Category: Notes

A belated Happy New Year to my Cape League fans. Nothing too big going on in the world of the CCBL but we do have a few rosters popping up. In case you missed them:

Bourne
Cotuit
Harwich
Wareham
Y-D

The Y-D roster jumps out to me at this point. The 2012 runners-up are slated to have standouts Robert Pehl, Sam Travis and Alex Blandino back in the fold. NC State star sophomore Trea Turner is also on the roster, as is UCLA pitcher Hunter Virant, an unsigned 11th round pick last year.

On this cold, blustery Tuesday, I thought of how much I’ll soon be missing baseball, which made me think of how much I’m already missing the Cape League. The translation of this is that pretty much any kind of day will make me think of a way I can ease into an off-season notes column. Cold and blustery? Cape League all the way.

It has not been the quietest off-season, due in large part to the drama in Falmouth. In case you missed it, you can catch up here. To make a long story short, Falmouth general manager Robert Clark removed manager Jeff Trundy from his post in a decision that was reportedly unilateral. The Commodores Board of Directors quickly convened and reinstated Trundy, which prompted Clark, his wife and team president Christine Clark and secretary Helen Kennedy to resign. Just a weird situation all around. I don’t know enough about the situation to take a side here, but it seems the majority opinion was with Trundy on this one. He’ll be back in the dugout next summer.

There were some moves in Bourne too, without any drama. Dan Dunn will take over for Tom Fink as general manager.

Sean Manaea got plenty of love in summer top prospect lists, but the biggest news as far his future is concerned came from Perfect Game’s Allan Simpson. In his early top 100 for the 2013 draft, Simpson put Manaea in the top spot. There’s a long way to go, obviously, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Manaea cement that status with a dominant spring. Whatever happens, there’s a decent chance a former Cape League will go No. 1 overall. Manaea, Mark Appel and Ryne Stanek are getting labeled early as the big three of college arms and they’ll all have a shot to go first. The Astros will have the first pick for the second year in a row. And though it’s only fall, Manaea is already getting scouted. Get used to it, Indiana State.

Plenty of Cape League alumni alive in the MLB postseason, led by the Giants tandem of Buster Posey and Tim Lincecum. I’m also a big Tommy Milone fan. The Oakland A’s lefty played for the other A’s in 2007 and was fighting the soft-tossing lefty label even then, when he didn’t make the Cape League all-star game and then surged late in the year to earn Outstanding Pitcher honors.

The guys at Bullpen Banter had some nice Cape League coverage and have continued it into the off-season. Al Skorupa, Peter Wardell and E. Tyler Bullock have a First Team, Second Team, Sleeper Team and a Best Tools list up there now. Check it out here.

Well. That was fun, huh?

Wareham’s comeback in game three of the Cape League championship was so epic and so special that it didn’t leave a whole lot of room for extra words in the immediate wake of it. Heck, with the picture on the previous post doing the talking, I don’t know if I needed to say anything.

We’re a few days out, and we can add a few things.

The first thing: it really was awesome. I started doing this blog in 2007, and I’ve been going to Cape League games since the 1990s. Never have I been to a better game than this year’s game three. I’ll remember it for a long, long time.

A few other notes:

I did the power rankings all year, and I think every week, I wrote some variation of “If Wareham’s pitching ever comes around, look out.” And you know what? It finally did come around. Ultimately, it wasn’t the dominant storyline — hello home runs — but quality starts set the stage. Barrett Astin pitched great against Aaron Blair in game two, and Fred Shepard more than held his own in game three. Both those guys had struggled in the regular season, but on the biggest stage, they shined. Wareham couldn’t have done it without them.

The performance of Wareham’s big four — Kyle Schwarber, Tyler Horan, Daniel Palka and Mott Hyde — was going to define the series one way or another. For a while, it looked like Y-D might shut them down — and win the series as a result. And then came the ninth and 10th innings, when Schwarber, Hyde, Schwarber again and Horan turned game three into a home run derby. Kudos to those guys for finishing out great summers in style.

And speaking of the home runs, I haven’t seen anything official but I’m going to go ahead and assume that Wareham’s 15 playoff homers are a Cape League record. Prior to the current playoff format, the most games a team could play was six, so that’s part of it (although Wareham did it in seven games). But also, going back to 2000, the previous playoff high was seven by Falmouth in 2004, so not even close. To even things out, the best home runs per game total since 2000 is the 2007 Y-D Red Sox’s 1.4 (six in four games). Wareham’s mark was 2.1.

