AAA: Round Rock 5, at Albuquerque (COL) 3 (7)
Round Rock: 7 hits, 2 walks, 1 strikeout
Opponent: 8 hits, 1 walk, 3 strikeouts
SP Michael Plassmeyer: 6.2 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 3 SO, 88 P / 59 S, 4.77 ERA
DH Jake Burger: 1-4, 2B
1B Abimelec Ortiz: 1-3, HR (3)
Only one of Abi Ortiz’s 16 homers in Frisco was truly opposite field. (A couple of others were left of dead-center but east of the alley.) In three games at Albuquerque, he’s added two more. Yesterday’s was a laser (103 MPH, 21 degrees) pointed just inside the foul line. I forgot to mention yesterday that Ortiz drove in eight runs in his two-homer AAA debut.
Michael Plassmeyer was a pitch from a shortened complete game but removed after a nine-pitch walk. Joe Barlow allowed a homer, single and double to put the tying run on second before recording the final out.
AAA: Round Rock 5, Albuquerque (COL) 4 (7)
Round Rock: 6 hits, 5 walks, 2 strikeouts
Opponent: 6 hits, 1 walk, 2 strikeouts
Record: 17-16, 5 GB, 51-57 overall
SP Ben Anderson: 3.2 IP, 3 H, 3 R, 1 BB, 1 SO, 66 P / 41 S, 7.11 ERA
RP Jacob Latz: 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 0 SO, 2.79 ERA
RP Robby Ahlstrom: 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 SO, 3.16 ERA
3B Cody Freeman: 1-1, BB, .322/.370/.523
Round Rock played as the home team in a makeup of a July rainout.
AA: Frisco 2, at Arkansas (SEA) 0
Frisco: 4 hits, 4 walks, 7 strikeouts
Opponent: 4 hits, 1 walk, 11 strikeouts
Record: 13-22, 8 GB, 51-52 overall
SP Leandro Lopez: 5 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 6 SO, 69 P / 46 S, 0.60 ERA
RP Wilian Bormie: 1 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 SO, 0.00 ERA
RP Geraldo Carillo: 2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 SO, 3.62 ERA
RP Erik Loomis: 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 3 SO, 9.00 ERA
We have a situation here. In three AA starts, Leandro Lopez has struck out 23 of 50 batters (46%) and walked four. The strikeouts came on four fastballs, a slider and change. Initially famed for a curve and bad-or-worse control, Lopez has increasingly relied on a slider and change to baffle hitters. Lopez had been pitching well in Hub City, but before the trade deadline, I’d have considered him an unlikely 40-man addition. He was too erratic, probably even so as a potential reliever, and if another team wanted to spend a Rule 5 pick on a pitcher with a 55% strike rate, best of luck. Now, with his early results in Frisco and the departures of Kohl Drake and Mitch Bratt? Hmm.
Hi-A: Hub City 3, at Jersey Shore (PHI) 7
Hub City: 6 hits, 6 walks, 13 strikeouts
Opponent: 10 hits, 6 walks, 9 strikeouts
Record: 21-17, tied for first, 52-51 overall
SP Aidan Curry: 4 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 3 BB, 4 SO, 68 P / 43 S, 4.04 ERA
SS John Taylor: 2-3, BB, .294/.374/.392
C Ben Hartl: 1-2, 2 BB
The walks reared their ugly little heads in Aidan Curry’s second outing back fro the complex, but he didn’t suffer from them. Malcolm Moore isn’t on the IL but hasn’t played since exiting early on Sunday. OF Dylan Dreiling’s last multi-hit game was July 18, and he’s .158/.262/.228 with a 35% K rate since. Texas promoted IF Antonis Macias to high-A.
Lo-A: wet
Today’s Starters
AAA: TBD
AA: Davalillo
Hi-A: Pence
Lo-A: TBD x 2
Rangers Minor League History, 2007-2024
The fifth-best relief season during 2007-2024 was by Phil Klein in 2014.
Phil Klein! Maybe you weren’t expecting him. Klein was drafted in 2011’s 30th round out of Youngstown State. A starter in college, Klein immediately switched to relief, striking out 28% of his opponents (very impressive at the time) at the A levels. Jumping to AA early in 2013, he improved his K rate to 30% but at the cost of a 19% BB rate (dreadful at any time). He returned to Frisco to begin 2014.
Klein sat 91-92 and mixed in a bullet slider. Sounds plain, even for 2014. But Klein was 6’7″ with an overhead delivery, so both pitches appeared to arrive from out of the sky and were impossible to tell apart out of his hand. Check that table above again. Klein pitched 52 innings and didn’t allow a single extra-base hit. After giving up a run on May 8, he decided he was done with those as well. Over a span of 35 innings, opponents batted .098/.179/.098, reached safely 22 times and struck out 44.
In late July, I was speculating about his 40-man prospects. 2014 was the year Everything Broke, so the Rangers one-upped my thinking by calling him up. Klein allowed extra-base hits and runs in each of his first two MLB appearances but settled into a respectable debut (2.84 ERA, .164/.291/.388, 23 K in 19 IP).
Klein’s control was a problem, though. In the minors in 2014, his total hits (22) were exceeded by his combined walks and hit batters (23). He also walked or hit 12 of 79 MLB batters (15%), and in the long run, neither he nor the Rangers could count on deceiving big-time batters into an artificially low BABIP. Klein broke Spring Training with the Rangers in 2015 and pitched decently but was sent to Round Rock mid-April and began starting for the first time since college. He would make a couple of starts for Texas in May, one solid, one not, before bouncing between teams and roles the rest of the season. In June 2016, he would be lost on waivers to Philadelphia, where he displayed the best control of his career in AAA but not for the Phils. After a season in Japan, his pro career would be over.
Klein was never ranked in Texas’s top 30 by major publications as best as I can tell. Jamey Newberg placed him in the upper twenties for a couple of years, which is telling. He was in a group of players who (for the most part, understandably) received little attention from folks who watched 30 systems for a living, but if you focused on the Rangers, you’d know he had a shot.