Early this morning on my walk before school, I dictated a post about Bryce Ball breaking out. It’ll be out tomorrow morning, but he had a night and then some! The young 23=year-old for the Smokies took over the system lead in RBI tonight as he just went off. More on Bryce later.
Fast Forward to tonight…
After my evening walk around 6:30, I settled into watch Star Trek Brave New Worlds with my wife. I kept track of what was going on during that time and it didn’t look very promising. And then around 7:30 after my show was over, all hell broke loose. Kevin Alcantara hit a grand slam home run that turned a 4 to 3 Myrtle Beach deficit into a 7 to 4 lead.
On most nights, Alcântara would’ve won the Hitter of the Day.
But not today.
A couple of innings later, reliever Luis Rodriguez walked the bases loaded to start the seventh and Myrtle Beach’s lead became very tenuous. Reliever Bryan King came in for his second appearance in Myrtle Beach. Nobody would come around to score for Charleston as King struck out the side to end the threat. King would go on to pitch three innings total on the night and earn the save. But it was his role in the seventh that earned him today’s Reliever of the Day.
From there, Myrtle Beach never looked back adding six more runs with King on the mound and cruised to a 13 to 4 win.
Earlier in the Day…
The day actually began in sort of a nondescript way as I was teaching. Some transactions came across my desk that saw Dakota Mekkes and Carlos Sepulveda headed to Iowa from Mesa while Brennen Davis would find his way onto the IL with some sort of back issue, which is weird because usually you don’t get that kind of information at all. It was also released that Grayson Byrd was on his way to South Bend while Jacob Wetzel came off the IL for Myrtle Beach along with Chase Watkins, who actually pitched last night.
As for Iowa, the played another day game today and Luke Farrell made his first start for Iowa this year. Farrell went five innings and struck out five and did not allow any runs. As a result, he was the Starting Pitcher of the Day. Farrell picked up the win as Iowa shut down Omaha 5 to 0. There’s really not a lot of fanfare to this decision as it was a rough day for most starting pitchers except for Farrell. Although, Chris Clarke pitched well after a rough first inning in his Tennessee debut.
In South Bend, Riley Martin got the start tonight for theh Cubs and he was cruising along and then ran into the third inning as he gave up three runs in that frame and two more later. Jose Albertos came in and pitched one-third of an inning before he was removed with an undisclosed injury. This was actually Jose’s first appearance back after coming off the injured list Tuesday. South Bend struggled to get anything going offensively as they lost 5 to 0 to Fort Wayne.
And we are back where we started…
The Tennessee Smokies swept a twin bill from Montgomery this evening. In the opener, the Smokies came from behind to win thanks in part to a Bryce Wyndham two-run single that actually scored three runs thanks to a throwing error by the leftfielder to give the Smokies a 4-3 win.
But that really wasn’t the story of the night.
The nightcap belonged to Bryce Ball who went 3-for-4 in game two and drove in six run with a home run, double, and a single. All he was missing was the triple. He makes tomorrow’s prospect profile look quite prescient. Ball is easily the Hitter of the Day. Just to give you an idea of how hot Ball is right now – Just in May, he is hitting .395 with an 1.191 OPS, 3 HRs, and 16 RBI in just 11 games.
It’s only the 12th of May.
Yeah, this is going to be fun!
