Sunday, June 14, 2015

2015 Grandstand Reading Fightin Phils Top Prospects #2 Aaron Nola

Pirates 4, Phillies 3
Game 63 - Saturday Afternoon, June 13th in Pittsburgh
Record - 22-41, 5th Place, 11 games behind the Mets

One Sentence Summary:  Once again, the Phillies couldn't string together a few hits when they needed them and the Pirates prevailed 4-3.

What It Means:  This seems like the 10th or 11th time this season the Phillies have had an active five game losing streak going.

What Happened:  Starting pitcher Sean O'Sullivan allowed four runs in his six innings of work.  Trailing by a run in the eighth, the Phillies loaded the bases with no outs.  Maikel Franco, Cody Asche and Freddy Galvis all grounded out in quick succession to end the threat.

Featured Card:  We listened to the first half of this game on our drive to Reading to take in the Reading Fightin Phils game.  I'll have a full recap of the Double-A action in an upcoming post.

Transaction:  Following the game, Darin Ruf was optioned to Triple-A and the long-exiled former All-Star Domonic Brown was recalled.  Ruf will see more regular at-bats with the IronPigs and hopefully Brown has a strong few weeks in order to raise his trade value.

5 comments:

The Junior Junkie said...

This dude here. This is my dude.

Jim said...

And now he's on to Triple-A! Very anxious to see this guy in red pinstripes.

Anonymous said...

Looking forward to the Double-A info! Did you get a copy of the set this Nola's from? At sometime in the past I got on the Fightin's email list, so I saw images of this set when it first got announced (promo for buying a book of tickets, if I remember right) and it looked like a pretty nice little set. It's nice to know that some teams still regard baseball cards as a "perk". :-)

Steve F. said...

I went to the Reading game on Saturday night with my dad and brother, and Nola looked good. He gave up a 2-run HR in the first inning as most fans were just settling into their seats (our group included), but then he shut down Akron for the rest of that inning and 4 more. It was surprising that they pulled him after 5 (and just 69 pitches) but then when the Phils announced he was moving up to AAA it made more sense. He looks like he is going to be pretty solid. I don't know that he will be the next Cole Hamels, but we could live with a long-term #2 guy like Brett Myers, Aaron Harang, Roy Oswalt level of production.

Steve F. said...

Oh, and I didn't realize that 1953 Topps-style Reading set was a promo for buying tickets, but they are now selling it ("limited quantities") for $10 at the stadium and on their website. I would say they had about 50 of the sets sitting out on a display in the team store. I don't know whether there are thousands more in a back room somewhere. But it's a nice-looking set and a solid group of prospects. This could be like getting a minor league set around 2002-04 with Utley, Howard, Ruiz, Hamels and Rollins in it--or at least we can hope that Quinn, Crawford, Eflin, Nola, etc. reach such heights!