As CapeMan mentioned in a comment on the previous post, this Wareham team seemed to have that extra bit of chemistry that is often the difference in a league full of all-star teams. If you checked out Twitter after the championship, you saw a lot of “Best summer of my life” comments from the Gatemen.

Schwarber was an easy choice for Playoff MVP after his game-three heroics. If they were giving a Playoff Most Outstanding Player — and ignoring the championship outcome — then Robert Pehl would have walked home with a trophy. Pehl batted .357 with four home runs in seven playoff games. Though his team didn’t take the crown, it was a great finish on a terrific summer for Pehl. Interestingly, both Pehl and Schwarber are just rising sophomores.

Unrelated to the championship but still noteworthy, Hyannis star Sean Manaea was named Perfect Game’s Summer Player of the Year. The story is a good read. Perfect Game also unveiled its Summer All America Teams, which include 11 Cape Leaguers.

Finally, I just wanted to say thanks to all of you for reading and commenting this summer. This was the most fun I’ve had in six years of doing this. It was a great summer. I’ve got some cool stuff planned for the next few weeks and months, so keep coming back.

All four playoff games were postponed due to rain yesterday. The weather still looks a little iffy today, but hopefully mother nature will cooperate.

In the meantime, if you haven’t seen the Enterprise article about baseballs on the Cape that’s been going around, check it out. Turns out, the balls really do seem to be different.

In other news, Harwich’s Phillip Ervin was named the 2012 Cape Cod League MVP yesterday. Ervin was the story of the first half of the season, and though he cooled off a little bit, he still finished with a .323 batting average, 11 home runs and 31 RBI.

It is not often that we get to see a new Cape League record established, but in the final few days of this wild summer of 2012, it’s possible that a lot of history could be made. A quick rundown:

With six games left, Harwich needs two home runs to break the Cape League’s team record of 59, which was set by Orleans — with metal bats — in 1982. There was a time this season when it looked like the Mariners were going to shatter the record. They slowed down, but it’s a pretty safe bet that they’re going to get the record anyway.

Yarmouth-Dennis has five games left and with a big finish, the Red Sox could break two Cape League records: hits and batting average. The hits record is 463 and Y-D currently has 419. The Red Sox would need to average about nine hits a game — which isn’t out of the realm of possibility for them. As for batting average, the record is .314 and Y-D is currently at .306.

Cotuit’s Patrick Biondi is hitting .405 and could become the first Cape Leaguer to hit .400 since Mark Smith hit .408 for Wareham in 1990. Cotuit has six games left.

With 75 strikeouts, Sean Manaea is expected to take the hill this afternoon and if he does anything close to what he’s been doing, he’ll break the modern strikeout record of 82, set by Daniel Bard in 2005. The actual Cape League record is 126, which was set when teams played significantly more games.

Wareham’s Tyler Horan hit his 12th home run last night, already the most since at least 2000. Wareham has six games left. If Horan has a ridiculous finish, he could approach the wood-beat record of 16, which was set in 1988.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but it’s hard not to be continually amazed by the power show Harwich is putting on this summer. The Mariners have now hit 30 home runs in 14 games. They’re on pace for 74, which would demolish the Cape Cod Baseball League record of 59. That record was set by Orleans in 1981, when the Cape League used metal bats.

At this point, Harwich has already surpassed the end-of-season, league-leading home run total from 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008. The 2007 Y-D Red Sox, whose 41 home runs are the most in at least the last 12 years, look well within reach for the Mariners.

That Y-D team is kind of a benchmark for offensive talent in recent history. The lineup included Gordon Beckham, Buster Posey, Jason Castro, Colin Cowgill and Grant Green.

Harwich is looking just as fearsome. Thirteen players have hit home runs and six have at least two. When all is said and done, Phillip Ervin and Austin Wilson may be the league’s top two prospects.

We’ll see if Harwich can make it two straight championships, which is just what that 2007 Y-D team did. For now, let’s just enjoy the show.

