Back At It! Portland Sea Dogs!

Took a little break from the red sox and blogging over the long weekend! Hope everybody enjoyed the Memorial Day weekend! I know I did. Drinking and eating is a lot of fun!  Thanks to a rain out and ESPN doing their best MLB on Fox impersonation I wasn't able to watch nearly as much baseball as I wanted to. However, that changed a little bit yesterday as I went to a double header of the Portland Sea Dogs in New Britain, CT. Now first off if you love baseball go to Minor League Baseball games at any level its great baseball and really fun especially at New Britain Stadium home of the New Britain Rock Cats the AA team of the Twins.

I was lucky to be able to see Chris Balcolm-Miller the RHP in his first AA game (we received him in return for Manny Delcarmen in the Colorado Rockies deal Balcolm-Miller was recently promoted from High A ball in Salem. The RHP was throwing his fastball 90 -92 with ok control though he fell behind some hitters early on. He also got a lot of swings and misses from his changeup which was sitting about 81-82 all evening. There was not a lot of contact by the Rock Cats on Balcolm-Miller. The biggest reason outside of his changing of speeds is that he hides the ball in a strange wide up. The ball goes down behind his back and he slings it up there. very deceptive and will probably get guys out at most levels as long as he can consistently make the same motion everytime.

I was disappointed in that I did not see Will MiddleBrooks the 3B who has a great start to his season, he has a jammed finger.

Do not hold your breaths on Catchers Lavernway and Federowitz they are no where near ready. Both guys showed little pop in their bats and very long swings. They called good games but were not anything special.

Also newly promoted Jermey Hazelbaker is one fast guy, darting around CF and on the base paths. While you cant teach speed he needs to a better job of reading pitchers. He was CS in the 1st inning of the 2nd game by a pea from the Rock Cats catcher he had no jump what so ever. The rest of the team were a bunch of flame out guys who are probably never going to get much passed AA.

I know it was only 2 games but i was not impressed with the Sea Dogs. Major issue for the Red Sox organization is not a lot of potential talent at the AA level right now!

If you see any Minor League Sox games let us know and you can post your first hand experiences here on 3 Up! 3 Down!