Clearwater Happenings
All’s quiet for one day
(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).
It was all quiet yesterday as the FIL had a day off.
Sixto Sanchez, Luke Lefwich, Tyler Viza and Seth McGarry headed for Phoenix over the weekend. They’ll be pitching in the Arizona Fall League which opens October 9 and ends November 17. Each got to pitch in an FIL game on Friday. Sixto worked two innings. While he looked a bit rusty, he’s healthy and did pop 100 several times.
Fall Instructs rules are unique. Actually, there really aren’t any rules in regards to batting order and fielding substitutions. The lineup often consists of more than nine players and you may even see a batter bat in consecutive innings. Defensively players are moved in and out at the team’s discretion and they sometimes play every other inning, sharing a position. John Kruk would toss his scorebook after the first inning.
The key component of Instructs is to address things the development staff wants players to work on. For example Jake Kinney, 21, is learning the Phillies method of incorporating hips and the lower half into pitching mechanics. It’s often an awkward transition for young pitchers but it produces very real results on Friday, that’s not his norm but he bounced back to end the frame with a strikeout. The young righty sits 93–94, the hope is that by incorporating his lower half he can hit the upper nineties and also put less pressure on his arm to throw. It takes a bit to learn but I’m witness to how it’s helped a lot of the young men in the system become better hurlers.
My buddy, Jim Peyton, and I got to chat a bit with Bryan Minniti, assistant General Manager, on Friday. That’s the neat thing about living in Clearwater, chatting with front office executives. They are very receptive to interacting, pretty cool.
