Class AAA Indianapolis: Ryan Doumit's torrid pace continues. Nyjer Morgan is doing his best to get himself noticed, hitting .362/.414/.448 and stealing 11 bases while being caught just once. Yurendell DeCaster had a fantastic week and is now hitting .333/.433/.431. Bryan Bullington beat Norfolk for the second time yesterday; he's now 3-0 with a 1.52 ERA, although he only has 13 strikeouts in 23.2 innings. Sean Burnett walked five and struck out none against Richmond on Monday.
Class AA Altoona: Neil Walker had a solid week and has raised his OPS to .722. Unfortunately, it's the same old Walker - he isn't walking or hitting for power, it's all batting average. That's not going to work in the majors. Andrew McCutchen improved his numbers this week with a pair of terrific games on Sunday and Monday, but his OPS is still just .598. Except for Alay Soler and Dave Davidson, all the pitching prospects on the team (Yoslan Herrera, Wardell Starling, Josh Shortslef, Justin Vaclavik) have been pounded.
Class A+ Lynchburg: Steve Pearce has hit four homers in his last three games - and five in his last five - and now has a .712 slugging percentage. Of course, he hit the ball pretty well in more than half a season at Lynchburg last year - what's he still doing down there? Unfortunately, there's nothing interesting to report on the pitching side.
Class A Hickory: Offensively, it's basically the same story as last week - the Crawdads have a bunch of semi-prospects clubbing the ball. Jamie Romak continues to hit like he's the South Atlantic League's Albert Pujols. Angel Gonzalez has dropped out of the party after going 4-for-27 this week, but Eddie Prasch (remember him?) and Jared Keel have joined in the fun. Unfortunately, they play the same position. Keel was a 31st round draft pick and the Pirates have treated him like an organizational player, but he's only 22 and he's hit very well since joining the organization. It might behoove the Pirates to give him some more playing time to figure out what they've got. They've got Prasch and Kent Sakamoto both playing well at the corners, though, and both were drafted with much higher picks, so it looks like Keel will have to scrap for playing time until someone gets promoted. On the pitching side, the Crawdads have several guys performing well, including Jared Hughes, Eric Krebs, Kyle Pearson and Charles Benoit.