Ervin’s season requires some perspective too. He has hit more home runs (8) in 14 games than each of the last two Cape League home run kings. He is on pace for 25, which would break the Cape League record of 22 set by Hyannis’ Cory Snyder in 1983, another record that was set with metal bats. The wood bat record is 16. Two other stats that catch my eye in Ervin’s line — he has stolen five bases and has struck out just eight times in 52 at-bats.

If we continue at this rate, it’s going to be a home run-filled not just for Harwich, but for the whole league. Falmouth currently has 17 home runs, Wareham has 15 and Orleans has 14. All of those teams are on pace to do better than the 2007 Y-D Red Sox. When the trend is that pronounced, it makes you wonder what’s going on. I think pitching is down a bit this year, but as Orville from Orleans suggested in a comment last week, the new bats in college baseball may be making a big difference. Some people say those bats perform worse than wood, so the adjustment from metal to wood is no longer a big deal. Beyond those two factors, I think there are just a lot of good power hitters on the Cape this year. We may see more home runs from guys who wouldn’t normally hit them, but I think guys like Ervin and Wilson are legitimate power hitters.

I was sad to hear the news that Trevor Gott is heading home with an injury. Gott was great last year and was off to an even better start this year. If any bullpen can absorb that kind of loss, it might be the Orleans unit. Four Firebird relievers have ERAs under two, led by Elon’s Dylan Clark. He hasn’t allowed a run in 13 innings and has given up only three hits. He has also struck out 13 and walked nobody. The bullpen also includes Dylan Covey and Karsten Whitson, both of whom were first-round picks in the 2010 Major League draft. The Cape League doesn’t see a lot of former first-round picks, let alone two on the same team, let alone two in the same bullpen.

Hyannis lefty Sean Manaea leads the league in strikeouts with 29 in 17.2 innings, and Y-D’s Aaron Blair is just behind him with 25. Like the home run hitters, those two are on a pretty good pace too. Last year’s strikeout leader was Joe Bircher with 48. If they make five more starts, Manaea would be on pace for 77 strikeouts, and Blair would be at 67. No one in the Cape League has struck out 70 since 2005, when Daniel Bard had 82 and Tim Norton had 77. The most since then was Brandon Workman’s 67 in 2008.

The league has a good-looking schedule this week. On Tuesday and Wednesday, teams will have home-and-home rivalry games. On Thursday, Orleans visits Harwich again for another marquee match-up. Harwich travels to Orleans next Sunday.

First day of summer, it really feels like summer . . . and the Cape League had its first off day of the season. Oh, well. Can’t win ’em all.

When people are still hitting over .500, you know it’s too early to really draw conclusions about the leaderboard — these are hot streaks that happen to coincide with the start of the season. That said, there are plenty of standouts so far. Harwich’s Phil Ervin (Samford) leads the league in both home runs (3) and RBI (9). He’s also hitting .381 and five of his eight hits have gone for extra bases. Tyler Sciacca (Villanova) is your leading hitter at .563. He hit .359 this spring.

On the pitching side, Y-D’s Brian Gilbert (Seton Hall) leads in strikeouts with 14. Fourteen pitchers have 0.00 ERAs. Orleans’ Chase Johnson (Cal Poly) leads with two wins. Trevor Gott (Kentucky) has three saves and hasn’t allowed a hit. I’d say Gott is well on his way to a second consecutive Reliever of the Year award.

A couple of guys who have been invited to Team USA are currently on the Cape. Trevor Williams (Arizona State) is scheduled to make one more start for Orleans. D.J. Peterson (New Mexico) is playing for Hyannis and Jordan Hankins (Austin Peay) is in Bourne. Not sure what their plans are.

A couple of temporary players have already been signed to full contracts, most notably Bourne’s Mike Ahmed (Holy Cross). Considering the way he started the season, it was no surprise that the Braves locked him up. Ahmed, the brother of former Brave Nick Ahmed, went 6-for-9 in his first two games. Here’s a story from Wicked Local about Ahmed.

Youngstown State sophomore Drew Dosch, a late addition to the Falmouth roster, is off to a scorching start. He’s hitting .429 with four multi-hit games. Dosch is coming off a big sophomore season in which he hit .353 with eight home runs.

Wareham has the most hits in the league and has scored the most runs. On the flip side, Wareham’s team ERA is the worst in the league. That gap isn’t surprising when you look at the roster. The Gatemen have a veteran lineup but only five of the pitchers on their initial roster are currently with the team. That’s a lot of holes to fill.

