It should be a very interesting final two weeks to the International League season.<\/p>\n
Entering Triple-A play on Sunday, nine teams are within 4.5 games of first place in the second-half IL standings. At the top of those standings are the Rochester Red Wings, Triple-A affiliate of the Washington Nationals, with a 37-25 record. One game back are the Yankees\u2019 Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders with a 35-25 record. Those teams will meet in a six-game series starting Monday* at ESL Ballpark in New York.<\/p>\n
*There\u2019s a rare Monday game on Labor Day; the two teams will be off on Tuesday and resume the series on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
At 82-53 overall, Rochester has the most wins in the IL this season. In the first half, the Red Wings finished one game behind the champion Memphis Redbirds. The RailRiders are 72-62 overall.<\/p>\n
In the season series, the RailRiders hold a 10-8 edge, outscoring the Red Wings, 101-94. They took four of six games from April 1-5 in Rochester and four of six from April 21-26 at PNC Field in northeastern Pennsylvania. When Rochester returned in an August 4-9 series, it won four of six.<\/p>\n
Both teams are evenly matched. Rochester ranks second in the league in team batting average at .264 and the RailRiders rank third at .262. The RailRiders are second in the league in home runs with 195 and the Red Wings tied for third with 189. Rochester is third in team earned-run average at 4.44, the RailRiders fourth at 4.47.<\/p>\n
Trey Lipscomb leads the way for the Red Wings, batting .292 while ranking second in the league in home runs (30) and RBIs (88) and tied for second in hits (135). Phillip Glasser bats .271 with 44 RBIs. Andrew Pinckney hits .270 with 14 home runs and 52 RBIs. Seaver King is the No. 4 prospect in the Nationals organization and is batting .301 with 14 home runs and 43 RBIs. One of his home runs came off Carlos Rod\u00f3n when the Yankees\u2019 2025 All-Star lefty was making a rehab start on August 8th at PNC Field.<\/p>\n
On the mound, Red Wings right-hander Chander Champlain is 8-5 with a 3.68 ERA, which ranks second in the league, and 85 strikeouts in 120 innings. If his name rings a bell, he was a 2021 ninth-round pick by the Yankees and part of the Royals\u2019 return for Andrew Benintendi in the trade at the 2022 deadline; he signed with the Nats as a minor-league free agent this past offseason. He combined with four relievers on a two-hit shutout of the RailRiders on April 22nd. Two more familiar faces in the bullpen are former RailRiders Yovanny Cruz and Jake Bird, who were in the trade the Yankees made with the Nationals to acquire Luis Garc\u00eda Jr. Both were briefly in the Nats\u2019 big-league bullpen after the deadline but have since been sent back to Triple-A.<\/p>\n
Oswaldo Cabrera leads the RailRiders in batting at .291 with 17 home runs and 65 RBIs. He is tied for fifth in the league in hits with 128. Yanquiel Fern\u00e1ndez is tied for sixth in the league with 24 home runs and tied for third with 78 RBIs. Duke Ellis ranks second in the IL with 49 steals.<\/p>\n
Anthony Volpe has provided an offensive spark since being sent down by the Yankees in early August. In 26 games, he is batting .300 with seven doubles, one triple, 10 home runs and 20 RBIs. Five of his home runs have come in the last six games.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe looks like a man on a mission,\u201d RailRiders manager Shelley Duncan said. \u201cWe\u2019re getting a good glimpse of the Anthony Volpe that a lot of the people in New York have fallen in love with. It\u2019s fun to see him play with that freedom, that energy that he has.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brendan Beck is the top pitcher in the league, ranking first in innings (125.2), strikeouts (140), ERA (2.86), opponents\u2019 battings average (.204) and WHIP (1.04) and second in wins (9). Rochester did inflict one of Beck\u2019s two losses this season April 26th. However, the right-hander has not lost since, winning seven games with 10 no-decisions. One of the wins came against the Red Wings on August 4th when he tossed six shutout innings and struck out a career-high 12.<\/p>\n
While the RailRiders can help themselves against Rochester this week, they also have to be aware of the teams behind them in the standings. The Worcester Red Sox, Indianapolis Indians, St. Paul Saints, Durham Bulls, Syracuse Mets, Columbus Clippers, and Nashville Sounds are all still in the mix and have ideas at making a run at first place.<\/p>\n
However, Duncan said the RailRiders can\u2019t get too caught up in scoreboard watching.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can only control what we can control and that\u2019s what we\u2019re going to put all our energy into,\u201d Duncan said. \u201cWhen those games happen, they bring enough energy on their own. To try to induce it by worrying about all that stuff, it\u2019s a trap. Any time you start hunting those on the scoreboard and start letting it get in your head, it\u2019s a trap to get you out of who you are. These guys play hard every single day no matter what situation they\u2019re in. It\u2019s fun to just go out there and win a game regardless.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the second-half title likely won\u2019t be clinched this week, the series between the RailRiders and Rochester could go a long way in determining who does.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like we\u2019re in a good spot to get that first place,\u201d RailRiders pitcher Alexander Cornielle said. \u201cThe guys are rolling, coming together more, speaking on stuff as a team that we need to get better at. We support each other and I feel like we\u2019ve hit that point in the season where everything is falling in place. I feel like we have a pretty good chance of making first place. I don\u2019t like to speak on the future, but I\u2019m pretty confident that we have the tools here to make it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It should be a very interesting final two weeks to the International League season. Entering Triple-A play on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179,65905],"class_list":["post-280406","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\/280406","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=280406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}