On Saturday the Daytona Tortugas played a doubleheader and their pitching staff had a heck of a day. While they split the doubleheader it wasn’t due to anything from the pitchers who took the mound on the day who allowed two runs over the 14.0 innings they pitched and struck out 24 batters with just three walks.
That night I looked at a few pitchers over on Patreon in the game notes (hey, did you know you can get the game reviews with a bunch of additional notes on players each day emailed to you for just a few bucks a month? Well you’re in luck if that’s something you’d be into) and a few things jumped out.
Jayvien Sandridge is dominating for Daytona
The left-handed pitcher joined the Reds organization in 2021, signing in June. He only pitched during the month of July and he pitched well in his first six outings, posting a 2.00 ERA in 9.0 innings with five walks and 12 strikeouts. But the final outing of his season saw him allowed five earned runs without recording an out. He didn’t pitch again in 2021.
In 2022 the Reds send the lefty to Daytona to begin the season. He’s kept runs off of the board all season – giving up just one earned run in each month so far this year. The one place he has struggled has been with his walk rate. In his 9.2 innings pitched between April and May he walked 10 batters and had 16 strikeouts. But in June he’s flipped that script. Sandridge has thrown 8.1 innings for Daytona this month and he’s walked just three batters. While the lowered walk rate is great to see, it hasn’t come at the expense of his strikeouts. In fact, those have also seen a big improvement as he has fanned 16 of the 31 batters he’s faced this month.
The Florida State League has Hawkeye installed in all of the stadiums except for Daytona, because of course that would be our luck (all of the parks in the league are the spring training home for big league teams except Daytona – they do have Trackman installed and use it there). There are differences between the two systems, and Hawkeye does give you more overall data – but the biggest difference in this situation is that *some* of the Hawkeye data is publicly available if you know where to look, while the Trackman data is not. That means for road games that involve the Tortugas we get some of that data that we don’t get anywhere else in the minors (for the Reds system, that is).
What’s interesting when looking at the data for Sandridge is that his first road game saw him average 94.1 MPH and top out at 95.6 MPH. Things went south for a bit after that, though, averaging 91.5, 90.4, and 92.6 over the next three road appearances that he made. But on June 19th he averaged 94.3 MPH and again topped out at 95.6 MPH.
The sample size is small for this kind of data – just five appearances – but let’s take a look at what those five road appearances tell us as far as his pitch repertoire goes.
| avgVelo | topVelo | usage | |
| Fastball | 92.6 | 95.6 | 69.7% |
| Slider | 81.0 | 82.5 | 21.3% |
| Change Up | 83.1 | 85.2 | 4.1% |
| Curveball | 77.2 | 78.2 | 4.9% |
The curveball and the slider showed similarities that it’s possible they are the same offering, just one is a tad slower than the other. Without having video of all the outings it’s tough to say for sure.
What’s not tough to say is that Jayvien Sandridge is dominating opposing hitters. His ERA sits at 1.50 on the season and he has struck out 32 of the 79 batters he has faced (that’s 40.5%). He’s holding hitters to a .136/.279/.152 line and of the nine hits he has given up only one of them has gone for extra-bases – a double allowed on June 5th. A majority of the batters he has faced this year have been righties. He’s only had the opportunity to face 12 lefties all season. They haven’t recorded a hit against him yet.
Matt McLain to the injured list
Over the weekend Matt McLain was placed on the injured list in Chattanooga with a sore wrist. I’ve been told he was checked out by a doctor and that everything came back normal, but they are going to be cautious.
Promotions
The midpoint of the minor league season happened last week, but in the middle of the weekly series that all of the full-season teams play. While there are promotions that take place throughout the season, there’s usually more than a few of them that take place midseason.
On Sunday night some of those started to get out. Elvaronsport12 on Instagram had the news that Allan Cerda was being promoted from High-A Dayton to Double-A Chattanooga.
The outfielder has hit .219/.370/.488 with 13 doubles, a triple, and 13 home runs in 62 games played for Dayton this season. The .219 average isn’t good, and he’s struck out 91 times in 249 plate appearances (36.5%). What is good, though, is the on-base percentage and the ability to hit for plenty of power. On the defensive side of things you’re looking at a strong defensive center fielder with a big time arm, too.
Bobby Nightengale of the Cincinnati Enquirer reported this afternoon that a few other Dayton Dragons were moving up to join Chattanooga. Pitcher Connor Phillips and infielder Nick Quintana will be joining Cerda in the trip south to join the Southern League.
Phillips was acquired this spring from the Seattle Mariners in the trade that sent Jesse Winker and Eugenio Suarez to Seattle. The right-handed starter made 12 starts for the Dragons in the first half, posting a 2.95 ERA in 64.0 innings while allowing 39 hits – just 5 home runs – and walking 32 batters to go along with 90 strikeouts. The 21-year-old will join the Lookouts rotation this week as they start a home series against Birmingham.
Quintana joined the organization this spring as well, coming over in the trade with Detroit for Tucker Barnhart. The Tigers selected Quintana in the 2nd round of the 2019 draft, but he struggled in his two seasons playing in their farm system. In 2019 he hit .194 in 66 games after the draft. Then in 2021 he hit .196 in 89 games. This season with Dayton he’s played in 59 games and has hit .257/.372/.421 with 12 doubles and 6 home runs.
