Goodbye August

August has officially ceased to be, we're now in the last third of 2018. What this effectively means is that there is only one more Staten Island Yankees baseball game left.

Because the weather for that is super iffy (New York's been raining so much you'd think it was Florida!), I decided to go see yesterday's game for sure.

At this point in the season there aren't too many autographs I need outside of a few guys in the Pulaski set who were recently called up to Staten Island. I already got two of them on Wednesday, and I managed to get the other two yesterday.

The first is Austin Gardner.
Gardner was drafted by the New York Yankees in the ninth round of the 2017 MLB Player Draft. The son of former Astros minor league Scott Gardner, Austin Gardner was seen as one of the better relief prospects coming into the 2017 draft. Using his fastball and curveball combination, he's put up very good results so far, such as when he wracked up 46 k's in 32.1 IP in Pulaski this year. Gardner was recently promoted to Staten Island to give the bullpen some more depth (the starters are starting to get shut down and barely go 4 IP now so the more relief arms the better).

The second (and last) autograph is courtesy of Daniel Bies (pronounced "Bees").
Bies was drafted by the New York Yankees in the seventh round of the 2018 MLB Player Draft. Bies is a 6'8" giant who was drafted out of the University of Gonzaga. He has a fastball that can touch 94 mph and a slider that's said to be above average. Bies is everything the Yankees covet, a tall pitcher who can throw a ton of strikes. He doesn't quite have the velo but he's still effective.

Both Gardner and Bies pitched on the 30th (of August) for their Staten Island debut. Bies pitched four innings of relief (four innings! in relief!) and Gardner pitched three (three innings! in relief!) to earn their first win and save (respectively) of the season. Power moves right there.

So how did the game yesterday turn out?

Well Luis Gil (pronounced "Hill") was the starter for the Staten Island Pizza Rats. The outing as a whole was kind of what I expected. Gil has insane velo (the scoreboard said he touched 100 mph but Robert Pimpsner reported that it only went as high as 98 mph), but has some control issues. I saw both. I also saw the Vermont Lake Monsters make a lot of hard contact against Gil's heaters. Gil threw in some changeups and a few curveballs but for the most part he was super fastball heavy. As a result he got himself into a lot of jams. Lots of base runners. He finished the last game of the season pitching 4 IP and allowing three earned runs.

When all was said and done the Pizza rats lost 9-0 to the Lake Monsters. Sucks, but it is what it is.

Regardless, I was just glad there was still some baseball left to enjoy. As of the time this blogpost officially goes up, there will only be one more regular season game for the Yankees this season and given how a playoff berth is looking less and less likely, that'll probably be their last game of the season as a whole.

Baseball man, so simple yet so magical.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).

2018 IP Auto Count: 70