Toot the Horn

Was a rainy day in SoCal today, which means I stayed inside, took the kid to John's Incredible Pizza and didn't get a whole lot done. Soooooo, instead of doing a full write-up, I'm just gonna take a look at something I posted a month or so ago over at http://www.minorleagueball.com and toot my own horn a bit, as some of the things I mentioned have kinda come true. This is my write-up of Garret Cole vs Sonny Gray when Vandy was in town to play UCLA.
Garret Cole looked very good, was pitching mid 90’s and topped out at 99 on one pitch in the first inning. He hit three batters in the first inning, yet didn’t give up a run as he struck out two and got an out at third base when a weak ground ball got by the third basemen and the SS got the baserunner out as he rounded third.

Cole mixed up his arm angle a bit, dropping down to a low 3/4 arm angle. He has more movement on his fastball than Gray.

Gray was pitching around 93-94, think he topped out at 96, fastball was a little straighter then Cole’s, but still had some good run to it. .

Neither really seemed to throw a change up, Cole didn’t really need to as he was pretty much in control of things as the score got a little out of hand.

Gray looked better than the box score showed, the bullpen came in mid inning and I believe two of the inherited runners came around to score. One of the runs came on a hit to RF, that the RF didn’t field cleanly and he probably would have thrown the guy out at the plate had he came up with it cleanly.

It was an interesting matchup because of the big difference in the size of the two pitchers. Cole has the great pitchers body, at 6’ 4"or so and Gray is all of 5’ 10" or so. Gray is definitely gonna get labeled as the injury risk, should he be a reliever type of label come draft time because of his size and he is kind of a max effort guy. The max effort with the lack of the third pitch, the pen may end up his home. (he may have a decent third pitch, but he didn’t show it yesterday).

UCLA didn’t really pound the ball off of Gray, there were a few hard hit balls into the left center gap, Gallego hit a triple into the gap which was probably the best hit ball off of him. .

It seemed a little odd after watching BP, most of the UCLA hitters didn’t really show much pop, they seem to be built similarly to CSUF, which seems to be the trend now. I was surprised to see in their notes that they had hit ten HR’s in the first four games of the season. Vandy has some big boys that made more of an impression in BP.

Joe Loftus doesn’t have a textbook swing, with his hands very low, but it seems to work for him. The ball jumps off his bat.

Aaron Westlake is a huge young man, listed at 6’3 236 he is listed as a catcher/1b but played LF. Big Swing, can put a jolt into the ball, but i don’t see him playin much OF w/ his body.

Anthony Gomez made an impression in BP, he’s a freshman, but didn’t play. I guess he’s the back up SS. I was disappointed he didn’t play, because he had a nice swing and he looks like he could be a big bat at SS

Cole still has the highest upside of the guys I have seen pitch this year, and his numbers this year have backed up his big stuff. I'm more impressed/happy with my call of Anthony Gomez. Since that write-up, he has moved to second base and has started twenty games, and has played in 29. Among the "regulars", Gomez is leading the team in batting at .475 (80 AB's) and has a .563 Slugging Percentage. He'll probably have to be a little more patient (only 3 BB's!!!), but he isn't striking out at all either (just 2 K's)

I had some technical difficulties (forgot to charge my battery), so not a lot of pic's, but a few are up top, and a little video below. . .