rkeden and I attended the Reading game in Manchester. It was hard to ignore lots of bad pitching on both sides, and the Fisher Cats in the field reminded me of the Rockies last week. There was definitely some offense to enjoy, especially by Ortiz and Ockimey. Ortiz's home run was an absolute bomb over the batter's eye in dead centerfield. Amazingly, we saw six bunts! Four hits, a sacrifice, and a foul attempt. Brought back memories...
Three of the Fightins' ptichers were particularly bad: the starter Perkins, who threw almost 40 pitches in his one inning, Zarbnisky, who gave up two loud homers, and Marconi--the best thing I can say about him is that he remembers to back up home (which he had to do a lot). Morales looked ok. The bets pitcher was Mike Adams (I assume he's not THAT Mike Adams).
Unfortunately, we didn't get to see O'Hoppe play as it was his day off. We did see a lot of him as he was warming up pitchers in the nearby bullpen (and there was a lot of that going on). He gave the little girl sitting in front of us a ball and promised to autograph it after the game--seems like a nice guy. I do have to say that O'Hoppe's replacement, Jack Conley, impressed. He was on base five times, including one of the bunt hits, and picked a runner off. I guess his catcher's ERA wasn't very good, though, but he did block a lot of bad pitches.
