When Anthony Volpe reports to the Triple-A Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, manager Shelley Duncan anticipates the shortstop to see some action at second base and possibly third base.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a good chance of that,\u201d Duncan said. \u201cWe\u2019ll see when he gets here. Us as an organization, we\u2019ll have a plan in place for him. Anthony will be a part of that plan. We\u2019ll move forward accordingly for what\u2019s best for him and what\u2019s best for the organization.\u201d<\/p>\n
Volpe, Jasson Dom\u00ednguez, and Max Schuemann were all sent down by the Yankees on Monday following the fallout of the Trade Deadline and the promotion of top prospect George Lombard Jr. Schuemann arrived and played for the RailRiders on Wednesday night. Duncan expected Volpe and Dominguez to join the team by Friday; they had 72 hours to report.<\/p>\n
The trio will be joining an already-good RailRiders squad. Despite having their eight-game winning streak snapped Wednesday with an 8-1 loss to the Rochester Red Wings at PNC Field, the RailRiders are in first place in the International League second-half standings with a 23-10 record, one-half game ahead of the Durham Bulls. Overall, the Yankees\u2019 Triple-A affiliate is 60-47. They are one of four teams in the 20-team league with 60 or more wins. Rochester has 64, the St. Paul Saints 63, and first-half champion Memphis Redbirds 62. During the RailRiders\u2019 six-game series sweep at Iowa last week, they batted .343 with 79 hits, including 11 home runs, and outscored the Cubs, 50-18.<\/p>\n
Heading into Thursday\u2019s action, the RailRiders rank fourth in the IL in home runs with 152. On the mound, they rank first in ERA (4.14), hits allowed (774), runs allowed (492), earned runs allowed (423), WHIP (1.33), and opponents\u2019 batting average (.227). They\u2019re also tied for first in shutouts (7), rank second in home runs allowed (104), and tied for third in saves (29).<\/p>\n
Two big reasons for their pitching success are right-handers Brendan Beck and Elmer Rodr\u00edguez.<\/p>\n
Beck, the Yankees\u2019 No. 19 prospect, is 9-2 with a 2.69 ERA in 20 starts and 118 strikeouts in 110.1 innings. He is tied for first in the league in wins with Trenton Denholm of the Columbus Clippers, is first in ERA, innings, strikeouts, and WHIP (1.02) and second in opponents\u2019 batting average (.201). He has not lost a game at the Triple-A level since April 26th. In 14 starts since then, he is 7-0 and he hasn\u2019t allowed more than three runs in any of those outings. Additionally, six of the starts have been scoreless, including Tuesday in the series opener against Rochester, when he tossed six shutout innings with four hits, one walk, and a career-high 12 strikeouts.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Rodr\u00edguez, the Yankees\u2019 No. 3 prospect, is 7-3 with a 2.77 ERA in 16 starts and 81 strikeouts in 81.1 innings. He is coming off a month of July that saw him go 4-0 in five starts with a 2.73 ERA and 26 strikeouts in 26.1 innings with eight runs (eight earned), 26 hits, and 10 walks.<\/p>\n
Adding Volpe, Dominguez, and Schuemann makes the RailRiders even better. They potentially could be the team to beat in the International League second half.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sky\u2019s the limit,\u201d Beck said. \u201cThose are great players and we\u2019re going to be excited to have them join the team. Everyone wants to be up top; this isn\u2019t anybody\u2019s end goal. It\u2019s nice that we\u2019re playing well right now and hopefully can seamlessly slide them in. Those are guys everyone is going to look to take things away from. They\u2019ve had huge experiences in the big leagues, played in huge games. That\u2019s something I\u2019m interested in taking things away from them and I know the other guys are probably going to do the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
Duncan cautions, however, not to think things automatically will be better. He said there could be an adjustment period adding the new players.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t know honestly,\u201d Duncan said. \u201cThe group of guys in that clubhouse over the past two weeks or so have allowed me to sit back and plug and play almost the same lineup every day. They\u2019ve gotten really comfortable together and the chemistry in there is phenomenal. A lot of times when you bring in new players, even when you bring in really good talent, it takes a little bit for everyone to really vibe and get to know each other. The expectation can\u2019t be they\u2019re going to come in and have a sense of comfort. Anytime there\u2019s any movement on a team, there\u2019s always a little time that chemistry builds.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the course of a season, you have a team\u2019s win-loss record. But over the course of that season, you see many different teams. When I talk about that, it\u2019s players learning to play with each other, learning to support each other, learning to sacrifice a little bit of yourself for the guy next to you. The guys in there right now are doing that with each other. When one guy doesn\u2019t come through, the next guy picks him up. They\u2019re able to communicate real well between at-bats and doing the little things right. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s fair to expect the same chemistry right out of the get-go. It takes work. Having a good team takes work. It takes constant effort to pour into that team. We\u2019ll need to do it again. When we do, you let the talent play for itself. It will be interesting, but it will be fun at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n
At various points this season, Volpe, Dominguez, and Schuemann have all played for the RailRiders, so there is some familiarity. But Duncan said when they were here, it was a completely different team. For example, when Schuemann was last here in April, the infield included Paul DeJong, Jonathan Ornelas, Braden Shewmake, and Seth Brown. None of those players are with the team now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s going to be some level of comfort,\u201d Duncan said. \u201cBut when the makeup on teams change, there\u2019s always work that needs to be put in with everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite all that, Beck believes there won\u2019t be any issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cBaseball is a hard game. It\u2019s hard to continuously go out there and have success,\u201d Beck said. \u201cWhen people come and go from the locker room, you rely on the culture of the team and the culture of the clubhouse to keep those things moving along. Luckily, we have a good culture here, so I\u2019m excited to see what we\u2019re able to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
It certainly should be quite a wild ride over the final six weeks of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Anthony Volpe reports to the Triple-A Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, manager Shelley Duncan anticipates the shortstop to see some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179,65905],"class_list":["post-261271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-yankees-prospects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}