SUMMER LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
June 22, 2006
BY ALLAN SIMPSON
Cotuit manager Mike Roberts wasn’t sure whether to attribute his team’s fast start this season to good hitting or good pitching. His team led the Cape Cod League by wide margins in both team batting and team ERA.
“I guess it’s a little bit of both,” said Roberts, the former North Carolina head coach who has returned for his third year at Cotuit. “We’ve been scoring a lot of runs, but I don’t know yet whether that’s an aberration or the pitching in the league isn’t that good this year.”
The Kettleers showed their dominance on the mound and at the plate in back-to-back games in the season’s first week, getting a sparkling pitching performance from righthander James Simmons (UC Riverside) in a 7-2 win over Wareham, handing that team its first loss, before trouncing defending champion Orleans 17-1, scoring 14 runs in the eighth inning. The pair of decisive wins pushed the Kettleers’ record to 4-1 and their team batting average to .333, while lowering their team ERA to 2.05.
The team’s dominant start landed the Kettleers in the No. 1 spot in Perfect Game Crosschecker’s first in-season Summer 16 poll of summer college league teams.
For all his team’s offensive output, Roberts was most impressed by the Cape League debut of Simmons, who threw eight shutout innings against Wareham (5-1) and didn’t walk a batter while scattering four hits.
“It was only one outing,” Roberts said, “but he might have been the most polished college pitcher I’ve seen since I had Scott Bankhead (UNC first-rounder in 1984). “He pitched like he was born to be on the mound. He was aggressive, yet he had composure and displayed great pitchability. He was comfortable and relaxed, and nothing seemed to faze him. He was a pleasure to watch.”
Simmons, who went 9-5, 2.96 with 94 strikeouts in 109 innings as a sophomore this spring at UC Riverside, worked mainly with a low 90s fastball and changeup, while mixing in only about 10 breaking balls, but he painted on both sides of the plate.
Meanwhile, Cotuit’s biggest offensive explosion of the young season coincided with the arrival of South Carolina shortstop Reese Havens and first baseman Justin Smoak, who missed the team’s first four games because the Gamecocks were involved in NCAA tournament play. Havens homered twice in his team’s 14-run, eighth-inning outburst, the team’s first home runs of the year, while Smoak, who hit 16 home runs as a freshman at South Carolina, added two hits.
It took only one session of batting practice and one game for Roberts to predict that Smoak will be a force on this year’s team and one of the first 10 players drafted in 2008.
“He’s got a great swing and an excellent approach to hitting,” Roberts said. “He hit some balls absolutely out of sight in BP.”
Roberts also predicted that Havens, who is a more natural third baseman than shortstop, will be a first-rounder in 2008. He started at third in his first game but was slated to take over at short when Tony Delmonico (Tennessee), who started the first five games there, was scheduled to join Team USA two days after Havens’ arrival. Delmonico hit .421-0-5 in his first five games for the Kettleers.
Havens and Smoak were expected to add muscle to the lineup, but the team’s biggest weapon is still expected to be outfielder Kellen Kulbacki (James Madison), who hit .464-22-75 this spring. Kulbacki was hitting .368-0-4 through his first five games, but was limited to a DH role because of a sore foot that impacted his ability to run.
“Top to bottom, we’ve consistently got better hitters this year than we did last year,” said Roberts, who guided Cotuit into the Cape playoffs a year ago.
GOLDPANNERS WIN MIDNIGHT SUN CLASH
The Alaska Goldpanners won the 100th anniversary of the Midnight Sun Game, beating the Beatrice (Neb.) Bruins 2-1 in 10 innings on a run-scoring single by Chu Yuan-Chin, one of four Taiwanese players on the Goldpanners roster. Righthander Chris Kissock (Lewis-Clark State) went the distance for the Goldpanners, allowing four hits.
The win was the 14th in a row by the Goldpanners in the Midnight Sun Game. They have served as the permanent host since the team was formed in 1960, but the game itself dates to 1906. Per Midnight Sun traditional, artificial lights have never been used in the game.
This year’s contest started at 10:30 p.m. and moved along at such a rapid pace that it was over 15 minutes before the sun officially set, at 12:47 a.m.
NOTEBOOK
--The Cape Cod League has the same 10 franchises for the 19th year in a row, but Bourne and Brewster, the last two teams to enter the league, are both playing in new facilities this year.
--Fayetteville (14-2) and Martinsville (12-2) both got off to fast starts in the Coastal Plain League. Fayetteville did so on the strength of a 1.68 team ERA—the best ERA in the league by 1.08 runs. Martinsville produced a team batting average of .328—best in the league by 49 percentage points. Asheboro sophomore first baseman C.J. Ziegler (Pima, Ariz., CC) was the league’s top power hitter, with eight home runs—double his closest pursuer.
--Don Dennis returned for his 40th year as general manager of the Goldpanners, who have produced almost 200 big leaguers—easily the most of any summer college league team—and won the National Baseball Congress World Series a record-tying five times, most recently in 200x. Dennis’ son Todd, the youngest of his four children, serves as the club’s assistant general manager and handles many of the team’s day-to-day responsibilities. “It’s hard to explain to someone how much support it really takes,” Dennis, 66, said. “With (amateur) baseball, you pretty much have to live and breathe this to make it all happen on the kind of budgets we have. Over the years, my entire family has participated in numerous ways, and they are the best help. They anticipate most things and always follow through. They are invaluable.”
--The Cape Cod League led all summer leagues with 175 former players selected in this year’s draft. The top six players all played in the league, as did 12 first-rounders in all. The Cape was followed, in order, by the Northwoods League with 96 players, the New England Collegiate League with 78, the Coastal Plain League with 72, the Valley League with 61 and the Texas Collegiate League with 56.
--Lefthander Christian Freidrich earned an invitation to the Team USA national team trials this year after going 10-2, 1.98 with 118 strikeouts in 82 innings as a freshman this year at Eastern Kentucky. He validated that selection in his first week in the New England Collegiate League by winning his first two starts for Vermont and earning league pitcher of the week honors. He was the only NECBL player to join Team USA, which was scheduled to play four exhibition games against NECBL teams from June 24-July 1 before engaging in its summer schedule against national teams from Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Germany.
--The most significant college player who elected not to compete with Team USA this summer is Georgia Tech catcher-righthander Matt Wieters, who hit .355-15-71 as the Yellow Jackets catcher this spring while going 1-3, 3.41 with seven saves as the team’s closer. Wieters played for Team USA a year ago as a freshman and is the only player who elected not to return this year. He will play for Orleans, winners of two of the last three Cape League titles, this summer.
--Mineral Wells sophomore lefthander-outfielder Kirkland Rivers (Texarkana, Texas, JC) shared the Texas Collegiate League lead in saves (3) and stolen bases (10).
SUMMER 16
The nation’s top 16 college summer league teams:
Team League Record
1. Cotuit Cape Cod 4-1
2. Wareham Cape Cod 5-1
3. Fayetteville Coastal Plain 14-2
4. Rochester Northwoods 15-5
5. Martinsville Coastal Plain 13-2
6. Chatham Cape Cod 3-1
7. New Market Valley 13-4
8. Mat-Su Alaska 8-2
9. North Adams New England 9-2
10. Waynesboro Valley 12-5
11. DuBois Central Illinois 8-2
12. Orleans Cape Cod 3-3
13. Cincinnati Great Lakes 9-3
14. Kenai Peninsula Alaska 8-3
15. Coppell Texas 10-3
16. McKinney Texas 10-3