Around the Farm: September 11

Around the Farm takes a quick look at some of yesterday's performances by Indians prospects throughout the system. The positions listed below are where the player was playing in yesterday's (playoff) game.

Drew Sutton – 1B, Columbus: 3-for-5, R, 3 RBI, K.
Since being claimed off waivers from the Reds in August, Sutton has been one of the key contributors on offense down the stretch for a struggling Clippers’ offense. In 29 games with Columbus he hit .302/.414/.448 with 2 HR, 15 RBI and had 4 stolen bases. He has proven to be very versatile as he has started at least one game at first base, second base, shortstop, third base and in the outfield, and being already on the 40-man and the Indians likely wanting to add a utility player to the roster the last three weeks of the season, he will likely be called north once Columbus finishes postseason play next weekend.

Paolo Espino – RHP, Columbus: 7.0 IP, 5 H, 2 R/ER, 0 BB, 6 K.
What a sensational performance from Espino, a guy who has quickly shown he can compete in Triple-A. With the rash of callups and injuries to the Columbus starting rotation in late July, he has really settled in and stepped up by pitching well. He had two disastrous outings where he went 4.0 innings and allowed 8 runs in each, but in his six other starts (including yesterday’s outing) he has allowed 2 runs or less in each outing and in five of those six outings has gone at least 7.0 innings.

• Jose Constanza – OF, Columbus: 2-for-6, 2 R, K. Another productive day getting on base and scoring runs. That’s his game.
• Ezequiel Carrera – OF, Columbus: 2-for-5, 2 R, RBI. Fine tuning his game for very likely promotion to big league team once playoffs are over with a very good 4-game series where he hit .467.
• Wes Hodges – DH, Columbus: 2-for-5, 2R, 2B, 2 RBI, 2 K. Even though he is on 40-man, very likely not going north once season ends.
• Jared Goedert – 3B, Columbus: 2-for-4, 2B, BB, K. Good game, but still a rough series hitting .176 which piggybacked a rough August (.222) and September (.130) regular season finish.
• Josh Rodriguez – SS, Columbus: 2-for-5, 2 R, 2B, HR, 3 RBI, K. Broke out of offensive funk with big game and game changing 3-run homer in 4th inning.
• Carlton Smith – RHP, Columbus: 0.2 IP, 3 H, 3 R/ER, 2 BB, 0 K, HR. His only appearance in the series, and really the only bad performance by a Clipper on the day.

Congrats to Columbus for advancing to the International League Finals (Governor’s Cup) where they will play the winner of the Louisville-Durham series. Those two teams are tied 2-2 in their series and the deciding game five is today in Durham at 5:00 pm.  The champinship series gets underway on Tuesday night in Columbus.

Lake County was rained out yesterday, so game one of their series is today at 1pm. With the rainout, they have revised the rotation setup for the last two games of the series. LHP Giovanni Soto will sill go today, but they are now skipping RHP Trey Haley who was originally scheduled to go game two and instead moved up RHP Brett Brach to game two, and now LHP Vidal Nuno will start game three if needed.

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