Brayan Bello rough rehab outing, Marcelo Mayer hits first Triple-A homer
Red Sox starter Brayan Bello began his rehab assignment with the WooSox on the road in Jacksonville on Tuesday night. The righty started the game brilliantly, pitching two scoreless innings with a walk and one hit, but quickly faltered.
Bello went out for the third inning, giving up a leadoff single to left field to Ronny Simon. After a groundout, he advanced to second base, and then the chaos began. Jumbo Shrimps’ Agustin Ramírez hit a sharp double into center field, scoring Simon, followed by a Maximo Acosta single and a Deyvison Los Santos walk.
WooSox manager Chad Tracy would remove Bello from the game and replace him with Hunter Dobbins, who promptly gave up a grand slam to Heriberto Hernandez, leading to a five-run third inning.
In total, Bello allowed four runs on four hits with two walks while striking out five in the WooSox’ 10-5 loss to Jacksonville. His fastball topped out at 97.3 mph, throwing 68.1 % of his pitches for strikes (47 pitches, 32 strikes).
Right shoulder soreness forced Bello to miss the start of camp. On Sunday afternoon, he will start his second rehab game in the Jacksonville series finale.
Dobbins tossed 3 2/3 innings of relief for Bello, giving up five runs off three hits; all three hits were homers, while walking three and striking out two batters.
This was Dobbins' first Triple-A appearance of the new season. The right-hander was named the Red Sox Minor League starting pitcher of the year last season and was added to the 40-man roster last winter, protecting him from the Rule 5 draft. He led the Sox’ system with a 3.08 ERA between stints with the Portland Sea Dogs and Worcester Red Sox.
The organization wants Dobbins to increase his fastball velocity to stay in the upper 90s.
“The driver is if we can increase his fastball velocity to hold it constantly in the upper 90s, it will elevate the quality and grades of all his other pitches,” Worcester pitching coach Dan DeLucia said of Dobbins on ‘To the Show Baseball Podcast.’ “We are just tightening things up this spring. One of the drivers is getting ahead in counts more often, and when you do put guys away. We want to see how fast he can race to two strikes and how fast he can end the at-bat when he gets to two strikes.”
Dobbins hit 98 mph twice in his outing on Tuesday night and 99.3 and 99.4 mph.
Marcelo Mayer belted his first career Triple-A home run in the sixth inning, sending the ball 411 feet and 106.9 mph off the bat deep over the wall in right field.
Mayer had two hits, three RBI, one walk, and one strikeout. The 22-year-old shortstop is 4-for-13 (.308) with an .895 OPS.
Vaughn Grissom hit his first home run of the year in the second inning, 342 feet over the left field wall. The Red Sox assigned Grissom to Triple-A Worcester to begin the year after losing the second base job to Kristian Campbell in camp.
Instead, injuries plagued Grissom beginning last January when he tweaked his groin during “Story Camp” and then suffered injuries to both his hamstrings, followed by getting sick with the flu and ending the year with the WooSox.
“I wouldn’t change last year for anything,” Grissom said about his tumultuous first year in the Red Sox organization to Boston Sports Journal. “It would have been great if it had rolled out a different way. I learned a lot about myself that I feel like I’m going to need for the rest of my career. I’m learning what I need to do to prepare myself. I learned a lot of things. If it had happened this year, it could have been worse. There are a lot of ways to look at it, but I’d rather see the greater in it.”
Roman Anthony, the game’s top prospect, went 1-for-5 with a triple that he tried to extend into an inside-the-park homer and struck out twice.
The Crack of the Bat!
With all the discussion surrounding “torpedo bats” this week, I find it somewhat ironic that my travels this past weekend took me on a tour of the Louisville Slugger baseball bat museum and factory in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. A mere two blocks up from the Ohio River.
Mayer hit his second last night. Anyone know if there's any thought to Mayer playing some first base?
If he could be the first man up for every non catcher infield position in case of injury, that'd be awesome.
Last year when Casas got injured we had to scramble for Garrett Smith (that was his name, right?) and Dom. It be a lot nicer if Mayer could just step in. Might be eating his defensive ability there a bit, but better than remaining blocked in Worcester if Casas were to get injured.