PNC Field, Moosic, Pennsylvania (AAA #15 - Pre-game pizzazz, and second chances)

 

This looks like just another busy photo of a ballpark, but there are several noteworthy things.

First, the sign over the scoreboard says “PNC Field.” That’s correct, and it’s not to be confused with “PNC Park.” Field is a minor league ballpark in Moosic, in northeastern Pennsylvania, home of the Scranton-Wilkes Barre RailRiders. Park is a major league park in Pittsburgh, in the opposite corner of Pennsylvania. Obviously, PNC Bank is big all across the state.

Second, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many kids on a minor league field before a game before. If you look, besides the junior high choir getting ready to sing the national anthem, there are at least four clumps (I think they’re little league teams), the first between home plate and pitcher’s mound, the last in deep center field. And that doesn’t count the five kids who were among the seven people who threw out ceremonial pitches. Or the kids on the field to join the pre-game "Macarena." I don’t keep try, but that might be a record number of ceremonial pitches. Although I’ve never seen that many kids on the field before a minor league game, I have seen much larger groups of kids at major league parks. At Chase Field in Phoenix, they periodically have hundreds, if not thousands, of little leaguers parade from right field along the warning track to the left field corner, then up into the bleachers (you don’t want to have a seat next to one of the aisles they’re using to come up off the field).

Third, the panel of advertisements represents an impressive monetization of the field.

Finally, you wouldn’t have noticed it just glancing at the picture, but there is a hotel on the horizon above left field. There is no path through the steep forest and brush on the hillside behind the stadium, so it’s a one-mile drive. With a machete and some climbing gear, it would be no more than a quarter mile.

The game:

The pre-game was the liveliest I’ve seen at a minor league park, and the crowd was into it. That gave me high hopes for the game, but the crowd of 3882 must have used up all its energy then, because they were pretty lifeless during the game. Maybe we were spoiled by going to games in Philadelphia with attendance over 41,000 each of two previous nights, but I expected more after the pre-game buzz.

The RailRiders, the AAA affiliates of the New York Yankees, beat the Syracuse Mets, the AAA affiliate of the Yankees’ crosstown rivals, the Mets, 7-5. I was fascinated that there seemed to be nearly as many people in the crowd with Mets gear as Yankees. 

The RailRiders certainly do try to make the link with the Yankees obvious. Their uniforms have pinstripes, just like the Yankees. Their uniforms have the “midnight navy blue” color scheme as the Yankees. Like the Yankees, the jerseys have numbers but not names on the back. And I think it’s the same font as the Yankees. I like that.

I thought the most intriguing performance of the game was that of Allan Winans, the RailRiders starting  pitcher. He pitched five innings, struck out eight, allowed two runs, and was the winning pitcher, moving his record for the season to 6 wins and no losses. Coming into the game, he’d allowed only one run in 39 innings, so this was his worst start of the year. The other fascinating thing was to watch him pitch. With numbers like that, you expect a phenom, a 23-year-old stud who was a first-round draft pick and relies on a 100-mph fastball. Winans is 29, was a 17^th-round pick in 2018, and has pitched a total of eight games in the majors, giving up 33 runs in almost exactly the same number of innings as he’s pitched this year in AAA (and given up three runs, after the two tonight). Most of the time in this game, he threw changeups and curveballs, at anywhere from 73 to 80 mph. On the scoreboard, the speed of his occasional fastball topped out at 84 mph, although the online app said that it got up to 88 mph. I’m not sure he’ll ever make it back to the majors, because he just doesn’t look like a modern major league pitcher. All he can do is get hitters out.

Second chances

I have to comment on one other player, Shelby Miller. Although he pitched for the Diamondbacks, three time zones away, I can’t help but compare him to Winans.

In 2015, Shelby Miller was a player that the Diamondbacks acquired in what was probably the worst trade they ever made. This spring, he signed a minor league contract with the Diamondbacks in what was probably the best minor league free agent signing they ever made. I love second chances.

Young Shelby Miller threw hard, upper 90s fastball, but he could pitch, too. In 2013, at age 22, he finished third in voting for Rookie of the Year. In 2015, he made the All-Star team. He led the National League in losses, but that was mostly because his team, the Braves, never scored runs when he was pitching. After the season, the Braves were willing to trade him, but only for a high price, and it seemed every team wanted him. The Diamondbacks offered the best package, and got him, by trading a starting outfielder and two minor-leaguers. At first glance, that doesn’t sound like a steep price, but the two minor-leaguers included a pitcher who had been a first-round pick and seemed a year away from the majors, and a shortstop who had been the first pick in the first round (i.e., the best amateur baseball player in the U.S. that year), and was ready.

The outfielder, Ender Inciarte, started for the Braves for a couple of years. The minor-league pitcher, whose name I don't remember, never panned out. The shortstop, Dansby Swanson, became a star, winning a couple of Gold Glove awards as the league’s best fielding shortstop, and being a key part of the Braves winning a World Series in 2021. Earlier in the week, we saw him hit a home run for the Cubs, who have a truly good team, in no small part because they now have Swanson.

Miller, meanwhile, was awful. In 2016, his the first year the Diamondbacks had him, he won a total of three games and lost 12. The next year, he won two games in the majors before being hurt for the season. He played a few games each in the majors and minors in 2018, then became a free agent that no one particularly wanted.

For the next four years, he played comparable numbers of games in the majors and minors, with only minimal success, and was released during the season four different times. He became one of those players trying to hang on and get another chance.

He got that chance in 2023. The Los Angeles Dodgers had a team that would end up winning 100 games (of 162), but their pitching staff was thin, so they took a chance on Miller, and he pitched very well as a relief pitcher, although he did miss two months with injuries. He did reasonably well with Detroit last year, but still, no one would sign him to a major league contract for this year. The best he could do was a minor league free agent contract, going to Spring Training with a chance of making the major league team, but nothing guaranteed. He had a few offers like that, and signed with the Diamondbacks. He made the team, and started the season as a relief pitcher who would pitch an inning or two in non-crucial situations.

But then the two top relievers got hurt, the next two in line were ineffective, and Miller kept pitching well, so that by May, he was the “closer,” the pitcher they would rely on to get the “save” by getting the crucial last outs if they were ahead and the game was close. Just before Winans started, Miller got his seventh save of the season in an afternoon game. The starting pitcher (whose effectiveness is often measured by wins) and the closer (whose success is measured by saves) are easily the two most important pitchers slots for a team in any given game. In his first three seasons with the Diamondbacks, as a starting pitcher, Miller was the winning pitcher a total of five times. In his first 10 weeks of his second stint with the Diamondbacks, he has seven saves, even though he wasn't the closer at the start of the season.

I don’t know how the rest of his career will play out (he’s 34 years old), but Shelby Miller’s story this year is the one many of the players we’re watching in AAA want to repeat.