Wardens Jorge Reyes made his professional baseball debut Tuesday night, and it was pretty darn good.
Reyes, drafted in June by the San Diego Padres, spent much of this summer pitching in the Cape Cod League a wood-bat summer league for college baseballs elite players.
But on Aug. 17 just hours before Major League Baseballs deadline to get draft picks signed or losing them Reyes signed with the Padres.
With his college career at Oregon State University ended he was the College World Series MVP in 2007 as a true freshman Reyes has been assigned to the Eugene Emeralds of the Northwest League for the final few weeks of the season.
On Tuesday, he started against the Everett AquaSox.
In four innings, he gave up four hits, one earned run (a solo home run), and he struck out three.
But a closer look reveals a much more impressive outing.
He went 1-2-3 in the first inning, striking out the first batter he faced and fanning the third guy.
In the second, he gave up a lead-off single, but he enticed the next batter to ground into a double play. He struck out the next guy.
In the third, same thing. Leadoff guy singles, next guy grounds into a double play.
Fourth inning, he surrenders the solo homer, and the next guy singles. But for the third time, he gets the next batter to ground into a double play, then closes out the inning with another groundout.
Three double plays in four innings. Since this is professional ball, Reyes isnt going to strike them all out. But he's found ways to get them out, even when they had success against him.
Great start for him.
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Getting an early start on today's NWL Divisional Series blog between the Tri-City Dust Devils and Boise Hawks.
Hitched a ride to Boise with Dust Devils radio play-by-play man Jason Schwartz at 10 a.m. this morning. Our other passenger was Erik Mertens, best known as Erik the Peanut Guy. It was a fun trip with two great guys, and we all had a lot to talk about.
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Maybe that's just me being bitter about losing all those midway games as a kid.
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Well, this year, he's quarterbacking Wisconsin after he was essentially shown the door at NC State when he chose to keep playing baseball in the Colorado Rockies' system. But it's been a great pickup for the Badgers, who beat UNLV tonight 51-17 in the season opener for both teams.
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I walked up to the press box and Rob Fai, Vancouver's play-by-play man, said there were 35 grateful Canadians players and coaches for the story I wrote in today's paper. I guess it fired them up pretty good with the headline "Devils have NWL title wrapped up".
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