Tag: Shorebird of the Month

Well, my friends, the rodeo has come to an end.

I never believed that when Josh Potter became my first Shorebird of the Week back on April 6, 2006 that it would become a series that spanned most of the life of my monoblogue website, which was only a few months old when I started. It turned out that I featured a pretty good slice of the guys who played here in that span of time, over 250 in all.

But it has to end someplace and it’s getting harder and harder for me to put these together in a manner that I like, so when I can’t do my best work it’s time to put the feature to bed. I will saddle it up one more time tonight with my August/September combined Shorebird position player and pitcher of the month.

Let’s begin with the position player, who finally had a healthy half-season to show what he could do. An injured Reed Trimble came up at the tail end of last year after being drafted as the Competitive Balance “B” pick in 2021 out of the University of Southern Mississippi and hit just .169 in 16 disappointing games. Rejoining the Shorebirds in late July this year, he got off to a bit of a slow start again but the Tupelo native finally blossomed like a crepe myrtle in August, stroking a slash line of .307/2/16/.775 OPS in the month-plus. (Since there were only 10 scheduled games in September this season, I decided to combine months.)

It culminated a year where Reed hit .291/2/18/.747 OPS in 31 Delmarva games (after an 0-for-6 rehab stint in Florida.) Since Reed turned 22 this year, he’s not way off the timetable for a prospect although it should be noted that this season’s CBB pick, Jud Fabian, tore up the Carolina League in meriting a quick promotion to Aberdeen – in fact, he was in line to snag this honor until he was called up, as was Dylan Beavers. Unfortunately for Reed, it’s two more outfielders who have leaped over him on the Orioles’ depth chart. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Orioles pulled a Darrel Hernaiz with Trimble and kept him here for another couple months to see how he starts a season.

Besides Fabian and Beavers, the other contender was a bit of a surprise. Fan favorite Creed Willems put together a great month as part of a second half where he surged his overall batting average over 50 points after July 4. But Trimble won out for my final Shorebird Position Player of the Month honor.

If it weren’t for the extended month, my pitcher would not have had the requisite number of games on the roster as he came off the injured list on August 14. But Ryan Long picked up where he left off as the ace of the Shorebirds’ staff (he was close to winning in June and July as well) and thus is my final Pitcher of the Month.

Ryan came to us as a 17th round draft pick last season from the unusually named Pomona College/Pitzer College in California. (In looking this up, I found it’s two schools who compete in athletics as one, and the arrangement is over 50 years old. Whatever works for them.) He was sent to the GCL in Florida and, truth be told, didn’t burn the place up – 0-2 with a 7.71 ERA in just seven innings. Regardless, once spring training ended Ryan found himself on the Delmarva staff and he’s quietly become one of our best hurlers: in August and September he finished 3-1 with a 2.16 ERA in 16 2/3 innings, with a nifty K/BB ratio of 17 to 4. (That’s been an issue with several Delmarva pitchers, as they are worst in the Carolina League at allowing walks.) It didn’t hurt that, despite his injury after the first appearance, he put forth four straight shutout outings covering 16 innings.

Ryan finished the season with just that three-week chunk missed with an injury but led the Shorebird qualifiers with a 7-5 record and 3.10 ERA, as well as a 1.25 WHIP. He also put up a good 73/31 strikeout to walk ratio in 72 2/3 innings. He’ll turn 23 over the offseason so it’s my suspicion he will be Aberdeen-bound to begin 2023, joining several other 2021 picks who have already made the leap.

Unlike the batting competition, Long pretty much dominated the pitching side; however, there were spirited efforts from 2022 draft choice Cameron Weston, trade piece Yaqui Rivera, and full-season pitcher Moises Chace to crash his party. But Long had the best month.

So, like Porky Pig would stutter, that’s all folks! I’ll have the Shorebird of the Year next week and that will be it for baseball coverage at monoblogue. In October it’s relocating and expanding to a new Substack page called The Knothole where my love of baseball will see the end of this era and the beginning of my historical look at the game. (I might have some Shorebird stuff, too, but no more players of the month.)

Until next week, happy trails.

For the penultimate edition of this series, I have two winners who have come aboard midstream to provide a spark to the team, which ended July by taking 5 of 6 in Lynchburg.

