Staten Island Yanks Win Their Opener 2-1

The starter tonight was Gio Gallegos, 21 year old former IFA RHP out of Mexico.   He was excellent in his SI debut working 5 scoreless, giving up 3 hits, no runs and striking out 3.  He's really good, but I'm not sureI can put him in the same class as some of our other high upside pitching prospects, because while he doesn't walk anyone, his K's are just 7.2 per nine, which isn't awful or even bad, but you do expect top prospects to K at least one an inning and that just doesn't seem to be his style.   On the other hand, tonight, it did seem he could get them when he needed to, so maybe he's just a very sophisticated young pitcher who knows how to work and how to get bad contact early in counts.    He's certainly a guy to keep an eye on and he had a great debut tonight.

Other pitchers included Charles Basford who is an SI repeater from last year.   That puts him either halfway or all the way to being an organizational arm.  He gave up solo jack in his second inning of work.

The line-up, tonight, featured 4 of the college bats from this year's draft: Michael O'Neill, Brandon Thomas, John Murphy and Derek Toadvine.   Jagielo is out with a hammy, and Judge hasn't signed yet so they had no big time power threat in the lineup.   Daniel Lopez, an IFA the Yanks were really excited about a few years ago got beaned in his first AB and had to leave the game.

James Pazos, LHP, another SI repeater was the third SI pitcher.  His left handedness makes him a little less of an organizational arm at this point, but he's 22 so he has  to get it going now and start moving...  of course since he's a lefty he may have even more time than that.   He got himself in and out of trouble.

Tyler Webb came on to close with the Yanks up 2-1 in the 9th.  He's that big lefty who closed for South Carolina and doesn't throw really hard but gets a lot of K's.   And he just ended his scoreless save with a K.   Big win!