400 Miles to Toronto: Two Claims to This Week’s Best Pitching Performance

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400 Miles to Toronto: New Hampsire Fisher Cats ColumnTwo more Fisher Cats series completed: New Hampshire’s last trip to Hartford this year and the Erie SeaWolves’ last trip to Manchester this year. As of June 9, 2017, here’s the state of things on the path 400 miles to Toronto and beyond.

Who’s Hot

Batters: Andrew Guillotte and Gunnar Heidt:  Guillotte had a brief stint in Triple-A and after the last week, it looks like he might be returning there soon if he can replicate his performance at Dunkin’ Donuts park.

Over the three games in the Hartford series, Guillotte hit .416, with two runs, two RBIs and a homer in the series finale. He also only struck out once in 13 at-bats.

Guillotte couldn’t produce much in the Erie series, but offense was at a premium on both sides. Perhaps the only performance of note was Gunnar Heidt’s outing on June 8, where he accounted for both of New Hampshire’s runs, also getting a stolen base, a walk and one of the Fisher Cats’ seven hits.

Pitchers: Sean Reid-Foley and Chris Rowley: One could make a case for Andrew Case, but over the past two series, there were two starting performances that stuck out.

Sean Reid-Foley is beginning to rebound after a slow start to the season, and he earned his third win of the year on Saturday in Hartford, going six scoreless innings, striking out eight Yard Goats.

Chris Rowley wasn’t lucky enough to pick up a win the previous day, but his performance was perhaps more impressive. On that day, Rowley also struck out eight Yard Goats over nine innings of work, allowing just one run. Unfortunately, that was the only run allowed by either team during the course of that game.

Who’s Here

The Fisher Cats said good bye to righthander Josh DeGraaf and infielder J.C. Cardenas over the past week, with both players heading to Advanced-A Dunedin.

DeGraaf had just nine appearances since promotion from Dunedin at the beginning of May, highlighted by an atrocious three-run, four-out performance against Binghamton on May 7. Other than that, he was fairly solid, allowing only two more earned runs during his time with the Fisher Cats, both coming against Harrisburg on May 31.

DeGraaf had to make way for the return of Francisco Rios, who had a truncated performance on Thursday.

Cardenas made only seven appearances for New Hampshire, recording just three hits in 25 at-bats.

Jake Thomas replaced Cardenas, making the leap from Single-A Lansing.

This week also marked the arrival of Steve Pearce, working off a calf injury. So far this year in Toronto, Pearce has a .205 batting average, with four homers and 10 RBI in 27 appearances.

What’s Next

Tonight, the Fisher Cats begin a three-game against Akron, followed by a six-game Western Division road trip against the Richmond Flying Squirrels and the Bowie Bay Sox.

About this Author

Andrew Sylvia

Assistant EditorManchester Ink Link

Born and raised in the Granite State, Andrew Sylvia has written approximately 10,000 pieces over his career for outlets across Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont. On top of that, he's a licensed notary and licensed to sell property, casualty and life insurance, he's been a USSF trained youth soccer and futsal referee for the past six years and he can name over 60 national flags in under 60 seconds according to that flag game app he has on his phone, which makes sense because he also has a bachelor's degree in geography (like Michael Jordan). He can also type over 100 words a minute on a good day.