The Winston-Salem Dash finished the week 3-3. José Rodriguez continues to just devour High-A pitching and most games featured either an impressive starting performance or a decent bullpen outing.
PITCHING
In a mixed bag of news, Jerry Burke pitched two perfect innings in his fourth limited-inning start since returning from injury, but is now back on the Injured List. If this is it for him this season, he had a disappointingly brief but still encouraging second pro year, throwing 44.2 innings between two levels and allowing 17 earned runs and 40 hits for a 3.43 ERA and 1.187 WHIP. With the Dash specifically, those numbers improve to a 3.18 ERA and 1.059 WHIP; he allowed just two home runs over 34 innings.
Kaleb Roper had about the best bounce-back start a pitcher could ask for after giving up seven runs in fewer than four innings last time out. This week, he went a career-high six innings and allowed zero runs, his only baserunners coming on a single, a walk, and a hit by pitch. He struck out six and was rewarded with his first win of the season.
Since his promotion from the Cannon Ballers in early August, Chase Solesky has had two very good and two pretty bad starts. His outing on August 28 was one of the pretty bad ones. He was not helped in the process by one of Rodriguez’s three errors at short that day, making only four of the seven runs he allowed earned. In the good starts he has a line of 10 IP, 7 H, 3 R (1 ER), 1 BB, 10 K. In the bad ones, it’s 7 IP, 15 H, 14 R (9 ER), 3 BB, 7 K.
The very newly promoted Karan Patel was the opener in August 29’s game, his first start of the season, and it was one of really only a small handful of rocky outings for him. The two runs he allowed over three innings were all packed into the second, that frame featuring two singles, a hit by pitch, a wild pitch, and a double where a runner was thrown out at home on a Caberea Weaver-Brandon Bussard-Gunnar Troutwine relay. Patel, a righty drafted in the 7th round in 2019, is now two appearances into his Dash career, with a line of 5 IP, 4 H, 2 R, BB, 8 K.
Then on September 1, Dan Metzdorf carried a one-hit shutout into the sixth inning of a seven-inning doubleheader before allowing a one-out walk, followed by a one-out double and one-out two-RBI single. He completed the sixth having allowed just those two runs on three hits and two walks. This was his second straight strong start and the longest outing of his career, beating his previous record of five innings, which was itself earned in that last start.
The Dash have been leaning heavily on opener-type starts, and excitingly, it was 2021 6th-round pick Taylor Broadway starting the back end of the September 1 doubleheader. He only threw one inning, but it was quick and clean, dispatching three batters on nine pitches (two fly balls, one groundout). Now 8.2 innings deep into his professional career, he’s allowed two hits, one run, and one walk, striking out 11 (that’s a WHIP of 0.391, you sample size freaks).
This week’s bullpen line: 27 IP, 28 H, 19 R (16 ER), 18 BB, 35 K.
Their best performance came in relief of Solesky’s rough start on August 28. Kevin Folman struck out four over three innings, two unearned runs scoring on the second of Rodriguez’s three errors, then Broadway and Wilber Perez combined to strike out six over three scoreless innings to end the game. Altogether, the three relievers struck out 10 in six innings.
Most relievers this week had at least one good outing and then one not-so-good one, most of the latter coming after Patel’s start on August 29 or Broadway’s brief start on September 1. Cooper Bradford threw one scoreless inning and then allowed two runs over 1.1 innings his next time out. Trey Jeans, having a great strikeout year (53 in 39.2 innings) and not as good of a walks-and-run-prevention year (22 walks, 24 earned runs), appeared three times — two near-perfect innings on August 26, then two separate one-inning, one-run outings… on August 29 and September 1. Sammy Peralta, who’s been mostly effective since his early-August promotion, also appeared thrice with just one of those outings scoreless.
Jordan Mikel struggled both times out — six hits in three innings combining for four runs. So did Edgar Navarro — four runs in two innings for him. Ryan Williamson only made it into one game, allowing one (unearned) run in one inning. Ty Madrigal only had one appearance as well and also gave up one run, this one earned, over 1.2 innings.
