Matt Morris Report: Austin Meadows breaks out of slump

Altoona, the West Virginia Black Bears and Bristol were rained out.

-- Wilfredo Boscan and A.J. Morris combined to blank Syracuse, 4-0.  Boscan, however, left the game with an unknown injury after walking the leadoff batter in the 6th.  He allowed just two hits and two walks, and struck out five.  Morris gave up four hits and a walk over the last four innings, and struck out two.  The red-hot Brent Morel (yes, I said it, it was hard) was 2-3 with his eighth HR.  John Bowker hit his first HR since joining the Indians, his fourth on the season.  Elias Diaz went 0-3.

-- Austin Meadows (pictured) went 4-5 with a double as Bradenton beat Brevard County, 7-4.  Meadows came into the game 13-for-82 over his last 20 games, with just one two-hit game in that span.  (Happily, his BB:K ratio remains good at 29:38.)  Barrett Barnes added a double and his fifth HR in five at-bats, and Erich Weiss was 2-4 with a double.  Reese McGuire had a double in five at-bats.  Tyler Eppler missed out on the win when he got knocked out with two outs in the 5th.  He gave up the four runs on seven hits and two walks, and struck out three.  Henry Hirsch got the win instead, as he allowed just a hit and no walks in two and a third innings, with four strikeouts.

-- The West Virginia Power beat Greensboro, 3-1.  Stephen Tarpley gave up one run in six innings on four hits and two walks.  He struck out five.  Jake Burnette continued his up-and-down ways, in this case up, as he gave up a hit and no walks, and fanned four, in two innings.  Michael Suchy was 2-4 and Taylor Gushue 2-3.  Cole Tucker and Connor Joe didn't play.

-- The GCL Pirates won a seesaw game from the Astros, 4-3, in eleven innings.  The Bucs took a 1-0 lead, provided by Yoel Gonzalez' first HR, into the 8th.  The Astros scored three in the top of the inning on just one hit, courtesy of three walks, a wild pitch and a passed ball.  The Pirates tied it with two out in the bottom of the 9th on an RBI single by Michael De La Cruz, then won it on a walkoff double by Jhoan Herrera in the 11th.  Starter Luis Escobar, one of the better arms the Pirates brought up from the DSL, threw five shutout innings, allowing one hit and no walks, and fanning six.  Escobar failed to survive the 1st inning in his first start, so this was a nice turnaround.  (It probably didn't hurt that the Astros are hitting .130 as a team.)  Cristian Mota, a small lefty who reaches the mid-90s, threw a scoreless inning and two thirds, striking out three, but he also wild pitched in the go-ahead run in the 8th.  Raul Siri was 2-3 with two walks.

-- The DSL Pirates lost to the Rangers2, 8-6.  Starter Adonis Pichardo gave up two runs on five hits and two walks in four innings.  He fanned five.  Yondry Contreras was 2-4 and Melvin Jimenez 2-5.