Morning Rundown: AFL 2023 first week recap for Pirates

How have the Pirates prospects been performing one week into the AFL schedule

Photo Credit: WTM

Saturday night’s offensive explosion between the Peoria Javelinas and Salt River Rafters marked the first weeks worth of games being played, as all teams are off on Sunday.

As for Salt River, they sit at 2-4, only ahead of Glendale in the standings, and have the worst run differential in the league at -15. They are also the only team without a home run yet.

When just looking at the Pirates’ representatives, here’s how they have been performing.

Jase Bowen

Not only has he been the best of the Pirates’ prospects, he has been arguably one of the better players in the entire league right now.

Bowen currently ranks third in the AFL in hits, behind Jakob Marsee and teammate Sterlin Thompson.

Bowen has gone 8-for-25 this fall and has slashed .320/.346/.520 with half of his hits going for extra bases. He’s also driven in five runs, which puts him in the top 10 in the entire league.

Jack Brannigan

Brannigan has struggled at the plate to start things off, playing in four of the six games this week. It took him until his latest to pick up a hit, and is currently 1-for-14 in AFL action. Of those 14 at-bats (17 plate appearances), he’s struck out eight times.

Carter Bins

He hasn’t played much, with two games logged of the six Salt River has played. He’s picked up one hit in seven at-bats (.143), which was a softly hit infield single, and has also stolen a base as well.

Cam Junker

He’s pitched in two games so far, going 0-1 with an 11.57 ERA in 2.1 innings pitched. Most of the damage came in the game he picked up the loss in. He’s shown some ability to get some chase with the slider, but has walked (3) more than he has struck out (2).

Nick Dombkowski

Basically anyone who pitched in Saturday night’s game was hit pretty hard, and Dombkowski was no exception. Overall he’s allowed three runs on six hits and two walks in three innings pitched. Opponent’s are hitting .429 against him so far in the very small sample size of games.

JC Flowers

Regular rules don’t apply in the AFL as far as who can pick up a win, which is why Flowers is sitting at 1-0 after his only appearance - a start.

He struggled the first frame, before settling down and pitching two more. Overall he allowed three runs on two hits and four walks, striking out two in three innings pitched.

Tyler Samaniego

Samaniego pitched a clean inning in his first outing of the fall, but then got beat up on Saturday. In that inning he allowed three hits, one walk and two runs.

Alessandro Ercolani

The youngest player participating in the AFL has shown it in his two appearances so far, struggling with his control - mainly with the fastball.

His first outing he walked four batters before getting lifted after two-thirds of an inning. The second time around he still struggled a bit (two walks) but made it through the inning, even picking up a strikeout on a fastball.