Random player notes from the past few days

The Goldpanners' DJ Crumlich, out of UC
Irvine, made some heads-up team plays.

I'm taking a little bit of time away from the ballpark, what with the Anchorage area being nearly deserted all weekend and for the next couple days, but I've been listening to the audio feeds and watching me some PannerVision when I can. Most of it has come in bits and pieces, though, so I haven't really had enough good stuff to put together a whole reflections post on an entire game. So instead of struggling through that, here's some quick notes about what I've managed to catch from the games, Saturday through Monday...

DJ Crumlich looked pretty good for the Goldpanners. He displayed some good heads-up base running early on, faking the steal home to distract the pitcher while Sikorski swiped second. He also made a pretty solid leaping catch. Tack on a hit and a run and he had himself a pretty good game.

I think Liam Baron (Panners) is a pretty cool cat. In fact, I think I've called him that before. Something about his demeanor says "cool cat" to me, I guess. Anyway, he's got a unique style, throwing lots of curveballs. My first thought was, "how many curves is this guy going to throw?" But there's some subtle differences in his, though, as he throws variations of his breaking ball from different arm slots to keep the batter off guard, mixing fastballs in for good measure. Three strikeouts on 2.1 IP and no earned runs on the evening to pick up the win last night. Whatever he's doing, he's doing it pretty well. I'm curious as to whether that's a strategy that a player can take very far into the pro ranks, but until someone proves him wrong, what the heck.

We already learned about Eddie Orozco (Oilers) and his no-hitter, but getting down to some of the nuts and bolts, he's pretty effective with mixing his pitches. He's got a good feel for his curveball and last night he was using it effectively, combined with his fastball, to get ahead in the count. It seemed like his strategy was to get way ahead of the hitter and then try and get him to chase junk, and it worked pretty well, obviously.


Also for the Oilers, Jeff Popick showed some power and knocked a grand slammer out of the park in the Oilers' 8-1 rout of the Miners in game 1. Up until yesterday no Oiler had hit a round-tripper, which surprises me. Popick was hitting .286 headed into the day. Popick is listed at 6'4" 210lb, and he and Kolby Moore share the role of tallest officially-listed guys on the team. However, Moore looks like a big stout guy and Popick -- to me -- looks like he's got a more projectable frame. He's not a bean-pole but he looks like he will fill out a little more as he matures. If that's the case, Popick could develop into a real slugger.

On the Pilots side of things, Trevor Hairgrove must have found his old glove with the hole in it from last year because he's climbed back atop the Pilots' error standings. But wait, he started off pretty steady so maybe he can blame it on their road trip. I feel like I pick on the guy a lot but it's mostly because I want to see him succeed. In any event, he gets a pass from me on that end of it because he is hitting like a madman. He's batting .341 with a homer, 2 triples and 3 doubles (that's good for a .568 SLG%) plus 4-for-4 in the steals department. The Pilots named him player of the week and I can see why. Their offense has been pretty anemic so far this year, and they definitely need to keep Hairgrove's hot bat in the lineup.

Can Tim Maitland run or what? I still haven't seen the Pilots in person yet (I know, shame shame...) but I'll be running the stop watch on him when I do. The Fire tried to pick him off the other night and instead of diving back to the bag, he just ran on down to second...safely. He's 7-for-7 in steals this year, not bad.

And speaking of the Fire, how about Marc Schoch? Two doubles in that first game of the Saturday doubleheader, and looking at the stat sheets, he did pretty good on Sunday, too. So far he's hitting to the tune of .400 and has a team-leading 13 RBI. In case you were wondering, 13 RBI is good enough to lead the ABL right now. Right behind him in the AIA batting average hierarchy is Cody Terry, who showed some power Saturday, hitting a homer to straight-away center, about 405 feet. This Fire team can actually put some runs on the board, they're just having trouble putting it all together.

That about wraps it up for my random notes. These aren't in any particular hierarchy, I just wrote them out in the order they came to me and them lumped them together by team. I probably have some more laying around somewhere (I operate on the pile system of organization) but I guess that's good for a mid-week post. Later in the week I'll be taking in at least one real-life game, and it'll probably have more notes than photos, so look for some more detailed reports in the next couple days!