Wednesday's Rock Cats Report

Quietly, and with many, many singles,
Rock Cats infielder James Beresford is leading
the team in batting average

Last night, the Rock Cats lost to the Akron Aeros 6-2. Starter B.J. Hermsen took a tough loss, giving up 3 runs (only 1 earned) in 5 innings, but he wasn't aided much by his defense, which committed 2 errors while he was on the mound. Hermsen is 3-2 on the season with an ERA of 2.96. Very solid. He has walked 5 and struck out 25 in his 7 starts (48 and 2/3 innings) as a Rock Cat. Deibinson Romero and Evan Bigley provided the offense, both hitting solo home runs for New Britain. For more, here's a great summary of the game by Nodak Twins Fan.

The Rock Cats lost another player to promotion to AAA Rochester. Starting pitcher Steve Hirschfeld was promoted earlier this week. He was 4-4 on the season with a 3.2 ERA. In 64 and 2/3 innings this season for New Britain, he gave up 73 hits, walked 16 and struck out 44, for a WHIP of 1.38. Good luck, Steve! As noted in the Hartford Courant this week, Hirschfeld is the 8th player promoted from New Britain this season. Aside from Wilkin Ramirez, Darin Mastroianni and Pedro Florimon, the bulk of the promoted players have been pitchers, including Lucas French, Deolis Guerra, Lester Oliveros and David Bromberg (I guess you can also count Jason Marquis, but that hardly worked out well for anyone). This, as I have mentioned before, is the tough part about minor league baseball: your best talent rarely stays for too long. In return, New Britain has received players such as Hermsen, Caleb Thielbar and Bruce Pugh, who all saw success at A-level Ft. Myers. Hopefully, they can continue their success in the Eastern League.

Although they have lost 3 consecutive games, as of this morning, the Rock Cats are in a tie for first place in their division. Both the Trenton Thunder (suddenly very hot) and New Britain are 32-24, good for a .571 winning percentage. The Rock Cats continue their series against the Aeros tonight. Incidentally, I heard that it was a 10-hour bus ride to Akron.

Finally, as I try to do every week or so, I'll take a look at a few prospects and highlight how they are doing on the season, and in recent days.

Aaron Hicks: .246/.341/.396, 8 2B, 1 3B, 6 HR, 28 RBIs, 15 stolen bases (caught 4 times).
In his last 10 games, Hicks is hitting .233/.333/.410 with a home run, 3 RBIs and 9 walks. I have been getting a few questions lately about Hicks and a promotion. As Seth Stohs noted recently, Hicks needs to be added to the 40 man roster after this season. In my opinion, though, Hicks is playing this season where he needs to play. Defensively, he's ready for the majors, but significant work needs to be done at the plate, including a determination of whether he will continue to switch hit. Twins fans, Aaron Hicks is 22 years old -- still a young prospect who the Twins took out of high school. There's no point in sending him to AAA when he's not even batting .250 in the Eastern League. I have confidence that he will materialize, but it might take a little more time than some want.

Chris Herrmann: .250/.313/.401, 14 2B, 5 HR, 19 RBIs.
In his last 10 games, Herrmann is struggling, batting .125/.300/.219 with a home run, 3 RBIs and 8 walks. If you happened to miss it, I recently interviewed Herrmann. Take a look. My opinion is that, like Hicks, Herrmann is where he needs to be right now. Hicks and Herrmann are not similar prospects, though. Hicks, as a 22 year old first round outfield prospect drafted out of high school, needs to be developed slowly and carefully, especially considering that the Twins have good outfield talent in their system. Herrmann, a 24 year old catcher with D-1 college experience, is already second on my depth chart for catchers in the entire organization. If Herrmann can get that average up to around .270, and demonstrate more plate discipline, I'd like to see him promoted this season. The interesting question is should he go to Rochester or Minnesota? Ordinarily, you think about a guy working his way through the minors and going up the ladder one step at a time. What about a catcher, though? If the expectation in Minnesota is that Herrmann will be Joe Mauer's back-up sooner rather than later, does it make more sense to send him directly to Minnesota this September to learn how to catch the different pitchers on the Twins roster? Or, is it better for his development to catch AAA-level pitchers (many of which he already caught in New Britain) and work on hitting at that level? It's an interesting question.

James Beresford: .273/.346/.302., 2 2B, 1 3B, 11 RBIs.
In his last 10 games, the Australian Beresford is hitting .294/.333/.353. Very quietly, Beresford is leading the Rock Cats in batting average, and although he generally flies under the radar, it's important to give mention when it is due. The problem with Beresford's stats, though, is that they are barren when it comes to power. Of his 38 hits this season, 2 were doubles and 1 was a triple. And for a middle infielder, he apparently is not very fast (or is not a good base-stealer), going 0-for-3 in stolen base attempts. But perhaps just as importantly, the defense has been solid: he has only 1 error in 202 chances between second base and shortstop. I don't realistically think of Beresford as the Twins second baseman of the future, but he's only 23 years old, and there is still time for development.  

The Rock Cats and Pitching

In each of his 4 starts since joining the Rock  Cats,
B.J. Hermsen has gone over  6 innings.

Yesterday, I reviewed some notable hitting prospects for the New Britain Rock Cats. The team is now 10 games over .500 and is in first place with a 1.5 game lead over the Reading Phillies. So although the offense has been scoring plenty of runs, the pitching has also kept this team in games.