This is a good photo of Frederick Bencosme because it shows him at a place he often hangs out: first base. After two games in June getting his feet wet in the Florida Complex League, Frederick was promoted here June 9 and has worked his way around the infield: mostly at short, but also getting a handful of starts at second and third.

Even though he hails from the Dominican Republic and not Panama, the kid reminds me a lot of Rod Carew – plays the similar positions, has good bat control, and hits it where they ain’t quite a bit – for the month, Bencosme slashed a team-best .369/2/10/.960 OPS, which followed up a similar June. For the season here, Frederick is hitting .362 in 40 games, with a knack for putting the ball in play – just a combined 35 strikeouts and walks in 167 plate appearances here. It follows up a solid season in his native DR, where he slashed .310/2/16/.816 OPS in 44 games for the Orioles 2 team.

Signed as an international free agent August 14, 2020, the cancellation of the 2020 season meant Bencosme couldn’t begin playing until last season (although it’s likely he would have waited anyway as a late-season signee.) But the 19-year-old has shown he can hit pitching at each level he’s played; perhaps the one drawback to his game so far is the need to improve his fielding a little bit as he lags behind his league peers at shortstop. Still, it wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t spend a few weeks at Aberdeen before the summer’s out, depending on what happens with the plethora of infield prospects ahead of him on the depth chart.

Drafted in the 11th round last season out of the University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown, Dylan Heid had a July where he led the Shorebirds in strikeouts as well as OPS against, effectively shutting down the opposition to the tune of a 2-0 record and 2.25 ERA in 16 innings pitched – close to a starter’s workload in 5 relief appearances.

2022 was the pro debut for Heid, who – like his position player mate Bencosme – made two appearances in the Florida Complex League before coming to Delmarva late in June. After strugging in his two June appearances here, allowing 6 earned runs in 5 1/3 innings, he’s whittled that lofty ERA down to 4.22, with a 2-2 record in 21 1/3 innings, striking out 28 while walking 12.

Heid was one of those players who waited out last year’s draft as a member of the MLB Draft League, suiting up for the Trenton Thunder, a former Eastern League member that lost its spot to the previously independent Somerset Patriots. That experience may have been helpful for Heid, a Pennsylvania native who came from a school that’s only sent a handful of players to professional baseball. One knock surely to come on him is that he’s old for this level, having turned 24 in May, so he’ll need to be impressive to keep moving up the ladder.

This monthlong stretch may be of great assistance in that regard.

As I noted above, this is the penultimate edition. I’ve decided to combine August and September since the latter schedule has just 10 games. So the final Shorebirds of the Month will be selected September 15, with the Shorebird of the Year picked September 22. Then it will be time to embark on a new, exciting baseball-related project I’m putting together called The Knothole.

If things had turned out ever-so-slightly different, I would have had dual repeat winners for the first time. Until the last week of the month, Darell Hernaiz was once again the clear leader of the band insofar as the top position player went, but instead of getting another award he got something more important: a long-overdue promotion to Aberdeen on May 24.

In the interim, this month’s eventual winner did something you don’t see every day: hit a natural cycle of (in order) single, double, triple, and home run. That 5-for-5 day last week (with another single added for good measure in a 14-6 win at Charleston) vaulted Isaac Bellony past the absent Hernaiz and into this month’s honor. The switch-hitting outfielder ended the month with a slash line of .250/4/20/.845 OPS, all of which led the qualifiers. (One hitter had a better average and OPS but in a limited number of at-bats, only 16.)

The 20-year-old native of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands was signed back when the Orioles were beginning their push to rebuild the international pipeline in the latter days of Dan Duquette’s tenure as general manager. (For context, Bellony was signed on July 27, 2018 – right in the midst of five major league selloff trades that brought over a dozen players to the Orioles’ starved minor league system. Those begat a haul that soon brought former Shorebirds Jean Carlos Encarnacion and Jean Carmona over.) Isaac showed some potential in the Dominican Summer League when he began playing in 2019, so after the year-long minor league hiatus he was promoted to the Complex League in Florida, hitting .259/4/11/.804 OPS overall, primarily for the Orange team (37 of 39 games.)