Harwich is off to a good start and should get an added boost this week with the addition of Stanford stars Austin Wilson and Brian Ragira and LSU standout JaCoby Jones.

Orleans is off to a 5-1 start, same as the great start Hyannis got off to last year.

Look for the first Weekly Watch in the next couple days, along with the first-ever Right Field Fog Power Rankings.

We are off and running in the Cape Cod Baseball League season, and as anyone who’s followed the league knows, it never really slows down. It’s just baseball, baseball, baseball — and that’s a good thing.

With that in mind, I’ve got a few notes about Right Field Fog to pass along.

1. Do me a solid and follow Right Field Fog on Facebook and Twitter. It’ll be good for both of us. I’m turning myself into a social media maven. I’ll be posting lots of links so you can keep tabs on what’s on the site and a lot of other notes that you won’t find anywhere else. I may even give away a shirt or two to a randomly-selected Facebook follower (stay tuned!). And if you’re a big Cape League fan, you should hop on Twitter anyway. The teams provide a lot of good info and it’s a good way to keep tabs on things. To like Right Field Fog on Facebook or follow on Twitter, just click the links above or the logos on the right and go to town.

2. Just under the banner at the top, there’s a link to a Game Day page, where you can find quick links to every Cape League team’s live game coverage and Twitter feeds.

3. I’ll be trotting out a couple of new regular features here at Right Field Fog. I’m most excited about the Weekly Watch, which will be linked up top and will be your guide for players to watch all summer. It’ll be updated weekly, hence the name.

4. If you feel the need to own a Right Field Fog shirt, bumper sticker or coffee mug (and I don’t know why you wouldn’t feel that need) you can visit the Right Field Fog store at Cafe Press.

5. All the links to the 2012 Early Looks are in the right sidebar if you’re looking for a little more information on a player you’ve seen. Some will be a little out-dated at this point, but most of the likely stars are in there. Also on the sidebar are links to a lot of great sites. The Cape League is covered from all angles these days.

6. Finally, don’t hesitate to comment here at rightfieldfog.com. I don’t see as much Cape League baseball as I’d like, so if you want to pass along any observations, please be my guest.

Thanks for reading. Here’s to a great summer.

There will be many, many roster additions in the coming weeks, but I don’t know how many will be as big as a couple that stand out on the Cape League’s latest updated roster list.

The three that caught my eye the most are Austin Wilson in Harwich, Jared King in Falmouth and Dominic Ficociello in Orleans.

Wilson played for Harwich last year, and though he didn’t have a great summer statistically (.204 AVG, 1 HR), he was still one of the top prospects in the league. Perfect Game had him ranked No. 3 overall. Wilson wasn’t on early Harwich rosters but is there now. He’s hitting .308 with eight home runs for Stanford this spring.

Another guy who wasn’t on an early roster but is set to return is King, a standout at Kansas State. He also had his struggles on the Cape last summer in Falmouth, but he has been one of the top hitters in the Big 12 this spring. He’s hitting .376 with five home runs, 12 doubles and 40 RBI.

Ficociello was a 23rd-round pick out of high school and had a huge freshman season at Arkansas last year. He then played with Team USA. Now, Ficociello has popped up on the Orleans roster. He’s hitting .323 with four home runs and 32 RBI.

A good read on former Harwich closer Blake Hauser, who’s having a terrific season as VCU’s closer. Hauser had never been a closer before the Mariners tried him there last summer. He has continued in that role this spring and has been brilliant, striking out 54 in 28.1 innings.

I posted a note about LSU’s Raph Rhymes a while ago. The junior, who’s ticketed for Cotuit, was hitting almost .500 at the time. You’d think, more than a month later, that he would not be hitting close to .500 anymore. You’d be right — because he is not hitting an even .500. His average has gone up. It’s pretty ridiculous. Rhymes has been one of the great stories in college baseball this year.

Baseball America’s Jim Callis has come out with his first mock draft of the year. He has former Cape Leaguer Mark Appel going No. 1 overall to the Astros. The first round includes 10 total Cape Leaguers, and the first six college players off the board all played on the Cape.

Much like the New England weather a few weeks ago, my happy spring declaration from Feb. 24 was kind of a false spring, at least in terms of my keeping up with college baseball. It’s always tough in March. College basketball sucks me in every year, and with my Louisville Cardinals making the Final Four, I was obsessed.

