Around The Nest: Rafael Ohashi shuts out Northwest League

Artificial Turf Wars

Around The Nest is the Blue Jays’ minor league podcast where the broadcasters from up and down the farm system get together to talk about the performances of Blue Jays prospects in the past two weeks.

This week, we welcome Chris Georges, the Vancouver Canadians’ broadcast assistant, to the Nest. Chris G. is joined by Chris Jared of the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, Larry Larson of the Dunedin Blue Jays, and of course podcast host and the Voice of the Canadians, Tyler Zickel.

The Fisher Cats have had solid pitching performances—like Adam Macko striking out nine Yard Goats—but have had weak run support (sound familiar). Overall, the team is still loose, believing that they are better than their 15-21 win-loss record. Before a rough start Friday evening, Trenton Wallace had been solid for New Hampshire, sporting a funky delivery. Alan Roden has struggled at the plate but has been working hard, one-on-one with manager Cesar Martin.

The D-Jays batters had been taking a lot of walks earlier in the season, but had seemed to be little overeager lately. On the positive side, Christian Feliz and Yhoangel Aponte have been taking patient, encouraging at bats and lately, Manuel Beltre seems to have turned a corner, taking better at bats and getting a walkoff hit. On the negative side, Arjun Nimmala had been placed on the development list strikeouts have been piling up now that he’s seeing more breaking balls. On the mound side, Juaron Watts-Brown has been displaying a nasty slider and an underrated change-up and Connor O’Halloran has demonstrated that he can grind through games in which he just didn’t have his best stuff.

Vancouver’s Jace Bohrofen had been getting walks and making good contact but had not displayed home run power until this week when he hit two. Ryan McCarty has been delivering clutch hits for the Canadians and is seen as a guy with a big heart who is easy to root for. Japanese-Brazilian Raphael Ohashi has almost been perfect out of the bullpen, starting the season with 15 consecutive scoreless innings against five different Northwest League teams. Ohashi will be given a start in game 1 of Saturday’s doubleheader.

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