Minor League Roundup

Class AAA Indianapolis: Jose Bautista is steadily climbing after a rather slow start; he's now hitting .362/.438 with eleven extra-base hits. Rich Thompson is killing the ball, for whatever that's worth. The pitching situation is about the same as it was last week, with any number of guys putting up impressive stats. Sean Burnett had a horrible start on Sunday against Columbus to raise his ERA to 7.20.

Class AA Altoona: The offense is being led by Adam Boeve and a bunch of non-prospects: Brandon Chaves, Rafael Alvarez and now newly-signed Brett Roneberg. Craig Stansberry is having the same problems hitting for average that he was having last year after joining the Curve. Jorge Vasquez has struck out twenty batters in 10 1/3 innings. Class AA batters have just four hits against him. Vasquez is a guy who really should be viewed as someone who can help the big-league club, not as organizational filler.

Class A+ Lynchburg: All the Hillcats' ringers stopped hitting this week, as they suffered a five-game losing streak. Kyle Bloom, the team's only interesting prospect, should return to the rotation tonight following a couple weeks off with a minor injury. Bryan Holliday is pitching like he's trying to have a screenplay written about him or something: in 19 innings, he has struck out one batter and walked nineteen. Ridiculous. Those are the sorts of numbers that should get someone sent to the DL, or to extended spring training, or to the Greyhound Station, or somewhere. Anywhere.

Class A Hickory: The Crawdads still have a bunch of strong hitting from 2005 draftees Steve Pearce, Brent Lillibridge and Andrew McCutchen. All will probably be moved up to Lynchburg soon if they continue to hit this way. Pearce and Lillibridge are from fairly major college programs, so they probably won't face much of a challenge until they reach higher levels anyway.