Checking in from the Fort after today's session...

Jon Lester pitched 4 innings down at the complex today against the minor league guys. Lester looked pretty sharp, having a very smooth outing with limited solid contact against him. I clocked him 90-92 on his fastball for the outing with him topping out at 94 in the first inning. Lester mixed in all of his pitches with his cutter having excellent movement down in the zone and his curevball bending in with sharp break. The only hard contact against him was a ringing single from David Mailman between 2B and 1B on a 92 MPH fastball.

Notes from the Field

- Luis Segovia, Tom Di Benedetto, and Jeff Natale took some early infield practice before most of the players made their way out to the field this morning.
- Prior to batting practice, the whole group worked through rundown drills with the pitchers getting to chase down the outfielders in the base paths.
- Ryan Khoury had a painful moment against Manny Rivera getting drilled in the elbow during live BP.
- Manny Rivera has some good zip on his fastball, but was wild in his live BP session.
- Michael Lennox has a well balance, smooth delivery. Not quite an over the top thrower with some life on his fastball. Lennox was a bit off the mark with his fastball in his outing.
- Carson Blair had a smooth BP session and is getting a lot of instruction on his swing mechanics/approach on the ball.
- Jorge Jimenez generates a lot of lift with his swing and was stroking shots to RF during his 3 sessions of BP.
- Derrik Gibson has very quick wrists and a short, smooth stroke. There isn't a lot of power there right now, but he'll hit some balls hard this season.
- Jose Alvarez has some good velocity in his live BP session. 91 MPH on a couple of fastballs in his session. However, Alvarez had some trouble snapping his curevball off in his session.
- Jeff Natale put 3 or 4 balls out to LF in his rounds of BP. The ball was jumping off his bat today.
- Oscar Tejeda was hitting the ball hard this morning and on a line. Drilled the base of the wall in left-center in one round. His swing looks fluid and like there is some more thump behind it.
- Che-Hsuan Lin was in camp today and had an ok session of BP. He was getting the bat around well on some offerings, but his timing looked a bit off.
- Mike Jones put on a display in BP, knocking out 4 balls to RF promping a "you're making us all look bad" from the bench.
- Jon Still has a lot of power. He hit 4 balls out to LF in his 3 rounds of BP and they were big flies.
- Jason Place was hitting some line shots into the gap during his rounds of BP and a couple of balls left the yard. The bat comes off his bat very nicely when he squares the ball up.
- Mike Rozier pitched an inning during the intrasquad scrimmage and was hitting 78-82 MPH with his fastball.
- Chad Povich worked a couple of innings during the scrimmage and was working in the mid to high 80's. There wasn't much during the game in regards to hard contact against any pitcher.
- Michael Almanzar faced Povich and popped out to 1B on a 87 MPH offering.