Esmerlyn Valdez continues tear through South Atlantic League; Florentino Bradenton debut
Valdez among the leaders in all of minor league baseball in home runs
Esmerlyn Valdez’s assault on the South Atlantic League continued on Saturday, hammering two more home runs, giving him 19 now on the season.
He led the Florida State League with 22 last year with the Bradenton Marauders.
It’s been more than that; we know that the power is legit after last season. Valdez has also rounded out his game, hitting for a better average, improving his contact rate, and significantly reducing his strikeouts from the previous season, while advancing to a new level.
Valdez, who turned 21 before the season started, currently leads the South Atlantic League in hits, home runs, average, and RBI. His Contact and Swinging Strike rates have both trended in the right direction.
The next step is to see if the contact rates carry over with a promotion to Altoona, but he’s starting to look like a true power bat that the Pirates are sorely missing in their system.
Edward Florentino got a much-deserved promotion to Bradenton on Saturday and immediately jumped into the lineup, batting fifth and playing center field.
He went 0-3 with a strikeout and was hit by a pitch.
The lone strikeout was against a left-handed pitcher (Florentino, for those who don’t know, is left-handed) who was a college draft pick last year and is 22 years old.
That’s four years older than Florentino. It’s something that he will have to get used to, and it will probably be a tale of caution about a potential adjustment period he may have to go through.
The jump from the Complex to Single-A is a lot bigger than it used to be, and even with that in mind, outside of the strikeout, he still didn’t look too far out of place.
He was one of my breakout guys heading into the season, and I haven’t seen anything since the start of the season to say otherwise.
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Hopeful for Valdez but waiting to see him at AA, before I really begin to hope on him.
Here are three pitchers the pirates should trade for: Priester, Baz and Ortiz. Oh, I forgot they were traded away by the pirates and got virtually nothing in return for them..This brings me Back to Barry Bonds who the pirates let walk and got nothing in return for him. Management or ownership was so cheap that they refused to offer Bonds salary arbitration so he walked and they received nothing in return. If they offered and were not outbid by other teams, they would have had to pay him, and that they refused to do. See it is not just happening now but it has been this way for a very long time.