Alen Hanson hit his league-leading seventh triple on Friday night, driving in his 35th run of the season. He’s showing some power this year, with ten doubles and six homers, to go along with all those triples. Hanson has also been clutch with runners in scoring position, hitting .365 in 52 at-bats. He has hits in all nine June games Altoona has played, leading to a .342/.375/.500 slash line this month.
Nick Kingham made his AAA debut last night and he was spectacular. He went seven shutout innings, allowing five hits and a walk, while picking up eight strikeouts. Shown below is his last strikeout of the game, getting the awkward swing from Justin Christian, who has played parts of three seasons in the Majors.
John started working at Pirates Prospects in 2009, but his connection to the Pittsburgh Pirates started exactly 100 years earlier when Dots Miller debuted for the 1909 World Series champions. John was born in Kearny, NJ, two blocks from the house where Dots Miller grew up. From that hometown hero connection came a love of Pirates history, as well as the sport of baseball.
When he didn't make it as a lefty pitcher with an 80+ MPH fastball and a slider that needed work, John turned to covering the game, eventually focusing in on the prospects side, where his interest was pushed by the big league team being below .500 for so long. John has covered the minors in some form since the 2002 season, and leads the draft and international coverage on Pirates Prospects. He writes daily on Pittsburgh Baseball History, when he's not covering the entire system daily throughout the entire year on Pirates Prospects.
Can we make another trade with Florida to bring back Perry Hill – He would be good to work with Hanson at shortstop. Who currently is teaching Hanson how to field the position?
Carlos Garcia maybe?
I’m really interested to see how well Vance Worley can bring it this year and if Kingham keeps being nasty like this… Are we looking at a rotation of Cole,Morton,Kingham,Locke, (Cumpton,Worley) for 2015 or for 2014??? Just asking, are these our best 5 right now? Ol’ King Cole and their nasty friends?