Dave Kingman, often pointed to as a SO/HR type player, had a career SO% of 24.4%, though in ’77, he SO 48.2%. Despite the changes in the “modern” game, the feast or famine strategy needs to be revisited. Regardless, it’s time for even more roster shuffling.
Promoting a player hitting .219 in A ball is absurd. Quintana being promoted is borderline, although based on the Reds past history I think it’s fair to assume that it’s as much about trying to sell the idea that they got a legit prospect for Barnhart and that trading him wasn’t just a salary dump. A little surprised that De la Cruz and Boyle didn’t get promoted, but I’m assuming that’s probably due to them playing in the Midwest League All-Star game?
They did it with Hendrick earlier and he was hitting even lower at .205 in Daytona.
Hendrick comment below
And eye test reports on Quintana report good AB’s and game performance. Deserved.
I understand Quintana and Cerda asNick is a little older and Cerda is on 40-man. Quintana is one of those players who is much more valuable than his stats imply, as he seems to do something every game to help the cause even if it is baserunning, defense or moving a runner. Cerda still can use some work making contact but when he does it flies. Phillips is the one I don’t get. He is still young and to me Boyle would have seemed to be more worthy from performing and more experienced from age and past work.
So, Cerda, Phillips and Quintana up to Chattanooga. Callihan, Rogers and Rivera replace them? Those are my choices. DLC and Boyle should follow soon to Chattanooga. McLain on the IL, so DLC to Chattanooga seems possible soon. They can rotate between SS and 3B. McLain injury doesn’t seem serious, so I’d like to see an IF of McGarry, Urbaez, DLC and McLain on most nights. Torres can take over SS in Dayton. Cerda to Chattanooga crowds the OF. Gilliam or Siani to the Bats? Gilliam my choice. Phillips to Chattanooga pushes Williamson to the Bats is my best guess. Some others that I hope get a serious look at promotions are Free, Pinto, Garcia, Stockton and Nutof from Chattanooga and Holt and Sandridge from Daytona.
You know de la Cruz is a very average right handed hitter he could probably stand to stay in Dayton to get better at it.
Dragons only have three outfielders on the roster with the loss of Cerda and injury to Hinds. Could use two. I see Rogers being one.
I wonder if Gillian moves to Bats to replace Amburgey and make room for Cerda.
If the organization can promote Hendrick with a BA of .205 in Daytona, DLC is a lock to get promoted. DLC probably hits RH 20-25% of the time. If he doesn’t improve hitting RH in the future, he can go strictly LH against all pitchers. His avg. is down this year, but a .286 hitter (42-147) against LHP career to date is above average.
Steve, one of the questions with Elly is whether the club is willing to risk him getting (more) picked apart by AA pitching, as well as what his learning aptitude is. This also ties in with the fact it is only his first go around of full season ball, so he may yet have to learned how to play through the daily grind as well, and what is the best environment to do this in, Hi-A or AA. Assuming the top to bottom player development practices are in place, the people in the department hopefully know. I think this is also where their knowledge of the kid comes in, ie, can he handle more failure. Or does he need to build success more slowly. I suspect we are soon to find out. I’m on the side of taking it more slowly with I’m, and maybe give him a taste of AA later in the season. Wet his appetite so to speak.
As for Hendrick, it was somewhat of a mystery then and is now. What I have read was that he’s gotten hot for a week-plus. They also had OF’s coming up from AZ and needed space, with Hendricks being something of a lotto pick for promotion. The tea leaves also suggest they may have promoted him with the hope of catching a hot streak and building confidence, but we’ll probably never know. The bummer to me is, his problems making contact were pretty well known at the draft. Every time I see the expression, ‘there’s currently a lot of swing and miss to his game but …’ I just groan. That big of a flyer on a first round pick is really questionable; more like 2nd/3rd round type of pick, IMO.
Just from an eye test Hendrick is either over confident or very cocky. He literally struts to the plate before he hits and does the same thing back to the dugout after a strike out or after scoring a run. My wife, a retired probation officer, notices the whole body language thing more than me, but points it out..
Or is compensating (feels inadequate, Hendrick).
Williamson may be awhile yet before promotion as reports on his fastball show regression from last year.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/10-milb-prospects-in-need-of-a-productive-second-half/
Could be Hopkins to the Bats? I think Guilliam is the right choice…The Bats have 4 active OFers in Friedl, Cedrola, Fairchild and Dawson right now while Aquino and Fraley come back from the IL and join Almora Jr in the Reds
Boyle deserves to be promoted, killing it !
I hope at least Nutof and Garcia get promoted. They have both been outstanding in their time at Chattanooga and feel like a promotion is far overdue. Would love to see one of them in the bigs by the end of the season.
With Cerda being promoted and Hinds hurt I think Roger’s and O’Guinn from Daytona should be moved up to Dayton
Gotta like Sandridge’s physical frame (6’5″, 220), with the height and shoulders looking as is strength can be added. Looks like he has some moxie as well.
Getting a solid reliever and prospective starter from an Orioles 32nd round pick who was released in the 2020 non season would be an excellent job of scouting.
Williamson, Karcher and Gilliam up to the Bats, Okey down and Papierski to Reds and Zeuch to the Bats. Cotton and Willems down to Dayton. Callihan up to Dayton, Trautwein down to Daytona. Franco up to Daytona. All these in addition to Phillips, Quintana and Cerda. Still think DLC and Boyle will be on the move sooner than later.