Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
May 19th, 2023 Scoreboard
- Triple-A Oklahoma City 7, Sugar Land 6
- Double-A Tulsa 10, Corpus Christi 1
- High-A Great Lakes 3, West Michigan 2
- Single-A Rancho Cucamonga 3, Visalia 8
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Kyle Hurt‘s ridiculous start to 2023 continued on Friday, as he put together his most dominant performance yet:
That’s a K/9 of 17.22, and a BB/9 of 2.35. That’ll play.
Hurt continues benefit from some mechanical adjustments that have helped him fill up the zone at an increased clip — in 2022 his K/9 with Tulsa was 13.06, and his BB/9 was 10.74 — and the improvement is nothing short of remarkable.
The only thing left at this point is to ramp up the workload and see whether he can maintain his refined delivery and improved command deeper into ballgames. The 24-year-old (he turns 25 on May 30th) is currently on the same workload track that he experienced in 2022, with pitch counts in the neighborhood of 50 for most of his first eight appearances. By the end of June, that rose to 70, and a month after that, he went up to 89.
Given Hurt’s age, the quality of his stuff, and the desperate need of arms on the big club, a trip to neighboring Oklahoma City should be in the offing before too long, because he isn’t just beating his current level, he’s utterly destroying it.
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There’s a catcher on the Tulsa Drillers who absolutely banging these days, and it’s not the one you’d expect — 2020 4th round pick Carson Taylor, who is having himself one heck of a month of May:
Taylor ended up going 2/3 with a pair of walks, raising his slash line for the month to .370/.452/.778, for an OPS of 1.230. If it holds, this would be his best month with the bat as a pro by a healthy amount, with his previous top OPS mark of .992 coming in June of 2021.
I will have more on this in another post, but like his Friday battery-mate Hurt, Taylor has undergone some small mechanical changes as well (along with dropping switch-hitting), that have aided him in his recent upturn. There’s some interesting smoke here, and there just might be a fire, too.
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Austin Gauthier, Dalton Rushing, and Yeiner Fernandez all had the day off on Friday, so it probably comes as little surprise that Great Lakes struggled to get anything going offensively. Indeed, they were down 2-0 in the bottom of the 9th, with one out and two on, when Ismael Alcantara changed the entire complexion of the day with one swing of the bat:
Ismael Alcantara hit a walkoff 3 run homer for Great Lakes! The Loons whiffed on the first gatorade bath attempt, but got him on the second 😂 pic.twitter.com/MOtAExYUXt
— Josh Thomas (@jokeylocomotive) May 20, 2023
I really, really love that they went back for a second cooler. You hit a walkoff, you need to get that bath. They whiffed, but you like to see these sorts of mistakes rectified immediately, that’s quality player development.
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Here’s Saturday’s start times for the minor-league clubs (all times Pacific), along with the Dodger affiliate’s starting pitcher:
- Oklahoma City vs Sugar Land – 5:05 PM, William Cuevas
- Tulsa at Corpus Christi – 5:05 PM, Nick Nastrini
- Great Lakes vs West Michigan – 3:05 PM, Jerming Rosario
- Rancho Cucamonga at Visalia – 6:30 PM, Payton Martin
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Enjoy your Saturday, folks.