In the absence of Hernaiz, Isaac has become the primary offensive threat for the Shorebirds, and despite his average falling off a little bit in May, his overall .262/6/30/.843 OPS at the end of May led the remainder of the team in those slash categories. One item that may change in the future, though: like Cedric Mullins before him, future success may dictate the switch-hitting may be dropped as Bellony’s only 1-for-21 as a right-handed hitter this season. Given his stat sheet now has a handful of left-on-left at-bats, that may have already occurred.

Fans of the Shorebirds may have noticed the international flavor of the team this year, particularly as Bellony represents a product of the emphasis on scouting abroad. Isaac is the first homegrown international position player to be a Shorebird of the Month since 2017 (current Shorebirds coach Daniel Fajardo was the last) but I suspect there may be more in the pipeline.

Meanwhile, on the pitching side Daniel Lloyd was definitely in the mix for repeating the honor of Shorebird Pitcher of the Month, but instead I chose to honor another player recently promoted to Aberdeen.

Righthander Alex Pham was here at the very tail end of an extended 2021 season, pitching in three games as a wrap to a year that sent the Bay Area native from his senior campaign at the University of San Francisco to Wareham, Massachusetts for a brief pre-draft stint in the showcase Cape Cod League circuit to five games (and all of 6 2/3 innings) in the Complex League to two weekends and a week here. Looks like he pretty much covered all the corners of the country.

While Alex was unscored upon here, a couple rough outings in Florida contributed to an overall 3-1, 4.63 mark and 1.543 WHIP. A 12:3 strikeout to walk ratio was also promising for a guy not picked until the 19th round. (Just like Shorebird of the Week Hall of Fame pitcher Josh Hader – granted, Hader is by far the most successful from that year’s round, just three of whom even made the Show.)

Pham didn’t show up here this season until the end of April, so I’ll take the liberty here of lumping in his single one-inning appearance with April to his May stats. It all worked out to a 1.59 ERA in six appearances covering 11 1/3 innings, where Alex allowed just eight hits and struck out 15 while walking seven for a 1.324 WHIP. Perhaps those aren’t eye-popping stats, but Orioles management has been aggressive with moving up the 2021 draft class and considering Alex will turn 23 later this fall they wanted to see how his outstanding breaking ball (it was very fun to watch batters react to it) would play at a higher level. (So far, so good – his Aberdeen numbers are a shade better than he had for the Shorebirds.)

Pham emerged from a scrum at the top of the pitching heap that included the aforementioned Lloyd as well as Hugo Beltran, Shane Davis, Alejandro Mendez, and Preston Price. Hopefully those who remain will keep making it hard to select the next Shorebird Pitcher of the Month.

I’ll be back to the normal first Thursday selection in July for the June honorees.

Back for another season, and I’m kicking it off with a very familiar face as my first Shorebird position player of the month.

In fact, Darell Hernaiz is one of just a few Shorebirds of the Year to begin the next season with Delmarva. But unlike the others, who won simply as being the standardbearer on a well below-average team, Darell is stuck behind a whole host of more highly-regarded prospects on the left side of the infield, several of whom he shared time with here last season.

So while Darell’s still here, he’s spent his April crushing the competition to a point where Hernaiz is the unquestioned best offensive player on the team, slashing .322/5/16/1.009 OPS – all numbers which led the Shorebirds’ attack.

While Darell was highly placed as a 5th round draft pick in 2019 out of a Texas high school, the Puerto Rican native still languishes behind guys like Gunnar Henderson (drafted ahead of him in 2019), 2020’s Jordan Westburg and Coby Mayo, and Cesar Prieto, a Cuban shortstop signed this offseason and assigned to Aberdeen. Even though Prieto was hurt recently, the Orioles opted to move Greg Cullen’s rehab to Aberdeen rather than finally promote Hernaiz. Perhaps it’s the seven errors Hernaiz committed that keeps him here, but one has to wonder if Darell will be one of those guys who leaves as a six-year free agent and makes it with someone else. Meanwhile, he’ll hopefully just keep raking and contend for a back-to-back honor no one has done before.

