In the Dominican on Tuesday night, rain wiped out one game and shortened another. Starling Marte’s team lost 6-0 after the game was called with two outs in the top of the seventh. He went 0-for-3 with a strikeout. Through 11 games, he is batting .143, with a double, a triple, two homers and a 1:14 BB/SO ratio.
Jung-Ho Kang and Edwin Espinal had their game postponed due to rain after three innings. Kang was 0-for-2 at the time, while Espinal had a single and a walk in two plate appearances. It appears they will just start the game over at another time, so these stats will be lost.
Anderson Feliz went 0-for-3 with a run scored. Due to a 3-for-19 stretch over the last six games, his average is down to .289 after a hot start.
In Venezuela, Elvis Escobar struck out as a pinch-hitter in his only at-bat. He’s now at .271/.319/.327 through 28 games.
Jose Osuna should join Bravos de Margarita soon. He said a week ago that he thought he would need 7-10 days to be ready. Nothing was announced, but today would mark the low-end on that estimate. The team believes that Elias Diaz could join them a week from today.
In Mexico, Carlos Munoz broke out of a recent mini-slump by going 2-for-4 with a run scored. He was 1-for-16 over his previous five games. Munoz has a .284 average through 28 games. He committed his fifth error of the winter in this game. In seven years of pro ball, he never made more than six errors in a season.
In Colombia, 17-year-old shortstop Francisco Acuna played his eighth game on Sunday night and went 0-for-3 with a walk and his first error in 34 total chances. He’s hitting .100/.280/.150 through his first 25 plate appearances. His team was off on Monday and Tuesday’s results (he started at shortstop and batted ninth) won’t be available until later today.
In Australia, catcher Arden Pabst was injured (type of injury wasn’t announced), so he was removed from the Sydney Blue Sox roster. That’s the bad news, but as a result of that injury, Jin-De Jhang will take his spot on the roster. It could be a big winter for Jhang, who missed a lot of time this season due to an oblique injury. As of right now, he looks like the front runner for the second catching spot with Indianapolis, splitting time with Jacob Stallings. The Pirates re-signed Jhang as a minor league free agent three weeks ago.
The season in Australia begins tomorrow for some teams, Friday for others. Michael Suchy is also on the Sydney roster.
A few random things I love about winter ball in Australia. The first one is that summer starts there on December 1st, so there is nothing winter about the league, but it’s still considered winter ball here. The second is that the Sunday games there usually start early enough to make our Sunday winter articles we post at 8 AM, plus their Sunday games have ended before Saturday night games in Mexico on a few occasions.
