In Venezuela on Thursday night, Jose Osuna homered for the second night in a row, plus he added two doubles and did all that while leaving after six innings due to the one-sided score. He scored two runs, drove in one, and stole his second base of the winter. Osuna has a .909 OPS through 46 games, which ranks him seventh in the league. He now has six homers and ten doubles.
Elias Diaz went 2-for-4 with his fourth double. He scored once and drove in a run. He has an .806 OPS through 16 games and runners are just 2-for-6 in steals against him. Just like Osuna, Diaz left the game early and both were actually replaced by 2015 Pirates who signed elsewhere this off-season. Junior Sosa replaced Osuna and Francisco Diaz replaced Elias Diaz.
A.J. Morris pitched one inning and allowed one run on two hits. He has a 3.86 ERA in 25.2 innings with 14 walks and 17 strikeouts, though he does have a very impressive 3.38 GO/AO ratio.
Gorkys Hernandez went 2-for-4 to raise his average to .331 through 45 games. He has an .808 OPS.
In Colombia, Tito Polo continued his solid start to the season, going 2-for-4 with a double and run scored. He has a .359/.438/.487 slash line through 39 at-bats. Last winter in Colombia, he got off to a 5-for-30 start, with no walks and 12 strikeouts. While he did end up leading the league with five triples, his overall stats were well below what he has shown early this season. Polo was young for the league and it was much more advanced than what he saw in the GCL in 2014, but it looks like the full season in Low-A ball has helped him this winter. The level of play in Colombia is about what you would see in High-A. Players with upper level experience usually dominate in the league, but there will be some players like Polo in 2013 when he was a fourth outfielder, yet only had DSL experience.
In the Dominican, Gustavo Nunez and Pedro Florimon formed the double play combo for Estrellas de Oriente, a team now managed by their AAA manager this year, Dean Treanor. Nunez batted lead-off and went 1-for-4 with a single. Florimon went 0-for-3 with a walk and a strikeout. Neither is hitting well, with Nunez batting .195 and Florimon has a .206 average.
In Mexico, Felipe Gonzalez threw a scoreless inning, though he did it while issuing three walks. He threw just 16 of his 31 pitches for strikes. Gonzalez has a 7.90 ERA in 19 appearances.
I found video of Sebastian Valle’s ejection from Wednesday night and it was because he didn’t appreciate the pitcher’s celebration after a strikeout. That led to a brief fight, which can be seen here.
I wasn’t going to post video of Jose Osuna two days in a row until I saw this one. Not only did he crush the ball, there was some trash talking from the opposing bench afterwards. Impressive power by Osuna here. You can see Wednesday’s home run here.