We also have a somewhat familiar face as the Shorebird Pitcher of the Month, as Daniel Lloyd came up with the wave of 2021 draft picks at the tail end of last season. But while Daniel struggled a bit as a Shorebird in 2021 (1-0 but with a 6.17 ERA and 1.971 WHIP in nine appearances covering 11 2/3 innings) he’s done what many players have in their return to Delmarva: put up markedly improved numbers. In eight innings in April Dan allowed but one earned run and only five hits (and walks) while striking out 11. He only allowed a run in one of his five appearances in April and kept the streak going to begin May, running his ERA down to 0.90.

A South Carolinian born and bred, I’m sure Dan is enjoying the Shorebirds’ current week in Columbia, where he pitched for the University of South Carolina after starring at Summerville High School in the Charleston area. He was selected by the Orioles in the 14th round last season, and opened his career with one inning in the Complex League before reporting to Delmarva last August. Dan is one of a handful of pitchers who the Shorebirds retained this spring after many of them got our home cooking for the first time last season now that Delmarva no longer has a buffer team in Aberdeen for rookies out of the former Gulf Coast League.

Since Dan is only 21, he’s certainly at an appropriate level for his advancement and will probably see a lot of late-inning situations for the Shorebirds as the season goes on. At this time, Lloyd has not been in a save situation but the guys who get holds eventually get that chance, so we will see.

Unlike the position player competition, which Hernaiz dominated, the pitching came down to several guys as the month ended, with bad outings doing in a couple competitors. A very reasonable argument, though, could have been made for Juan De Los Santos to have grabbed the brass ring, and it was a close contest where Lloyd barely prevailed.

If you didn’t know me or didn’t read my website on a regular basis for years, it would be hard to guess what Jacob Julius, Nick Haughian, John Ruettiger, Dariel Delgado, and Mike Burke have in common. Yes, they all played for the Shorebirds but these are the five previous players who were honored in September as a Shorebird of the Week. In years past, whenever the season stretched for more than a handful of days into the month, I would have one last SotW honoree who oftentimes was the best of a small group who were left over as players who hadn’t yet been selected from the season.

This year is different, and may be unique once again. Given the delayed beginning to the season thanks to the CCP virus, we played a total of 17 games in September. It was a meaningful enough number that I decided to have one last crop of Shorebirds of the Month despite the shortened season and this season will be my first without a repeat winner.

In the middle of August, the Shorebirds got a shot in the arm with fifteen new players, most of whom were draftees from 2021. One exception in that group was a player who was drafted in 2020 but was kept in Florida after spring training was completed this season to get a little more seasoning at that level. But all Coby Mayo did for the Shorebirds was slash .344/3/17/1.018 OPS for the month, terrorizing the various pitching staffs of Salem, Carolina, and Fredericksburg along the way.

Drafted in the 4th round of 2020’s abbreviated draft out of Stoneman-Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida (yes, it’s that high school), Coby has given those fine folks something to be proud of as he finally made his long-awaited pro debut in the Florida Complex League back in June. Playing mostly for the FCL’s Orioles Black team, Mayo slashed .329/4/15/1.005 OPS in 26 total games before moving up to Low-A as a 19-year-old (he turns 20 in December.)

The third baseman showed no signs of stopping once he arrived here, hitting .311/5/26/.963 OPS and holding down third base in the 27 games he played here (out of 30 possible, a stretch where the team overall went 20-10.) Even with those gaudy numbers, though, there’s no guarantee he’ll be moving up to Aberdeen as the Orioles’ system is suddenly flush with a lot of great prospects on the left side of the infield. Mayo may well be here next April to start the season, but if he keeps up those numbers he won’t be finishing here.

On the other hand, my Pitcher of the Month may remind readers more of those obscure weekly honorees I alluded to earlier.

Rickey Ramirez didn’t have the dominating month that some prior pitchers of the month have had, but instead was the steadiest of performers and rated high enough in all the categories to win the honor this month. His 10 innings of work this month was sterling, allowing just one earned run and seven hits, striking out 13 while walking three for a WHIP that was an even 1. He even picked up two victories for the month.

