Minor Notes: Castellanos finds his stroke, Chatham debuts for Pawtucket

Here are Thursday's minor league notes:

• For the third time in as many weeks, Sea Dogs pitcher Daniel McGrath is taking home Eastern League silverware. The lefty took home the Pitcher of the Week award following a pair of dominant starts in which he tossed 13 innings and struck out 16, good for a 0.69 ERA. 

• There were two key promotions in the Sox system this past week, with Travis Lakins making his return to the majors and CJ Chatham earning his first promotion to Triple-A. Lakins has been called up once again amid troubles in the Red Sox bullpen, with the hope that a fresh arm can help the beleaguered Red Sox bullpen. Meanwhile, Chatham has been rewarded for yet another solid season in which he leads Portland in both hits and doubles.

• Following a string of excellent performances, it seems that Pedro Castellanos is finally tapping into the raw power that scouts have been hoping to see his entire career. Often cited as having the largest gap between raw and in-game power in the system, Castellanos has now hit seven home runs in 15 games, more than double his highest season total prior to 2019. 

• In Lowell, Cameron Cannon and Gilberto Jimenez have been wreaking havoc at the top of the Spinners' order. Cannon has rebounded from a slow start to his professional career and has now notched nine hits as part of a five-game hitting streak. While Jimenez hasn't struggled at any point in 2019, his continued domination of the New York-Penn League has been impressive. Jimenez is in the midst of a seven-game hitting streak, of which six of those game have been multi-hit affairs. 

• With the recent emergence of Cincinnati prospect Aristides Aquino, Jim Callis of MLB.com took a look at prospects with a similar profile to the slugger. Coming in on that list for the Red Sox was Bobby Dalbec who, like Aquino, possesses plus raw power but has struggled to make consistent contact and therefore limited his upside in the eyes of evaluators. 

• Dalbec's teammate CJ Chatham seems to be the opposite of the third baseman, a hitter who excels at making contact, but whose lack of power has limited his apparent upside. David Laurila of FanGraphs sat down with Chatham, who explained his thus far successful approach to hitting that seems to eschew the values of most modern hitting philosophies. 

• Another teammate of Chatham and Dalbec has seemingly found his groove following a dreadful three-month stretch. Josh Ockimey has now extended his hitting streak to 11 games and has reached base in 16 straight games, good for a .333/.422/.615 batting line in the month of August. In a feature for The Sun Chronicle, Peter Gobis argues that Ockimey has finally become the middle of the order threat that the Red Sox hoped he could become and is playing himself into a September call-up.

• With the minor league season rapidly coming to a close, Kevin Thomas of The Portland Press Herald looked ahead to the 2020 Rule 5 draft, specifically at who the Red Sox may protect. While the obvious candidates such as Bobby Dalbec and CJ Chatham top the list, Thomas also looks at longer shots such as Daniel McGrath, Kyle Hart, and Dedgar Jimenez. 

Photo Credit: Pedro Castellanos by Gary Streiffer/Salem Red Sox

Tweet