Bill Hass on Greensboro Grasshoppers Baseball:The Shuffle Continues

from Bill Hass with Bill on Baseball, at www.gsohoppers.com:

The Shuffle/Shuttle Continues

With eight games remaining in the regular season, the Hoppers’ roster continues to undergo changes.

Brent Keys has been activated from the disabled list, where he spent time with a bruised wrist. Infielder Anthony Gomez was added to the roster from Jamestown.

To make room, pitcher Austin Brice was placed on the disabled list (forearm tendinitis) and pitcher Charlie Lowell was promoted to Jupiter. The moves leave the Hoppers with 12 pitchers and 13 position players.

Losing Brice and Lowell means the Hoppers have to solve some pitching issues — namely, who will plug into Brice’s spot in the rotation. Lowell would have been the obvious choice but with him gone, my guess is Scott Lyman will slide into that spot. Greg Nappo is another possibility.

The seven pitchers in the bullpen should get plenty of work down the stretch, with Josh Hodges and Jose Urena both having their innings count closely watched. Hodges is the scheduled starter Tuesday when the Hoppers open their final regular-season home stand. They will play three games against Hagerstown, followed by five games in four days at Lakewood.

Brice’s spot comes up after Hodges, followed by Andrew Heaney, Jake Esch and Urena.

By winning the final game in Augusta, Greensboro salvaged a 4-3 road trip, which started with a three-game sweep of Lexington. The Hoppers got outstanding pitching, allowing just 11 runs in the seven games. Five times the pitchers gave up just one run.

On the flip side, the offense needs to find its stride again after scoring just three runs in the Augusta series. Keys, who has been on and off the DL in the second half of the season, could be the player who gets things going.

Gomez, drafted in the sixth round out of Vanderbilt in June, gives the Hoppers an extra middle infielder. He hit .269 in 51 games at Jamestown and struck out only 10 times. Gomez went 1-4 in his Hoppers debut.

Blog post from Bill on Baseball at www.gsohoppers.com:

One thought on “Bill Hass on Greensboro Grasshoppers Baseball:The Shuffle Continues

  1. Bill Hass will appreciate this. The article in today’s News and Record about the kid for the Grasshoppers has a chance to win the SAL batting title. It will be the first Greensboro batting title since Manny Jose in 1985. A funny story about Manny Jose and that season. We started the 1985 season on a 9 game road trip where Manny hit lead-off and I hit 9th. We came home with 0 wins and 9 losses. Manager Doug Camilli flip floped me and Manny in the batting order. So I led off and Manny hit 9th. We went on to The South Atlantic Championship series where we lost to the Florence Blue Jays 2 games to 1. Maqnny was so fast but not a real deciplined runner and he could hit but struck out a lot so he wasn’t a good lead off guy. So that move by Camilli made us a better team and it helped Manny win a batting title because the pressure of 9 is a lot less than lead-off. Also, he saw fastball after fastball in the 9 hole. No disrespect for Manny.

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