Rickey was another pitcher who was started slowly, making five appearances in the Complex League before moving up. And something about his approach must have resonated with the Orioles because the numbers in Florida were pedestrian at best, allowing five earned in 5 1/3 innings. For Delmarva, though, Rickey ended up 3-1 with a 3.21 ERA in 18 appearances covering 28 innings. He closed out 16 of his 18 appearances, garnering 4 saves (which joined a three-way tie for the team lead with Thomas Girard and Shelton Perkins.)

Unlike Mayo, who was a prized prospect, Ramirez was drafted in the 15th round by the Minnesota Twins out of Fresno State back in 2017. The Californian pitched two seasons in the Twins’ system, topping out at then high-A Fort Myers to begin 2019 but was eventually demoted to low-A Cedar Rapids.

He came to the Orioles as a minor league Rule 5 selection last year, and while these players are often footnotes to their new organizations, the Orioles put the comparative veteran (he turns 25 next month) in some prime spots. But it’s likely his time is running out unless he can latch on with Aberdeen next season because there aren’t many 25-year-old prospects toiling at this level.

As advertised, next week I’ll be revealing my Shorebird of the Year as I wrap up this most unusual of seasons.

This month’s contests were a battle of attrition.

Because the position player roster had a significant upheaval in the middle of the month, I had a dilemma: the new players wouldn’t be on the roster long enough to qualify (I use 2/3 of the games as a criteria) nor would the players they were replacing. Fortunately, I had a pretty good candidate who stayed all month and that guy was Darell Hernaiz.

In August Hernaiz hit .272/1/16/.667 OPS, playing in 20 games. He had a few breathers when the new kids came to town, but has settled into regular shortstop duty in the latter part of the season after splitting time between second and third while Jordan Westburg and Gunnar Henderson were here manning short. Having just turned 20 during the season and not putting up quite the numbers the more highly-touted Westburg and Henderson have, it appears the Orioles are quite content to leave Hernaiz here for a full season and give him a chance to move up to Aberdeen for 2022. For the campaign, though, the Puerto Rico native (who was drafted out of Americas High School in El Paso, Texas) has slashed .270/5/44/.673 OPS, and has been perhaps the most consistent performer we’ve seen as his monthly average numbers have held between .256 and .281 for the season. In addition, Darell has 16 steals on the season.

Darell’s always been a contender for the position player of the month honors, but had Colton Cowser started a week earlier and stayed on pace he may well have been the honoree. Cowser was the best of a large group of (mostly) newly-drafted players to make the leap from the Complex League in August and will surely be a player with a good chance of being my first-ever September position player of the month.

As for the Pitcher of the Month, it was an easy choice for me and probably about that easy for the Low-A East League, which is also honoring Jean Pinto.

Pinto, whose modest career had heretofore been three brief starts in the Dominican Summer League for the DSL Angels’ team, was half of the player haul the Orioles received in their trade of Jose Iglesias last December 2. And while Iglesias has wore out his welcome with the Angels, who released him last week (since signing with the Red Sox) Pinto is coming into his own as a 20-year-old pitcher for the Shorebirds, who received him when he was promoted from the Complex League July 27.

While Jean, who hails from Valencia, Venezuela, did not get a decision in his five August starts, he did pitch a team-leading 26 2/3 innings, allowing but 13 hits and four earned runs for a 1.35 ERA, striking out 29 and walking only 6. (That’s a WHIP of just 0.72 – mighty stingy.) His two best starts in August were matching six-inning, two-hit dominations of Down East at home and at Lynchburg where he also struck out six in each start without walking a batter. That’s the kind of consistency that will get a 20-year-old talent promoted eventually. And for the season, including his FCL stints, he’s sporting a 1-2 record with a 1.95 ERA, allowing batters an anemic .149 average along with a 65/13 strikeout-to-walk ratio overall. While newly-acquired Gregori Vasquez also had a pretty good month, Pinto was by far the cream of the crop.

I’m penciling Jean into Aberdeen’s rotation next season since he’s pretty much proven himself at this level.

It looks like, at this point, I will be doing the September Shorebirds of the Month on the 23rd since they are (as of this writing, on their off day) 5 games back of a playoff spot with 12 to play. That may sound insurmountable but the two teams directly in front of them are in the midst of playing each other and the Shorebirds play the current second-place team in their last series. So a good run may be enough depending on what else happens.

