Farm Report: Bats! Bats! What are these animals?

Triple-A: Rochester Red Wings 10, Louisville Bats 4

Louisville must have had some tired pitchers, because they turned out DH Hernan Ichibarren to throw the 9th. He kinda didn’t do well, but that’s kinda not his regular job.

Kohl Stewart had a meltdown second inning, otherwise this was all Rochester. Wonderfully, the big blow came via 30-year-old defensive specialist Tommy Field. With the win, Rochester edges closer to locking up a wildcard playoff spot, which would bother me if I thought it meant we wouldn’t see callups right on September 1st, and doesn’t bother me since Mitch Garver’s already in the bigs and Stephen Gonsalves may be coming soon.

My first thought was that "Bats" is about the lamest name for a team, ever. Then I remembered that Mammoth Cave is in Kentucky. And some Kentucky natives have written vividly about hallucinating bats. Well, it turns out bats are super common in the area, and here’s an absolutely wonderful bat education primer from a University of Kentucky professor. Bats eat mosquitoes. This is all I need to know to love them.

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Double-A: Chattanooga Lookouts 9, Tennessee Smokies 8

Have some feels for RH reliever Ryan Eades. He had a few games at AAA, did well, got bumped back down, and almost blew this one. Eades came on in the eighth and gave up a harmless two-out hit. Then, next inning, the first five guys he faced all reached, Eades got yanked, and every runner still on base would score. Erp. Former big-leaguer Felix Jorge started, and the Smokies tagged him for three runs in the first three innings. He settled in after that, ending up with six strikeouts in seven frames.

1B Jonathan Rodriguez (three-run, two-out dong) and 2B Ryan Walker (3-4, all singles) were Chattanooga’s Bat Stars. DH/OF Max Murphy, the Pride of Robbinsdale, drove in the game’s first two runs. He gets the special bowl of yummy mosquitoes.

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High-A: Ft. Myers Miracle 7, Tampa Yankees 6

Bats live in rookeries,* so it’s only appropriate that 2017 Twins draft pick OF Brent Rooker went yard in this one, contributing to a decisive five-run 7th-inning rally. The Miracle bats are heating up! Five players had multi-hit games, including Rooker, SS Jermaine Palacios, and IF Brandon Lopez. The other two didn’t get any extra-base hits, so I cast shame and ignominy upon them.

Sean “Zitza” Poppen was a little shaky in his five innings; the bullpen picked him up. Going scoreless were RHP Tom Hackimer, LHP Andrew Vasquez, and RHP Michael “Wrath Of” Kohn.

*No, they live in belfries. Rookeries are for sea mammals. I was TESTING YOU.

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Low-A: Cedar Rapids Kernels 2, Beloit Snappers 1

My kind of minor-league game, where there’s good pitching and a tidy 2:33 running time. 1B Lewin Diaz had two singles, and Twins 2017 top pick SS Royce Lewis an RBI double. LHP Anthony Marzi threw seven strong innings, and the two-strikeout ninth was closed out by RHP Hector Lujan, whose team photo looks like he just came back from getting a dental filling replaced. (So he’s high on novocaine and hallucinating bats.)

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Rookie League: Elizabethton Twins 9, Bristol Pirates 1

Moar bats, you say? We gots ‘em. Star Wars character CF Akil Baddoo went 3-4 with a double. 3B Ariel Montesino, 3-4 as well. And anything you pitch to DH/IF Jose Miranda can and will be used against you, since he launched a two-run dong. That’s his eighth in the short rookie-league season.

Missing bats, too! 22-year-old RHP Bailey Ober racked up eleven strikeouts in six innings, 20-year-old LHP Jovani Moran five more in the next two. RHP Jared Finkel closed out the ninth with no strikeouts, but no hits or walks, either, gettin’ them Baby Pirates on just 12 pitches. As a correction from last weekend, I have it on good authority that young Finkel was, in fact, born and raised in New Jersey, not on an airplane or space station as originally stated.

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Do you have a picture or pictures you took of tractors, farm animals, land, or other equipment you’d like to see us use for a future farm report? We would love your submissions and happily give you and/or your farm full credit and a shout-out.

Please e-mail myjah at Maija.Varda@gmail.com if you are interested, and include the name of who took the photo (and their permission) so we may give the proper photo credits. If Fillmore uses the photo, though, he’ll just steal it and give you nothing, that’s the kind of guy he is.

Photos must be large! We need at least 1800px width. If you’re not sure if it’s big enough, send the picture and I will tell you (TWSS).