Justin Steele
vs
Joe Ryan
Olympic silver medalist, Joe Ryan, makes his MLB debut tonight. He's done well throughout his minor league career. He put up a 12.5 K/9 and a Rhu_Ru-approved 1.6 BB/9 this year in AAA with the Rays and Twins. Only two of those starts came as a Saint and struck out half of his batters faced (17 strikeouts, 34 batters faced). I am skeptical he will be that good in this start, but it is the Cubs.
Can't start much better than that!
Rocco has a fixation with Rob Refsnyder that would make Gardy proud.
More like Cy Ryan
Early farm report:
St. Paul scored five runs in the first inning and leads Columbus 9-2. Drew Maggi hit his thirteenth homer. Bryan Sammons pitched five innings, giving up two unearned runs.
Wichita and Arkansas are scoreless in the second. Chris Vallimont is pitching for the Wind Surge.
Quad Cities leads Cedar Rapids 2-0 in the fifth. Nathan Eaton hit a two-run homer. Sawyer Gipson-Long is pitching for the Kernels.
Fort Myers leads Daytona 2-1 in the fifth. Christian Encarnacion-Strand hit a two-run homer, his third.
Well this went pear shaped pretty quick
Not a good third inning for Ryan but not a good <all of the innings> for the Twins so far.
Spent the evening visiting, but glancing at the boxscore, I'd say Joe had a game to be proud of, and something to build on. Good showing
I got to talk to some of his fan club that attended the game tonight, three friends of the family that all agree Joe is the greatest thing ever and is destined for the Hall of Fame. He made one bad mistake tonight and grooved a pitch with runners on base. The radar said he was only hitting 88-92 with his fastball, but I was in the centerfield grandstand and the pop of the ball in the catchers mitt was like rifle shot loud. Over his minor league career, he's struck out 326 batters in 226 innings. That's 1.44 K/inning. In two starts totaling nine innings for the Saints he had 17 strikeouts. His minor league WHIP is .87 and his ERA is 2.67. I think I'm going to like watching him pitch.