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Pirates Caffeine: Owens Nice Start, Alderson Loss, Cain K’s Five, Marte & Presley Stay Hot
By Tom Smith
The Pittsburgh Pirates
made little noise this offseason, but one item the brass often spoke about was the young pitchers who would begin the 2011 season in AAA. For a ballclub starving for pitching, the season just got off to a nice start.
Rudy Owens, welcome to AAA.
The lefthander threw seven innings walked nobody, struckout five and got the win as Indy shot down the Mud Hens 5-1. Joe Beimel pitched an inning and struck out two batters.
When we saw Owens at Bradenton he didn’t have his command, thankfully he saved it for when it really counted. [Owens Spring Training Video not showing? [Click here]
Good Lord Alex Presley is smoking. Three more hits yesterday for Indianapolis. The Tribe had nine hits, eight singles and a Josh Harrison double. Gorkys Hernandez also added three hits.
By the way, the ice has been broken, Andrew Lambo has a hit….and two more strikeouts.
Clipped from: indianapolis.indians.milb.com (share this clip)
Altoona’s Tim Alderson took the loss after Aaron Pribanic went five innings, got eight groundball outs, gave up three runs. Pribanic walked a batter and struckout two. Alderson pitched two innings and gave up five hits, all three of the runs were unearned.
The Aeros scored the three runs after Alderson was able to get two outs in the seventh. He started off the inning by getting Karexon Sanchez to whiff. Back-to-back Akron singles followed and then an errant throw by Brock Holt allowed a run to score. After a groundout to Jeremy Farrell, Alderson surrendered a two-run double to Chun-Hsiu Chen. Chen was gunned at third base on a relay by Curve SS Jordy Mercer to Farrell.
Starling Marte had three more hits raising his average to .429. He has three doubles and a homer on the young season.
Farrell had a double and a triple which impressed @coryh on Twitter who was in Altoona and provided some solid tweets.
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The Marauders remained undefeated at McKechnie with an 11-8 win over the Hammerheads.
Jarek Cunningham looks like he is back, he went deep for a solo shot (1) and had his third double of the season. Catcher Chris Snyder had two more hits and seems poised for a return from the DL before the weekend.
Clipped from: web.minorleaguebaseball.com (share this clip)
West Virginia ruined a nice start from Colton Cain. The 6’3″ lefty struckout five in 4.2 innings.
First baseman Justin Howard got his first two hits of the season in impressive fashion with two doubles. But the Power went 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position and lost 3-1 to Asheville.
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