Saturday I went to my first baby baseball game of the year in Trenton to see them play New Hampshire. Dellin Betances was on the mound but much more exciting than that for me was getting to see my favorite not-really-a-prospect from Staten Island, DeAngelo Mack. I was so excited, in fact that I completely neglected to take any pictures of him. I was actually uncharacteristically lazy about taking any photos at all that were not of Sal Fasano managing the Fisher Cats.

I’ve seen Betances a few times now, and this was the worst I’ve seen him. His secondary stuff, particularly his curveball, looked great and he got a ton of swing and misses on everything but he had a lot of problems locating his pitches. Because of his stuff, he wasn’t all that hittable but a lot of the time he was so far off the plate that nobody was going to swing. On a positive note, what I liked other than the whiffs was that he was able to come back out after a rough inning in the fourth (a HBP, a walk and a few singles) and rebound to have a mostly uneventful fifth, striking out two.

If you haven’t seen him before, here is some video of Betances’ pitching motions from warming up before the start of an inning:

Austine Romine got knocked around in a collision at homeplate a few days ago and nobody is quite sure what is going on with him, so he was not in the lineup. That leaves Trenton kinda boring from a prospecting point of view outside of Corban Joseph. I am admittedly a fan of Joseph, and in the time I’ve seen him he’s improved his defense at second and he holds his own at the plate. He’s not an outstanding prospect but he has the chance to be a solid player, I think. Especially if he can stick at second base. Here’s a picture of him at the plate for your enjoyment.

While watching minor league shortstops is a barf party most of the time every now and then someone like Adeiny Hechavarria comes along and gives you something pleasant to watch. When I saw Hechavarria last year, he was impressive but sometimes went for splashy plays and made a few mistakes. Last night he showed great range on both popups and groundballs, and was completely on in the field. His bat looked as bad as it did the last time I saw him, but I do think that he’ll get every shot to start in the majors with the hope that his bat is below average and not outright horrible.

As fun as it was to listen to impatient people whine about Betances the real highlight of the game was Sal “Looks like a guy who knows a guy” Fasano. He was working as the 3B coach on top of his managerial duties for New Hampshire and even put on a catcher’s mask and warmed up a pitcher between innings.

While coming out to give the umpire the lineup card he took the time to knock out the Thunder mascots. Very impressive.

DeAngelo Mack clearly knew I was in attendance and went 4-4 at the plate so that was nice. As I mentioned earlier I neglected to actually take any pictures but he’s been holding his own at the plate so I think that even after Melky Mesa comes off the DL they’ll find space for him on the roster so I’ll get to see him again this year.

Other than that, not much to report about the game. It went extra innings so I got a coupon for WaWa coffee I intend to use at some point before it expires and we harassed Travis D’Arnaud into talking to us but that’s all I have to report.

Here’s the rest of my set from the game if you want to look at some bad pictures:

Trenton Thunder 06-04-2011