Today I thought I would take a look at the Rock Cats' pitching. Keep in mind that Lucas French, Lester Oliveros and Deolis Guerra have all been promoted to AAA Rochester, so less than 2 months into the season, the Rock Cats have lost 3 of their most consistent arms. With that being said, let's see how a few of the pitchers are doing:

First, some starters:

Logan Darnell: 5-2, 4.53 ERA, 51 and 2/3 innings, 35K, 16 BB, 1.37 WHIP.

Steve Hirschfeld: 3-4, 3.14 ERA, 49 and 2/3 innings, 37K, 14 BB, 1.39 WHIP.

Andrew Albers: 1-1, 4.31 ERA, 48 innings, 37 K, 4 BB, 1.35 WHIP.

David Bromberg: 1-1, 3.94 ERA, 29 and 2/3 innings, 26 K, 12 BB, 1.31 WHIP.

B.J. Hermsen: 2-1, 2.57 ERA, 28 innings, 16 K, 2 BB, 0.86 WHIP.


And now some of the bullpen arms:

Daniel Turpen: 3-1, 5.56 ERA, 22 and 2/3 innings, 4 saves, 24 K, 4 BB, 1.19 WHIP.

Luis Perdomo: 3-2, 2.45 ERA, 22 innings, 1 save, 22 K, 9 BB, 1.23 WHIP.

Bobby Lanigan: 1-2, 2.49 ERA, 21 and 2/3 innings, 3 saves, 22K, 3 BB, 1.11 WHIP.

Caleb Thielbar: 1-0, 2.61 ERA, 10 and 1/3 innings, 1 save, 7 K, 3 BB, 1.45 WHIP.

There you have it. As a group, there are no major standout performers -- no guys with a 1-point-something ERA or massive strikeout totals. But if you look a little deeper, some of the stats are pretty impressive: BJ Hermsen has been very good so far, and you have to like his control. In fact, I would say that, as a team the Rock Cats have shown good command of the strike zone. Perdomo, Lanigan and Turpen all have been striking out close to 1 batter per inning while exhibiting good control. And new Rock Cat (and Minnesota's own) Caleb Thielbar has been solid out of the New Britain bullpen thus far.

Finally, I'm going to dig a little deeper on Daniel Turpen. In two rough performances this season (most recently on Monday night), he allowed 4 runs and 6 runs. In those outings he pitched a combined 4 and 1/3 innings. In his other 18 and 1/3 innings pitched, he has allowed only 4 total earned runs -- good for an ERA right around 2. Not to imply that you can simply "take away" bad outings, but when we're dealing with relatively small sample sizes, it's important to at least note a couple factors that are contributing to Turpen's interesting stat line.

The Rock Cats play a noon game today, and a 10:35 a.m. game Thursday, so be sure to check back for updates!

Rock Cats Split a Twin Billing

Target Field probably feels pretty far away
for the struggling Joe Benson

Last night, I wrote Wednesday's Minor League Recap for TwinDaily, wherein I gave a brief summary of every Twins minor league game that took place yesterday. Check it out here. The Rock Cats played an interesting doubleheader last night, comprised of two 7-inning games. Here's what I wrote about the Rock Cats in my recap of those games:

Game 1: New Britain 0, New Hampshire 3
The story of the first game of this day on which the Rock Cats and Fisher Cats played two 7-inning double headers is that hits came at a premium for Hardware City. Chris Herrmann, playing left field today, was 1-for-3 with a double, his 11th of the season, and new Rock Cat Matt Rizzotti, demoted from AAA, had a single in 3 at-bats. That was it. 2 hits all afternoon. Steve Hirschfeld took the loss, and is now 2-4 on the season. But he pitched pretty well -- 6 innings, 3 runs, 3 strikeouts and 2 walks. He did, however, allow 8 hits and 2 solo home runs, which is what did him on this day when the offense couldn't muster anything. Blake Martin pitched a scoreless final inning.

Game 2: New Britain 6, New Hampshire 3
The Rock Cats salvaged a split of the double header tonight. Logan Darnell was decent on the mound, going 6 innings, giving up 3 runs. Importantly, though, he walked 1 and struck out 8. He did allow 2 solo home runs. Daniel Turpen picked up the save, tossing a scoreless 7th, allowing no hits and walking 1. New Britain had only 5 hits in this night cap, and Estarlin De Los Santos did the most damage, with a 3 run home run and a double. Matt Rizzotti also had a double, and Nathan Hanson and James Berersford each had singles. Joe Benson was 0-for-3 with 2 strikeouts and a walk, and Aaron Hicks was 0-for-3 with three Ks.

You have to be worried about Benson at this point. He's 2-for-24 (.083) since joining the Rock Cats, with 7 strikeouts and only 2 walks. The move to AA was supposed to accomplish at least a couple things: to get Benson's swing back; and to restore his confidence. So far it's failed on both counts. Yes, it's only been 6 games, but Benson has been worse in New Britain than he was in Rochester. When I attended last Thursday's game, where Benson was 1-for-4 with a walk, I remarked that 2 of his 3 outs were hit very hard. I wanted to chalk up that performance to bad luck. But there's only so much bad luck you can have. It should be noted that Benson played right field in the second game, and sat the first game, so it's not as if he is taking away playing time from Hicks.

Benson, and the rest of the team, will get an opportunity for a series win this morning at 10:35 eastern time, when they face the Fisher Cats in the rubber match. The Rock Cats do a lot of "Baseball in Education" days, where school groups attend day games -- hence the early start. Righty David Bromberg starts for New Britain; hopefully he's having his morning coffee right about now.

The Rock Cats are 23-15 on the season, in a dead tie with the Reading Phillies for first place. The Trenton Thunder, at 19-17, are the only other team in the division that is above .500. Reading is off today, so a New Britain win would move them into sole possession of first place.