Minor League Update: Indians and Pirates Exchanging Projects

A lot of wheeling and dealing for the Tribe, but not what you would expect.

With excess players coming in, I guess the Indians felt they needed to rid themselves of some players who will probably never make it to the Majors.

The Indians shipped off infielder Ryan Mulhern, 27, and pitcher Dan Reichert, 31, to the Pirates for either Cash or a Player to Be Named Later.

He wasn’t received in exchange for Mulhern and Reichert, but this former number one pick was claimed off waivers from the Pirates. Bryan Bullington was the first overall pick in 2002 and former general manager Dave Littlefield never really intended on him being a superstar. In fact, one of his direct quotes was something to the effect of “We selected Bullington because he is going to help us the quickest, he is a middle of the rotation starter.”

Riiiiiiiiiiight.

Bullington will be 28 in a few months.. It doesn’t hurt to take a chance, younger than Reichert who we traded and supposedly more potential.

Buffalo in the post Mulhern era did lose. Frank Herrmann pitched well for six innings. Only three hits and an unearned run. He also struck out 10. JD Matin pitched a scoreless inning of relief and Zach Jackson pitched 1.2 innings with 1 run.

Thrilling win for Akron last night.. I’ll admit I was tracking it as it was happening. It looked like Akron was out of it until a big four run inning in the 8th. Wyatt Toregas is Mr. RBI as of late, knocking in the winning run with a sacrafice fly.

Matt LaPorta went 2-5 with a RBI and a run scored, while Wes Hodges went 4-5 with three runs batted in.

If you want a great perspective on LaPorta and his debut so far, look no further than Steph Storm and her view on LaPorta from the past three games. He laid out Matt Wieters at the plate, even though he was beat by the tag last night.

Kinston’s big win was backed by a grandslam off the bat of Jared Goedert.

Aside from Lonnie Chisenhall, there are a few players down in Mahoning Valley that are impressing some people.

Last night a few of them came up big. Third baseman Jeremie Tice hit his first home run of the year and went 2-5. The other is infielder Isaias Velasquez (No Relation to Catalina from My Name is Earl) went 3-4 with two runs batted in. Also a prime prospect playing for the Scrappers in Robbie Alcombrack went 3-4 as well.

Something must be in the air with all the Indians team with all the run scoring yesterday. The GCL team got into the act with 14 runs off 21 hits. Delvi Cid, Abner Abreau, and Kevin Fontanez all knocked in two runs.

Tony Lastoria talked with Akron Aeros manager Mike Sarbaugh, has an update on Tony Sipp, and has a full transaction log.

Stanford’s Cord Phelps, the second baseman signed with the Tribe. That’s another draft pick in the books.

Brendan Donnelly pitched for GCL Wednesday, He’ll probably be going to Kinston soon.