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The Minors: Kinston

The weather in Washington cooled and the humidity dropped yesterday so my wife and I headed to Woodbridge to watch Kinston play the Potomac Nationals (a Washington National's team) .  I guess because the Tribe's season has been so disappointing I just haven't paid much attention to baseball at any level this season, so I knew fewer of the Kinston players than usual.

Potomac has a pretty good team this year (unlike previous years).  They won their division in the first half of the season.  Kinston finished second, in the other division. Fortunately Kinston won last night's game 7-5 to gain a split of the four game series.

This game happened to feature two 2007 first round draft choices, the National's Ross Detwiler (6th overall) and the Indian's Beau Mills (13th overall).  Detwiler was the P-Nats starting pitcher and Mills started at first base.  Based on year-to-date stats and last night's play the Nat's should have selected Mills.

Detwiler is 5-7 (after last night's game), ERA: 5.44  WHIP: 1.66
Mills is .281/.363/.484 with 15 HRs and 66 RBIs in 374 ABs.

Kinston jumped all over Detwiler early, leading 4-0 by the end of the 2nd inning.  Carlton Smith, Kinston's starting pitcher looked unhittable for the first two innings, but in the third inning came back to earth.  Smith entered the game 7-5 with a WHIP of 1.16 and looked pretty good until the 6th inning.  He had to leave the game when he got something in his eye with runners on first and third, two outs and a 3-1 count on the batter, and holding a slim 7-5 lead.  Neil Wagner (RHP) came on and ended the inning with just one pitch.  He pitched two more perfect innings, striking out three.  He certainly looked better than his stats (2-6, ERA 5.36 in 48 innings).

Ryan Goleski, recently demoted from Akron I believe, played RF and looked lost at the plate and in the field. Nice knowing you, Ryan.

Goedert played 3B.  Early in the game he barehanded a slow hopper and got off a perfect throw that just beat the runner at first.  It was sweet, but in a similar play a few batters later he launched a throw over 1B Mill's head.  The baseball gods are fickle...

John Drennen had a nice game, he went two for five and had a stolen base.

No one else stood out.  However the P-Nat's pitcher who relieved Detwiler - Clint Everts - showed nasty stuff, striking out 8 in 3.1 innings, including 7 straight.

It was a sloppy game with 5 errors (should have been 6).  I hate sloppy games.

Minor league games are always fun.  We sat in the second row, even with third base, and just a few feet from the Indian's dugout to our right.  And the hot dogs were good.

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