Astros Minor League Player and Pitchers of the Week: Week Six

In our look back at last week, we have some great Astros minor league performances to acknowledge. These nominees and winners are from the week commencing Sunday, May 4th and continuing through Saturday, May 10th.

PLAYER OF THE WEEK

Another week, another plethora of amazing performances. Let me start by handing out a couple of honorable mentions to Oklahoma City utility player Andy Simunic (4 games) and Quad Cities first baseman Chase McDonald (5 games) who had terrific weeks.

The nominees and winners played in a minimum of six games. Stats are for the week only and are not cumulative for the season.

OF James Ramsay (Quad Cities)
.389/.577/.556
7R 3-2B 3RBI 8BB 4SO 2SB

2B Chan Moon (Quad Cities)
.364/.548/.636
6R 3-3B 6RBI 9BB 3SO

SS Carlos Correa (Lancaster)
.424/.441/.545
5R 2-2B 3B 11RBI 0BB 4SO 2SB

3B Matt Duffy (Corpus Christi)
.409/.462/.682
2R 2B 3B HR 6RBI 2BB 1SO

3B Tyler White (Quad Cities)
.500/.500/.583
2R 2-2B 7RBI 1BB 1SO

2B Tony Kemp (Lancaster)
.517/.588/.621
10R 3-2B 4RBI 5BB 3SO

Tony Kemp has had an amazing season, but once again he is the bridesmaid to our winner who put up ridiculous numbers for the week. And, of course, I mean ridiculous in the best possible way!!!

OF Teoscar Hernandez (Lancaster)
.536/.618/.857
8R 6-2B HR 7RBI 6BB 9SO SB CS

PLAYER OF THE WEEK: OF TEOSCAR HERNANDEZ

Teoscar Hernandez - April 2013

Photo by Jayne Hansen

>>>>>>><<<<<<<

STARTING (TANDEM) PITCHER OF THE WEEK

As a reminder, my starting pitcher parameters are either two appearances or a minimum of five innings in one game over the 7-day period. With that said, acknowledgement needs to be made of two excellent 4-inning outings from Corpus Christi's Brady Rodgers and Lancaster's Chris Devenski, and great 3-inning outings from Quad Cities' Kevin Comer and Edison Frias.

With that said, here are my nominees and my winner for the week. Stats are for the week only and are not cumulative for the season.

RHP Matt Heidenreich (Corpus Christi) - 1 win
0.00 ERA/1.400 WHIP
5IP (1 game) 6H 1BB 5SO
Held hitters to a .286 BA

RHP Bobby Doran (Oklahoma City) - 1 win
1.50 ERA/0.833 WHIP
6IP (1 game) 3H 2BB 3SO PO CS
Held hitters to a .176 BA

RHP Mike Foltynewicz (Oklahoma City) - 1 win
1.50 ERA/0.500 WHIP
6IP (1 game) 1H 2BB 12SO
Held hitters to a .053 BA

Some may disagree with my winner. Yes, Folty had a completely dominating performance, but when all is said and done, Buchanan pitched one more inning and allowed one fewer run and two fewer walks. In his own way, Buchanan was at least as dominating ... he just goes about it in a different way.

RHP Jake Buchanan (Oklahoma City) - 1 win
0.00 ERA/0.714 WHIP
7IP (1 game) 5H 0BB 5SO (15 groundball outs)
Held hitters to a .192 BA

STARTING (TANDEM) PITCHER OF THE WEEK: RHP JAKE BUCHANAN

Jake Buchanan - May 2013

Photo by Jayne Hansen

>>>>>>><<<<<<<

RELIEF PITCHER OF THE WEEK

There were so many excellent relief appearances last week that once again, I had to go for those who put up multiple scoreless outings or longer outings. Tyson Perez and J.D. Osborne (both of Lancaster) and Michael Dimock (Corpus Christi) all had great scoreless two-inning appearances. Even taking them out of the equation, I had ten pitchers with multiple scoreless outings and one scoreless long relief outing, so I narrowed the field further by including only those with a WHIP under 1.000. This left Jason Stoffel (Oklahoma City), Andrew Walter (Quad Cities) and Patrick Urckftiz (Corpus Christi) behind despite their effectiveness. I was still left with seven names so I took Josh Zeid out of the running since he got promoted. Here are your final six. Stats are for the week only and are not cumulative for the season.

RHP Rhiner Cruz (Oklahoma City)
0.00 ERA/0.750 WHIP
2.2IP (2 games) 0BB 1SO

LHP Kevin Chapman (Oklahoma City) - 1 save
0.00 ERA/,0.750 WHIP
2.2IP (3 games) 1BB 3SO
2 inherited runners/0 scored

RHP Daniel Minor (Lancaster) - 2 wins
0.00 ERA/0.923 WHIP
4.1IP (2 games) 3BB 4SO CS
1 inherited runner/0 scored

RHP Jorge de Leon (Corpus Christi) - 1 save
0.00 ERA/0.250 WHIP
4.0IP (3 games) 0BB 3SO

RHP Juan Minaya (Lancaster)
0.00 ERA/0.231 WHIP
4.1IP (1 game) 1BB 7SO
1 inherited runner/0 scored

Again this week, the only apparent way to beat those excellent outings seems to have been perfection and that's precisely what our winner provided. Plus there's the little matter of what happened when our winner inherited bases loaded, not once but twice last week!

LHP Chris Cotton (Quad Cities) - 1 win, 1 save
0.00 ERA/0.000 WHIP
3IP (2 games) 0BB 2SO
6 inherited runners/1 scored

RELIEF PITCHER OF THE WEEK: LHP CHRIS COTTON

Chris Cotton - July 2013

Photo by Jayne Hansen