The new age of the Winston-Salem Dash

It was a long offseason.

I did much less driving than usual in 2020, but sometimes I’d venture out, and sometimes my route would take me past the ballpark. I’d sit at the light and look over at it, an empty, yawning building with grass dying on the outfield berms, seating for 5,500 people for zero people. The 2019 Dash hadn’t been that exciting of a team, but I found myself missing things like Steele Walker’s “oh-shit-I-hit-it!” swing and sprint, the sound of the ball off Craig Dedelow’s bat, even the runner at second base in extra innings (minor leagues only, thanks!).

I wondered if I’d get the chance to go to another game at all or what it would be like when I did. Would I even be comfortable going when they came back? Would it still feel like baseball?

Vaccinated and masked, I got the chance to find out on Minor League Opening Day, 614 days after what I didn’t realize would be the last pitch of Dash baseball before the world changed. And it had – history’s longest, worst offseason was plenty of time for the front office to create signage and PAs about safe ballpark practices in a pandemic (or at least as safe as possible in a state where only 40% of people are fully vaccinated). Merchandise stores and concession stands had been shuffled around; the shop that had served as a buffer for the press box is now just a room with some tables in it, and the press box itself is fitted with Plexiglas shields between seats. With the room’s wall of windows wide open, it’s not a bad setup.

But it’s different, just like the rest of the minor leagues. The Dash survived what I can’t help but see as a greed-driven contraction of the minors where so many other teams disappeared (and with them, roster spots MLB teams were no longer obligated to pay for), some resurfacing in a prospect or college league, some without options. A lot changes in the minors during a normal offseason, so of course the biggest changes of all came during the least normal one. The schedule is different, across all leagues. This season, Opening Day wasn’t until early May. Monday is now a universal off-day, with the other six days of the week reserved for a single series. Teams play two six-game series at home, then two on the road. It’s a lot of seeing the same teams over and over again.

Which means the players have had to make adjustments on top of making adjustments. A starting pitcher could face the same team twice in a week. If a powerhouse team of top prospects is on the schedule, it could be like a Category 5 hurricane stalled out over land, wreaking one-sided devastation with time as the only immediate remedy. This on top of a layoff more than three times as long as usual, two offseasons and then some; players are trying to play off the rust, find out where their skill level is at now, ramp back into the baseball flow without hurting themselves or others. And to shake things up even more, now that short-season leagues are a thing of the past, all the prospects not advanced enough to have already been playing full-season ball but who are too valuable in the eyes of their teams to let go have all been crammed onto one of the four remaining teams. This goes a long way to explain the, uh, issues Kannapolis is having.

And it goes a long way to explain the Dash roster as well. Bryce Bush, Lenyn Sosa, and Luis Mieses were all teenagers last time they played pro ball, and while they all have showed promise, none had mastery of any level at which they played, and it’s a mystery how the lost year of development will impact their careers. Sosa currently has the best line of the three, slashing .227/.247/.373 going into Wednesday’s game. Bush is back on the injured list, where he’s spent a good part of his pro career. Mieses hit a home run on Opening Day but also went 0-for-24 between May 12 and May 21 (two walks). The rest of the position players are mostly a somewhat interesting mix of repeat Dash, relatively recent minor league free agent signings and some 2019 short-season and DSL guys/Yolbert Sánchez.

What should we be expecting from Sánchez? I have no idea. His glove is supposed to be close to major-league ready, but I haven’t seen him handle enough chances to judge. He’s a little old for the league and as a seasoned-ish pro, it wouldn’t be too surprising to see him tear it up, but he’s struggling with the bat, 12-for-56 on the season with just one extra-base hit going into Wednesday, a double. Now, the Sox player development department gets to figure out if this is because of the pandemic layoff and he’s getting used to playing again, or because he’s never played in a full-season stateside league, or because of both residual and continuing pandemic stress, or because the Dash are facing good pitchers, or because he’s just having a slow start that he’ll shake off later, or because he’s just not that good offensively. Truly, I do not know.

