Clearwater Happenings
Final day for Instructs
(Steve Potter, a longtime Phillies fan now living in Clearwater, is a baseball enthusiast who files news and notes from time to time for the Phillies Insider blog).
On a beautiful sunny Clearwater day, the Phillies instructional league program came to an end at Spectrum Field. Phillies 6, Yankees 1 but scores and stats don’t count or matter.
Today
RH Kevin Gowdy took the hill for the first time since August 2016 because of Tommy John surgery. Threw about 30 pitches. A very encouraging outing for this young man . . . OF Ben Aklinski had a day with two home runs and four RBIs . . . SS Luis Garcia had two hits and an RBI . . . 3B Alec Bohm hit the ball hard all day and had a single; the other three at bats were “at em” balls . . . Mitchell Edwards stole a base that earned him an ovation from his teammates. Mitchell is not the fleetest afoot; he’s a catcher.
Overall observations from this Fan’s View
Innings were limited intentionally for pitchers over the three weeks of game action; most worked 3–5 innings at the most. Young arms who caught my attention Gabriel Cotto, Jake Kinney, Efrain Morales, Starling Castillo, Nicoly Pina and Manuel Urias. Hadn’t seen them until this fall.
College hitters Matt Vierling, Madison Stokes, Bohm, Aklinski and Luke Miller all had hard knocks at various points in camp. All are positioned for full season assignments.
Edwards continually impressed with his receiving skills, arm and bat. In general there’s a very good group of teen age catchers presently in the system.
OF Carlos De La Cruz continued to shine; very impressive all-around skills.
Luis Garcia can flat out play. This kid could become a very special player. INFs Nicolas Torres and Christian Valerio also look to have bigger upside yet to come.
OF Jose Cedeno and 3B Juan Herrera are teenagers who just look like they are gonna be players. Very athletic builds and actions. Would expect they are GCL players next summer.
Some fellas will be back at the end of the month for speed and agility camp and in November for ongoing strength and conditioning as well as rehab work. I’ll check in periodically at the Complex,
No games till next spring Till then….Happy Day, Happy Baseball!
