While I am sure that Donald Lutz would prefer to be back in the big leagues, the outfielder made his first start in the minor leagues in just over a month last night against Scranton Wilkes-Barre and he made it count. Lutz had three hits on the night, including a solo home run and he scored twice. In his month in the big leagues he had just four starts, and his start for the Bats on Monday was the first time he was a starter since a July 29th start against the Diamondbacks. He returned with a bang, doubling in his first trip to the plate.
Juan Silverio has been in a slump for about three weeks now, hitting just .128 coming into the game on Monday night dating back to July 18th, but he broke out of things for at least one night. The third baseman went 2-3 with a double and two runs batted in. The two hit night was the first time he had notched more than one hit in a game since June 30th (he did spent seven days on the disabled list in July). After a torrid start in Louisville things slowed down, but Monday night may be what he needed to get things moving back in the right direction.
It seems that Gavin LaValley is getting mentioned every day, but when you are hitting .331 you aren’t having too many days where you are racking up hits. The third baseman had three more hits on Monday night, which pushed his average up to .331 and into the team lead, passing up Hector Vargas (.324). He was able to extend his hitting streak to five games, going 9-20 (.450). More impressive though is how good he has hit over his last 25 games where he’s posted a .374/.448/.571 line for the Arizona League Reds.
Arizona starter Mark Armstrong has put together back-to-back impressive starts. Last night he tossed 4.2 innings with just one earned run, a walk and seven strikeouts. The start before that was good for 6.0 shutout innings, no walks and seven strikeouts. The 2013 3rd round draft pick now has 48 strikeouts and just 13 walks in 46.1 innings pitched this season to go with a 4.27 ERA.