I went to the Altoona Curve game Saturday night to see the organizational debut of the recently acquired Tim Alderson.  I don’t have any pictures or video, and my seats weren’t the best, so I don’t have an in depth scouting report, but I do have some thoughts that I think are worth sharing.

If you’ve ever been to a minor league baseball game, you know that, just like the talent on the field, the entertainment is also minor league.  Dave the Horn Guy was the featured entertainment for the night and he was just awful.  Someone had the bright idea to give him free reign to the PA system, and he took full advantage, talking and playing during at bats.  It was annoying, and distinctly not entertaining.  In addition to everyone favorite horn guy, there was sumo wresting, some sort of strange build a burger contest, and other various fan participation events.  All-in-all. the entertainment was, well, not entertaining.

OK, so now that that’s out of the way, lets get to what happened on the field.  Pedro Alvarez’ defense at the hot corner left a lot to be desired.  Take this with a grain of salt, because one game is a small sample size, but his foot work seemed poor, and his arm didn’t look great.  There are two specific plays of note, both in the same inning (my score sheet isn’t with me at the moment, but it was the 8th if I remember correctly).  With one out and runner at first, Pedro fielded a soft bouncer to third.  He looked to second to get the lead runner, saw he wasn’t going to be in time, and while turning toward first to make the throw, he dropped the ball.  A bit later a ball was sharply hit behind the third base bag.  Pedro did I nice job to get to the ball, fielding it behind the bag, just into foul territory.  His throw to first seemed weak from my vantage point, but it was in time to get the runner and end the inning.  From just this one performance, I’m not going to write him off as a 1B at the MLB level, but I think its safe to say he need to work hard on his defense this off season if he wants to stay at third.  On the other hand, Alvarez bat was everything its cracked up to be.  He went 1-1 on the night, drawing four walks, several of them after falling behind early in the count, and also hit a home run to left field.

Alderson looked good, but not dominant.  His curve drew a lot of swings and misses, and he was able to locate it for strikes regularly, which is a rare quality in a 20 year old pitcher.  On the other hand, his fastball seemed to work in the 85-88 range, and obviously you’d like to see more velocity than that from a guy who stands 6′6″.  At least on this particular night, Alderson only seemed to be working these two pitches, and just as was said about Ian Snell, to excel as a major league pitcher he’s going to need more than just those 2 pitches.  In addition, his pitching motion and leg kick, seemed a bit awkward and jerky, and I’d like to see that toned down a bit.  His final line was 5.2 IP 2R 1 ER 7H 1BB 4K which is, as I said, good but not all that impressive or dominant.

The player who made the biggest impression on me, at least from the standpoint of being surprisingly good, was SS Brian Friday.  Friday went 1-2 with 2 BB and 2 K, and made several nice plays at shortstop.  After Argenis Diaz, who was acquired in the Adam LaRoche trade, Friday is probably the teams most advanced middle infield prospect, and it was nice to see him play well.  Given the dearth of middle infield prospects in our system, Friday is a guy to keep an eye on as he develops.

Anyway, I enjoyed the trip to Altoona, and given the number of prospects there, I wouldn’t be surprised if I find myself at Blair County Ballpark again between now and the end of the year.

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