But unless they make the playoffs, I will do the Shorebird of the Year on September 30 and picks and pans on October 7. All that will be left for the year then will be the Hall of Fame induction post for my (so far) four members of the Class of 2021 in December.

Okay, I lied. I managed to find a little time this week to get the post in so you don’t have to wait until the 12th. Truth be told, it was a pretty easy decision insofar as the position player went, but the pitcher was a razor-thin margin between two guys.

Let’s start with the position player, who ironically came up to replace a previous Shorebird of the Month.

When J.D. Mundy got his well-deserved promotion to Aberdeen, he was replaced at first base by another undrafted free agent, part of the bumper crop of 2020 UDFAs. Even better, he also goes by his initials and brought a lot of the same game, slamming 12 home runs in his first two months. While TT Bowens doesn’t quite have the same batting average, he’s done his best to carry the team in July and those offensive numbers were enough to earn him the honor of Shorebird Position Player of the Month.

As noted above, TT came as a non-drafted signee last summer, so his June 1 debut also began his professional career in games that count. A Connecticut native and product of Central Connecticut State University, he probably wasn’t going to attract a ton of notice in an area that wasn’t a baseball hotbed (although he played on a NCAA-qualifying team in 2019.) But he had a June that put him in the conversation for that month’s position player honors and continued his solid play in July, winning the month’s Triple Crown. On the season (including a game in August) Bowens is hitting .235/12/37/.806 OPS, which puts him among the Shorebirds’ leaders for the season overall and particularly the players who have been here most of the season.

Slotted in behind Mundy in the Oriole organizational pecking order, it wouldn’t shock me to see TT finish the season here and see if he can eclipse the 20 homer mark. Normally consigned to organizational player status, the crop of UDFAs signed by the Orioles last year may have contributed more to the organization so far than the six guys they actually drafted.

Now let’s look at this month’s pitcher, who definitely earned the honor.

Like Bowens, our pitcher is an UDFA, but unlike him this guy was passed over during the entire 40-round draft in 2019. Coming out of San Joaquin Delta College in California, Golden State native Noah Denoyer signed with the Orioles on August 5, 2019 and was soon brought cross-country to throw a few innings for the Orioles’ former Gulf Coast League squad, 4 to be exact. (In that time he allowed 2 runs on 3 hits, fanning five while walking just one.) And losing a season because of the pandemic meant that Denoyer probably lost a campaign that may well have been split between the GCL and Aberdeen, with maybe a shot at the Shorebirds late in the season.

In five July starts, Noah only went 1-1 but pitched 24 1/3 innings, allowing just 5 runs on 19 hits. He did not allow a walk in his last 21 innings but struck out 27 overall (vs. 3 walks.) That’s the sort of control which makes for a successful pitcher, and thus far his lowest game score in a start has been 47. (For comparison, a minimal “quality” start where the pitcher allows 3 runs in 6 innings, with six hits allowed, six strikeouts, and three walks would net a game score of 49 in the Bill James version that Baseball Reference uses.) A little more luck and Noah may have had a couple more wins.

For all of 2021, Noah has a 5-3 record, a 3.02 ERA in 14 appearances (10 starts), and just 21 runs and 43 hits allowed in 57 innings. He has struck out 67, walking 25 – although he’s on the aforementioned stretch of starts where he’s allowed no walks, which will eventually give him a solid ratio of maybe 3 walks per nine if he keeps it going. Not bad for a small college guy passed over in the draft; perhaps the Oriole scouts have found another diamond in the rough who will be ready for advancement before the season’s out.

While the position player was a fairly easy choice, I agonized between Denoyer and Houston Roth for the pitcher honors. Both had sensational months (Roth picked up four of Delmarva’s ten wins for July) but Denoyer was just a tick better overall.

Because September begins on a Wednesday again, this time I will wait until September 9 to announce my August winners. Depending on whether the Shorebirds make the playoffs or not, the September winner will be announced September 23 or 30, with the Shorebird of the Year selected the week afterward and the return of my annual picks and pans the week after that.

Scary to think we only have seven weeks left in the season, and just 15 home games after tonight!