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After a two-month stint with the Reds, Adam Rosales is back in
Louisville in an attempt to find his stroke. Rosales was a beast
while playing for the Bats in April, hitting .431 in 17 games.
While you have been basking in the summertime sun over the last few weeks, the Louisville Bats roster has been undergoing a facelift, as the organization has had happy hands, pulling the trigger on 18 transactions within the last nine days.
Two promising young prospects who are starting to see their first career action at the triple-A level are 24-year-old OF Chris Heisey and pitcher Zachary Stewart, who is just 22. Heisey, who already has four hits in three games with Louisville, has been working over double-A pitchers all year, hitting .347 with 13 homers in 71 games with the Carolina Mudcats. Stewart, a six-foot-two right-hander, was a third-round pick of the Reds in the 2008 first-year draft, and has flown threw the Reds system in just a year-and-a-half. Stewart started this season in A-ball down in Sarasota, crushing so many helpless souls that he was promoted to double-A after just seven starts. His success continued with the Mudcats, and he now comes to the Bats with a 1.82 ERA this season in 14 starts.
Left-handed starting pitcher Matt Maloney and IF Adam Rosales are back in Louisville after mixed results in their time with the big boys. Maloney, who has killed it for the Bats this season, was winless in the first three starts of his major-league career. Rosales spent two months with Cincinnati, having a pretty productive May, but tailing off as the calendar turned to June. While in Louisville to start the 2009 season, Rosales was torching opposing pitchers with a .431 average in 17 games. Rosales took the field tonight for the first time since returning to the Bats, and is still in the midst of an 11-game hitting streak from his April stint with the team. With Edwin Encarnacion currently manning the third base spot during his injury rehab (30 at-bats/.267/2HR/7RBI), Rosales will probably doing his utility man thing and play several infield positions to get his at-bats.
In a move that is somewhere between humorous and cruel, Bats OF Norris Hopper was traded to the Charlotte Knights for catcher Corky Miller while Louisville and Charlotte were in the midst of a four-game series. This meant that one night, Hopper and Miller played on one team, and the next night played as a member of the other. Does this mean that Hopper and Miller will just live in each other's apartments for the time being? The 30-year-old Hopper has been productive as a leadoff man for the Bats this year, hitting .280 with 13 steals. Miller spent the first part of this season with Ozzie Guillen and the White Sox before being sent down to Charlotte, and will probably split time with the Bats' other catcher, Craig Tatum.
No need to break out the firing squad to make room for the new faces, as Homer Bailey and Danny Richar both got call-ups to help the Reds try to make a run in the NL Central. While Bailey's call-up generated the most buzz last week among RedLeg Nation, Richar was also called up to Cincy last week when Alex Gonzalez made his monthly trip to the disabled list. Richar, who was hitting .290 with Louisville, hopes to get some face time as a situational player with the Reds while backing up defending gold glover Brandon Phillips.
Louisville and the Gwinnett Braves are currently duking it out in a four-game series in the dirty south outside of Atlanta. Tuesday night's 7:05 matchup between the Bats' Sam LeCure (6-5, 4.73) and Gwinnett's RHP Todd Redmond (4-6, 4.94) will be the final game of series, as the Bats have taken two of the first three to continue their hot month of June.
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