I am now in mourning, but what better way to move on then to fully embrace spring? It’s really baseball season now.

In the spirit of that, let’s do a little catching up on the first month of the college baseball season. We’ll get to some 2012 spotlights in the weeks to come and team previews before we know it. For now, a quick trip around the country with an eye on the Cape:

With a 22-2 record, Florida remains as the No. 1 team in all the major polls, and the usual suspects are doing the heavy lifting for the Gators. Among the former Cape Leaguers, Mike Zunino is hitting .351 with nine home runs, Preston Tucker is at .327 with nine home runs, and Brian Johnson is 4-0 with a 3.28 ERA. Florida is also getting some contributions from a few 2012 Cape Leaguers: sophomore pitcher Daniel Gibson (Bourne) has a team-best 0.57 ERA in 12 relief appearances, freshman Johnny Magliozzi (Falmouth) is 4-0 with a 3.95 ERA and freshman Casey Turgeon (Falmouth) is hitting .276 with three home runs as the team’s starting second baseman.

Gonzaga sophomore Marco Gonzales, who’s on the Falmouth roster, is emerging as one of the top two-way players in the country. He’s hitting .417 with two home runs and 16 RBI. On the mound, he’s 4-0 with a 1.25 ERA and 35 strikeouts in 36 innings pitched. Gonzales was the West Coast Conference Co-Player of the Year last year and looks like he’s on his way to the same honor this year.

Joining Gonzales as the Co-Player of the Year in the WCC last season was San Diego freshman Kris Bryant, who spent the summer of 2011 in Chatham and is slated to return this summer. Though Gonzales is off to a strong start, Bryant may end up making voters think about going with co-players of the year again. Bryant is hitting .382 so far with eight home runs and 34 RBI. He’s among the national leaders in home runs and RBI.

Among the top 50 home run hitters in the nation thus far, only four are slated for the Cape in 2012 at this point, and Chatham and Wareham each have two of them. Bryant and Boston College’s Tom Bourdon are ticketed for Chatham, with Daniel Palka and Tyler Horan on the Wareham roster.

LSU’s Raph Rhymes, who’s on the Cotuit roster, is a great story. He tried walking on to the LSU baseball team in 2008 but didn’t make the cut. So he went to junior college, earned All-American honors and came back to LSU for last season. The Tigers are glad they made room. After leading the team in hits last year, Rhymes is batting .491 in 28 games this season, good for second in the nation. Rhymes is a junior and will be eligible for the 2012 draft, so we’ll see if he makes it to Cotuit. Regardless, he’ll be a fun guy to follow this spring. And keep an eye on LSU in general. The Tigers have 10 players slated for the Cape, more than any other school.

Stony Brook had a huge summer on the Cape last year, with six players having a big impact, including league MVP Travis Jankowski. The Seawolves only had one player on the league’s January roster list, but he may carry a lot of weight anyway. Sophomore Brandon McNitt, who’s on the Orleans roster, has a 1.13 ERA in six starts, which ranks top 10 nationally. He has struck out 24 in 39.2 innings.

As always, some of the most highly-touted freshmen in the nation are on Cape League rosters and many have gotten their careers off to strong starts. North Carolina State pitcher Carlos Rodon (Harwich) is tied for 12th in the nation in strikeouts with 47. He also has a 1.29 ERA. NC State and future Harwich teammate Brett Austin is hitting .300 with 19 RBI for the Wolfpack. Southern Miss infielder Connor Barron is hitting .316 with a .449 on-base percentage.

And we can’t forget about last year’s standout freshmen who had good Cape summers. Several are slated to return this year, and they’ll be coming off strong springs if the first month is any indication. The League’s 2011 Pitcher of the Year, Ryan Eades (Bourne), is 4-1 with a 1.91 ERA and 39 strikeouts in 47 innings for LSU. Colin Moran (Bourne), the 2011 ACC Freshman of the Year, is picking up where he left off for North Carolina, hitting .389 with two home runs. And Mississippi’s Bobby Wahl, who closed for Cotuit this year, has moved into the starting rotation for the Rebels and is excelling. He’s 5-0 with a 1.91 ERA and has 48 strikeouts in 42.1 innings.