.288/.359, wRC+72, fWAR 0.4. Hit well in July and August but lost momentum in September. The overall line looks bad and he’s 28, but if I were the Red Sox I’d let him play every day in 2016. I still think he can be a valuable regular.

9) Yoan Moncada, INF, Boston Red Sox, Grade A-: Strong debut in Low-A, hit .278/.380/.438 with wRC+135. Stole 49 bases. Needs glove polish but that will come, power can increase to go with the speed. Thinking he moves up to a Grade A.
 
12) Blake Swihart, C, Boston Red Sox, Grade A-: Hit .274/.319/.392 in majors, wRC+91, fWAR 1.5 in 84 games. Strong defense will keep him around a long time and the bat should catch up eventually.
 
36) Rafael Devers, 3B, Boston Red Sox, Grade B+: Hit .288/.329/.443 with 38 doubles, 11 homers, 24 walks, 84 strikeouts in 469 at-bats in Low-A at age 18. Defense impressive and just scratching the surface with the bat. Stock up.
 
Pretty nice to see Devers' defense called "impressive." It had sounded like he might have been more remarkable for his bat than his glove, but at his young age I guess there's still plenty of room for defensive improvement as well.