The flamethrowing McKinley Moore, meanwhile, has been untouchable lately. The last time he was burned for a run was August 4, eight outings (and innings) ago. Over that stretch, he has gone 8 IP, 5 H, 0 R, BB, 13 K.
A random note: as a whole, the staff has been picking runners off like crazy recently; Jeans, Patel, Peralta, and Metzdorf were all credited with one this week.
BATTING
The story for this week, and it wouldn’t be surprising to have him be the story every week for the rest of the season, was José ‘Popeye’ Rodriguez. The 20-year-old has more multi-hit games with the Dash (10) than he has hitless games with them (5). He hit very well in 78 games with the Ballers — .283/.328/.452 — and in 19 games with the Dash, he has improved every part of that line drastically. It now stands at .360/.383/.507 after going 3-for-7 in September 1’s doubleheader. In the six games this week, Rodriguez went 2-for-5, 2-for-4, 0-for-4, 2-for-4, 1-for-4, and 2-for-3. He is a machine. He’s a machine that did make three errors in one game on August 28, but a machine nonetheless, and in fact, seems to be having an easier time with the glove in Winston-Salem than he did in Kannapolis.
Luis Mieses has also been hitting like a man possessed, or maybe a man who figured something out during a two-month demotion. Since his return to the Dash on August 1, he’s batting .293/.343/.587 with 10 doubles, a triple, and five home runs. From August 26 to September 1, he went 7-for-21, striking out just three times while hitting two doubles, a triple, and two dingers. All five of those extra-base hits, amazingly, came within a 6-for-12 stretch.
Alex Destino got a few days off here in late August and only played in half of this week’s games, going 4-for-8 with a double two walks in the process. In 90 games this season, he’s batting .239/.327/.459 with 19 home runs, now trailing team leader Luis Curbelo by two.
Coincidentally, Curbelo, who did play in every game this week, hit two home runs. He went 4-for-19 overall, with one of the two non-dinger hits a double. He now has 23 of those on the year, good for a tie for second in the league. His 21 home runs lead not only the team but are also tied for second in the league, trailing Braves prospect Jesse Franklin by one.
Harvin Mendoza and Samir Dueñez have been trading off between DH and first base; Mendoza is 10-for-31 in eight games since returning from Kannapolis and 6-for-23 with a double this week, while Dueñez has cooled off and went 4-for-22 with two doubles over those six games.
Evan Skoug and Gunnar Troutwine continue to split time behind the plate, each getting into three games this week. Skoug went 2-for-10, one of those a ground-rule double mere feet away from escaping the Dash’s weirdly-shaped right field. Troutwine has put together a six-game hitting streak despite not playing every day and went 3-for-12 with a double in his playing time.
Second baseman Jeremiah Burks has been hitting decently in his first five games with the team, playing mostly every day with a couple off in favor of Brandon Bossard. Burks is 5-for-18 in his Dash tenure with a triple his only extra-base hit to date; Bossard went 0-for-6 with a walk in his two games played this week.
Lázaro Leal has lost his DH/1B playing time to Mendoza and Dueñez, so he is mostly only getting into games in left field when Mieses isn’t playing there. He went 2-for-9 with two walks in four games.
Finally, center fielder Caberea Weaver is still trying to find his bat, a promising four-game hitting streak snapped with an 0-for-5 in Wednesday’s doubleheader. He went 4-for-18 on the week and is batting .189/.214/.302 in 16 games with the Dash.
As a final note, both José Rodriguez and Edgar Navarro earned their GEDs and were honored in an on-field ceremony on August 26 in full regalia:
Looking ahead, the Dash are in the homestretch of a season that normally would be entering its final weekend. They’ve still got about two and a half weeks left. Thirty-one games out of first place, they are 39-64.
Photo credit: Sean Williams/FutureSox
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