Orioles minor league rundown 7/14: Some All-Stars and a blowout

The quirk of the regular schedule leaves us without much minor league action on Tuesday. The International League (Triple-A Norfolk) and Eastern League (Double-A Bowie) are both on their All-Star Break, and both the High-A Frederick Keys and the Short Season-A Aberdeen Ironbirds.

The Triple-A and Double-A All-Star Games will both be taking place later tonight. A rundown of all of the Orioles minor league All-Stars this year, before the recap of the few games played yesterday.

Orioles Triple-A All-Stars

RHP Michael Bowden
RHP Oliver Drake
C Steve Clevenger
OF Dariel Alvarez - winner of the Triple-A Home Run Derby

The Orioles will soon have a decision to make on Bowden, who has an opt out in his contract for, well, today. Bowden has a 1.71 ERA over 24 games, nine starts, for the Tides.

Orioles Double-A All-Stars

RHP Terry Doyle
RHP Mychal Givens
C Rossmel Perez
OF Quincy Latimore
OF Mike Yastrzemski

Hey, that's a nice number of All-Stars, although I suspect Givens, who was briefly in MLB this year, would take sitting in the Orioles bullpen over hanging out in Portland, ME for this game. All five of these guys are at least 24 years old, so this isn't the most prospect-y of lists, but they've been doing great for Bowie this year. Congratulations to all of them for the achievement.

Orioles High-A All-Stars

Game played on June 23. California League All-Stars beat Carolina League All-Stars (which includes Frederick) 9-2.

RHP Mitch Horacek 
3B Drew Dosch (since promoted to Bowie)
SS Jeff Kemp
2B Tucker Nathans (ditto)

The Keys also had 1B Trey Mancini totally mashing. He would have surely been an All-Star except he earned his promotion to Bowie even before the All-Star game happened. Mancini has kept on raking there, too.

Orioles Low-A All-Stars

Game played on June 23. South Atlantic League North (including Delmarva players) beat South, 7-5.

RHP Garrett Cortright
3B Jomar Reyes
2B Stephen Wilkerson
OF Conor Bierfeldt (since promoted to Frederick)

Wilkerson drove in two runs in the All-Star Game. Reyes, unfortunately, has not played since June 12 with a thumb injury. Reyes, only 18 and in a full season league, is the most prospect-y of all of these guys. Hopefully he'll be back soon.

Now for your usually scheduled programming.

Delmarva Shorebirds 18, Lexington (Royals) 6

The official scorer in this game must have been busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. The Shorebirds went up to the top rope on the Legends, blasting their starting pitcher for eight runs in less than four innings and wrecking some poor schmuck reliever for another seven runs in the eighth inning. That is savage.

Young-ish (20) right fielder Ademar Rifaela had two hits and also two walks and scored three runs in the game. He is batting at a .240/.345/.389 clip since joining the Shorebirds. Starting pitcher John Means had himself a nice game - plenty easy with all that run support, right? John "Ends Justify The" Means gave up two runs on six hits in six innings of work. Means didn't walk anybody and struck out eight. Good job!

GCL Red Sox 8, GCL Orioles 3

I don't usually dip down and talk about these guys in detail, but hey, there was nothing else going on Tuesday. The rookie-level O's actually out-hit their Red Sox counterparts 12-11, but the GCL Sox went 5-17 with RISP whereas the GCL O's only went 2-13.

2015 draftees Ryan McKenna, Ryan Mountcastle, and Jason Heinrich all had multi-hit games. Heinrich is now batting .400/.457/.475 in the 11 games he's played in this league. Mountcastle sports a .311/.348/.361 line. He committed his fifth error in just 16 games at shortstop; remember, he was pegged as a probable future outfielder. On the other hand, Manny Machado combined for 19 errors between Low-A and High-A in 2011 in only 94 games, and look where he is now!

Wednesday's Schedule

Norfolk: OFF (All-Star Game - International League vs. Pacific Coast League, in Omaha)

Bowie: OFF (Eastern League All-Star Game)

Frederick: at Wilmington, 6:35. Starter: Luis Gonzalez

Delmarva: vs. Lexington, 7:05. Starter: Lucas Long

Aberdeen: TBD

For full box scores on these games, including the adventures of both of the Orioles Dominican Summer League teams, you can always check out here.