In baseball guys go on hot streaks and they go on cold streaks. Right now, Ivan Johnson is on one of those insanely hot streaks. Last night the Chattanooga Lookouts outfielder (and sometimes infielder) had three hits and a walk. Two of those three hits were home runs.
Over the last five games, Johnson has gone 10-21 with two doubles and three home runs. That’s good for a .476 batting average and a 1.000 slugging percentage.
Things went well in April for Ivan Johnson. In 18 games during the month he hit .269/.397/.481. When May rolled around, though, he went into a slump. Over the first 11 games of the month he hit .097/.243/.161. But starting on May 22nd, after getting a few days off, he picked things up and ever since then he’s hit .294/.396/.506.
That stretch in May has drug down his numbers a bit, but the Atlanta native has his OPS back over the .800 mark on the season with Chattanooga. This is his third year with the Lookouts and he’s now played in 201 games there and is having his best season – it may be time to see what he can do at the next level here soon.
We’re just living in Nestor Lorant’s world
Daytona has had some good pitching this season, and it’s been Nestor Lorant leading the way. He hasn’t made a single start this year. Instead he’s piggybacked in each of Adam Serwinowski’s starts. Lorant’s thrown 55.0 innings in 14 outings for the Tortugas and if he had two more innings under his belt he’d be qualified for the ERA title and he’d be running away with it. The 22-year-old righty has a 1.31 ERA and has allowed just 33 hits on the season and just two of those hits have been home runs. He’s also walked just 11 batters and two of those were intentional walks. Lorant has also struck out 64 of the 203 batters he’s faced (that’s 31.5%).
In the previous two seasons the walk rate for Nestor Lorant was higher than you’d like to see. He’s flipped that script and now has one of the lowest walk rates around, and he’s done it while maintaining a good strikeout rate.
On the books he’s already flown past his career high in innings pitched with his 55.0 innings. But that’s a bit misleading, too. Last year he threw what was then a career high 37.2 innings between the Arizona Complex League and Daytona. His season began when the ACL Reds season began in June, so he essentially only played about 60% of a “full season”. But he was throwing in games out in Arizona in April and May in extended spring training and those innings count when it comes to his building up of innings, they just don’t show up in the official record books.
With how well he’s pitched it might be time to move him up and maybe put him in the rotation, too. The organization may still be looking to slow down his innings depending on just how many he did throw last season before his regular season began, and how his arm health remains moving forward this season, but it’s also tough to say he hasn’t done any and every single thing he can in the Florida State League to earn a promotion.