Right now, it’s Luis Curbelo, Johan Cruz (his third go-round in Winston), Alex Destino, and Lázaro Leal (playing his first full year after a 2019 spent with the DSL team) saving the Dash from truly concerning team offensive statistics. Curbelo, at least, was able to play a little in both 2019-20 and 2020-21 in the Puerto Rican Winter League, although he went a combined 0-for-24. He also had a pretty terrible year in 2019, his year-end OBP sitting at .253 in Low-A, but at least so far in 2021, he’s been really damaging some baseballs. In fact, he leads the Former Carolina League (now “High-A East”) in home runs with seven, and his OPS of 1.012 is good enough for seventh in the league (and first on the Dash by about 250 points). The sixth-round draft pick in 2016 and a versatile-if-error-prone infielder, Curbelo needs to keep it up to show his past struggles are really over.

Alex Destino had a very good year with Kannapolis in 2019. His 17 home runs easily led the team, challenged only by the now-retired Corey Zangari’s 15. He got whatever the sad minor league equivalent of a cup of coffee is with the Dash that year, and now he’s back and hoping to quickly play his way up to Birmingham, where he would likely have been this year sans pandemic. His hot start has tapered off a little recently, although he’s behind only Curbelo (17) in the team RBI standings, with 15.

Meanwhile, Cruz is another versatile infielder who started 2019 on the Dash but finished the year strong in Kannapolis after injuring his arm on a swing. Despite decent slash numbers, due to his lineup spot and likely the team around him, he’s only scored five runs and has driven in just three. Leal, who’s not starting every day, is in a similar boat.

On perhaps a more positive note, despite wielding a roster of pitchers who, mostly, I had never heard of, they’ve largely been pretty good. Most notably, Davis Martin threw five perfect innings in his last start before Wednesday, with Jeremiah Burke adding four shutout innings to close it out, although he did lose the no-hitter. The team starting ERA is a decent 3.92, and they’ve been able to keep games close. They’ve already lost Jason Bilous to the Barons after he struck out 26 and walked only two in his 14.2 innings of work with the team. Taylor Varnell might soon be joining him as he revisits High-A ball both as a starter and out of the bullpen, zero runs given up doing either in 12 innings so far (five hits). Johan Dominguez has given up three dingers in 18 innings, but also has a WHIP of 0.889.

It’s kind of a bunch of randos and Lane Ramsey after that (I refuse to believe that I simply didn’t do a good job of keeping up over the last almost-two years), but for the most part they’re randos throwing the ball pretty well so far.

Ramsey, who was almost 7-feet tall and pitched very well and kind of wildly out of the bullpen for Kannapolis in 2019, is still almost 7-feet tall and still pitching very well, and even doing so less wildly! It’s too early to really judge starting pitchers and far too early to judge relievers, most of whom probably don’t even have nine innings of work yet, but Ramsey is off to a promising start. So is Caleb Freeman, a 2019 15th-round draft pick and the FutureSox No. 29 prospect going into this season, and Cooper Bradford, selected two rounds before Freeman.

The final pitcher I want to mention is Luke Shilling, who’s pitching professionally for the first time this season. He signed with the Sox as a minor league free agent over the winter after undergoing Tommy John surgery that lost him the last pre-pandemic year (he was originally drafted by the Sox in 2018, then released in 2020 and resigned in 2021). Freeman and Ramsey were expected to pitch decently at least; for Shilling, it’s been pretty much impossible to expect anything, given the circumstances. Although he’s got about the same number of innings as those two (7.1), his 10 strikeouts against four hits, three walks, and zero runs is impressive.

So, this is a lot of words to say that I do not know what to expect from the Dash over the rest of this season; anything they do will (will not?) surprise me. Right now, the team is one game under .500 in a tight division led by a 12-7 Bowling Green team and cellar’d by the Hickory Crawdads at 8-11. There are no can’t-miss prospects the way Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert were when they were here. It’s a lot of maybes, several ifs, and a couple straight-up gambles. They’re trying to figure it out against what I unfortunately must describe as an unprecedented backdrop. It’s a weird year for everyone involved, from players on the field to bloggers in the press box, and maybe when it’s over we’ll have a better idea of what “normal” means in the new Minor League Baseball.

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