Tomorrow Tony Cingrani will take the mound for the Reds. I will have up a “what to expect from Tony Cingrani” article tomorrow morning with a full scouting report. I bought my tickets this morning to go see the game which should be an excellent pitching match up between our guy and the Marlins super prospect Jose Fernandez. I can’t wait, just hope that the weather holds off today and tomorrow so the pitching match up doesn’t change.
Jon Moscot is really struggling so far in 2013. Last year, in limited action for Billings, he was dominant as he posted a 2.88 ERA in 25 innings with 6 walks and 26 strikeouts. Through three starts with Bakersfield Moscot has posted an ERA of 13.09 with 6 walks and 10 strikeouts in 11 innings. It is not worth much to take something from the stats in 11 innings, especially from a starter because they come from just 2-3 games, but I am going to. Moscot has a current “strand rate” of 49%. Major League average is 70-75% in a given year. His BABIP against so far is .395. His HR/FB is 21%. While you never know with the California League, that is awfully, awfully high. I would expect all of those numbers to perform significantly better moving forward. The one real concern that I have is his walk rate has jumped up to 10.2% this season, up from 6.1% with Billings last year. Hopefully he can correct that as he moves forward. His strikeout rate is down as well, at 17.2%, which is good enough to not be concerned about. His groundball rate is sitting at 54%, which is well above-average. He was the most talked about guy this spring from minor league camp, so the struggles are a bit shocking to this point, but there is a whole lot of bad luck going on there as well. Josh Smith started out rather poorly in Bakersfield last season and he made adjustments and was very strong from May-August with the Blaze. Hopefully Moscot can make similar adjustments and put his poor start to the season behind him.
The Bats placed Armando Galarraga on the disabled list with a blister. They called up Mike MacDougal, who last pitched in the Majors in 2011 with a 2.05 ERA in 57 innings. He threw just 10 innings last season. Pensacola placed Kyle Lotzkar on the disabled list with a hip flexor issue. I haven’t seen a roster move coming the other way yet for this one.
That is all for the day.