Luis Devers – Picture by Todd Johnson

Last night, I mentioned I thought that pitchers would have the advantage after a four day layoff. That lasted a whole day. Tonight, hitters across the system just went off. At every level, they were home runs aplenty as the affiliates averaged right at 10.5 runs a game today. 10.5 runs!

We will get to the hitters in a minute, but there were some outstanding pitching performances along the way.

The Starting Pitcher of the Day

This easily goes to Luis Devers as he threw six innings of no hit ball for South Bend. He only struck out two, but he didn’t need a lot of pitches to get it done either. He tossed just 62 pitches include 11 in one at-bat. The Quad Cities hitters just looked off-balance the whole night!

Honorable mention goes out to Caleb Kilian who twirled his best start at Iowa. Just when we thought that he was struggling, he came out tonight and threw five scoreless and struck out eight and only gave up one hit. He through 75 pitches, 46 which were strikes.

Reliever of the Day

This goes to Iowa Cubs reliever Sean Newcomb who has been almost unhittable in the second half of July. Tonight, he went four innings and struck out six in relief of Killian. He has a 1.88 ERA this month and 14. innings with 17 strikeouts. The Cubs may have found themselves something here that they can use for the long-term. To do that, though, they need to call him back up. Who knows when that will be?

Honorable mentions go out to both Michael McAvene and Jeremiah Estrada who seem to be making mincemeat out of hitters at their respective levels. Both have just been fantastic the past month!

Hitter of the Day

I cannot believe some of the stat lines put up today throughout the system. I’m going to list them here in a minute, but these aren’t even going to be the winners of Hitter of the Day. That’s how dominant the system was on Saturday, July 23, 2022.

*Kevin Alcantara went 4-for-4 with one run batted and he scored twice for Myrtle Beach.

*Ezequiel Pagán went 3-for-4 with a run batted in And he scored three times tonight.

*PCA went 2-for-5 with a home run and one RBI.

*Owen Caissie went 3-for-3 with two home runs and 2 RBI courtesy of his ninth home run of the year. 

*Jake Washer went 3-for-4 with a home run and three RBI.

I am not even close to being done. This is just unreal!!

*Darius Hill went 3-for-5 with three runs batted in.

*Narciso Crook went 2-for-4 with two home runs and four RBI and he did not get today’s award.

And I still have to give you Tennessee’s numbers!

*Alexander Canario went 1-for-3 with two walks and a three run dinger. he also walked three more times! The reason I bring that up, if he is walking, he’s not striking out!

*Miguel Amaya 2-for-5 with two runs scored and a two run home run.

*Bryce Ball went 3-for-5 with a solo shot and one RBI

*Yonathan Perlaza went 2-for-3 with an RBI and 3 walks.

*Chase Strumpf – 3-for-5, 1 RBI

OK…Now I am done, except for the winner.

Normally, any of the above forementioned performances would be good enough to win most days. But today was not most days.

Jacob Wetzel had the game of his career so far! He went 3-for-5 on the day with two home runs and he drove in six on the night. I’ve always liked Wetzel’s approach at the plate and his swing, he just hasn’t really put it together yet. Hopefully this can be the jumpstart he needs for his career. He was off to a really good start the first two weeks of this month and hopefully he can finish strong as he’s hitting .250 with five home runs and 16 RBI in just July to go along with an OPS .884. That’s not too shabby!

I’ll be back in the morning with “The Weekly” and then at noon, the “Rookie League Recap” will sum up what happened in the Dominican and Arizona complexes this week.