By BRIAN WOODSON
CHARLESTON
BLUEFIELD —
Appalachian League baseball players don’t want to be here long. They want to prove themselves at this level, and then keep moving up.
Still, that doesn’t mean the league’s players don’t want to win. After all, that’s why they play the game.
“I wouldn’t say it is a top priority, I would say us getting better is a top priority,” Princeton pitcher Jacob Partridge said, “but we would definitely like to win, that is for sure.”
Princeton will enter tonight’s first of a three-game series with Danville trailing the first place Braves by two games — after the Rays’ matinee win over the Mets on Wednesday.
The Rays in fourth place, but they were within two games of Danville, Burlington and Pulaski, all of whom would like to secure the two top spots in the East Division to qualify for the new expanded league playoffs.
Princeton still has 32 games left in the season, and that is plenty of time for a shakeup at the top.
“I think it is going to be interesting, I think there are three teams that are all pretty even,” said Johns, who didn’t include Princeton in that synopsis. “Danville is coming in and they are playing really well so this will be a good test for us.
“I think we are playing well too so it will be exciting coming down the stretch for all of us.”
While improvement is the primary role being sought by the Appalachian League players, Partridge figures if that happens than the wins should follow.
‘We’re really not worried about it right now, we are mostly worried about getting better, but the wins will come,” He said. “Once we get going we are going to start going well.”
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The league’s player of the week is Johnson City rookie Philip Cerreto, a Virginia native. The third baseman batted .481 and drove in 10 runs for the week. He had four doubles and two homers, raising his overall average into the .350 range.
Adrian Salcedo of Elizabethton earned pitcher of the week honors at the age of 19. He went 2-0, striking out 11 Bristol batters and 10 Burlington opponents in 14 innings pitched while giving up just one earned run and one walk.
As of Tuesday, he led Appy League pitchers in strikeouts (52) and his earned-run average (2.30) was in the top 10. It was his second such award this season.
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The author of the first no-hitter in Tampa Bay history, Matt Garza, is a product of the Appalachian League. He played in Elizabethton as the No. 1 pick of the Twins in 2005 and came to the Rays organization three years later in the Delmon Young trade.
Garza was 1-1 in the Appy League, where he walked six and struck out 25 in four starts for Elizabethton.
Garza got help in his no-hitter from Princeton alumni Carl Crawford and Reid Brignac.
In 1999, Crawford broke into the pros playing 60 games for Princeton, batting .319 and stealing 17 bases. Brignac was a P-Ray for 25 games in 2004, posting a .361 batting average.
• • •
Sunday was an unusually productive day for Appy League offenses. Seven of the 10 teams produced double digits in the hitting column — and Pulaski missed that mark by just one hit. Bluefield and Princeton combined for 31 hits in Sunday’s 18-9 win by the Rays.
On that day, 73 runs crossed home plate, and the average win was by slightly more than four runs above the loser’s output.
• • •
Two Orioles jumped into a temporary statistical lead on their team in unusual ways on Sunday.
Luis Ramirez was called in from the outfield to pitch the ninth inning against Princeton, the seventh Bluefield pitcher used due to an hour-long rain delay. He allowed one single but no runs, and struck out two in his one-time mound appearance.
That gave him an earned run average for the season of 0.00 — tied for the best ERA on the team.
Greyson Schram, who recently joined the roster as a “call-up” from the grounds crew, entered that game in the seventh inning with an 0-for-3 Appalachian League batting average. He promptly collected his first two professional hits, a double and a two-run homer.
With a 2-for-5 overall worksheet (.400) as of Monday, he had gone from the bottom to the top of the team’s batting-average list in the space of less than an hour.
— Contact Brian Woodson
bwoodson@bdtonline.com
