Could Storen reach the majors this year?

While baseball fans everywhere are watching to see if Washington’s first overall pick Stephen Strasburg is going to sign before the August 17th deadline, it’s their other 2009 first round pick that might reach the majors this year.  Drew Storen, a right handed pitcher from Stanford, was selected by the Nationals with the 10th overall pick that they got from failing to sign Aaron Crow last year.  Widely considered to be a cost effective selection to offset the ransom demands of Scott Boras and Strasburg, Storen is proving that it was not a mistake to draft him so high.  He was promoted to Double A Harrisburg today after brief yet successful stints in both Hagerstown and Potomac.  The Nationals appear to be grooming Storen to be their closer of the future, using him exclusively out of the bullpen in the minors.  It will be interesting to see if Storen is added to the big league roster in September when the rosters are expanded, because at his current pace he won’t be in the minors much longer.

Christopher Marrero locked it down at first base

Tonight I went to the Potomac Nationals game for the second week in a row.  They faced off against the Wilmington Blue Rocks, a Kansas City Royals Advanced A affiliate, in a clash for first place.  This Wilmington team was on fire, having won 11 in a row coming into tonight’s game and they had no problem making it an even dozen after an 8-1 win.  This game was pretty one sided right from the start as the Nationals’ bats never got started.  In fact, they only managed to get two hits on the day, one of them being a monstrous home run by 3rd baseman Tim Pahuta.  As bad as the hitting was for Potomac, the pitching wasn’t much better.  Adam Carr and the rest of the Nationals’ pitchers gave up 14 hits and 7walks including two huge home runs by Clint Robinson.  Aside from the Pahuta home run, the only positive thing I can really come up with for the Nationals was their defense, especially by 1st baseman Christopher Marrero.

Drew Storen: Future Nats Closer?

First round pick Drew Storen came in to pitch the 9th inning and showed the stuff that has many feeling he’ll be in the major league bullpen sometime next season.  He gave up a few hits that probably could be blamed on the defense being tired but he showed excellent poise in recovering and getting out of the jam fairly unharmed. 

For Wilmington, I was mainly interested in the play of 3B Mike Moustakas and 1B Eric Hosmer, as both are fairly highly rated prospects in the Kansas City farm system.  They both managed to play excellent defense and each happened to drive in a run at the plate.  I didn’t know anything about DH Clay Robinson coming into the game but he definitely got my attention with his power after crushing two homers.  As a final note, I came away very impressed with Derrick Robinson who went 3 for 5 with 3 RBIs and his 52nd stolen base of the year.