59know what’s coming, but they don’t do
damage on it—that’s stuff.”
Acquired in a trade last year with the
Rays that sent Tommy Pham to Tampa Bay,
Cabrera excited the Cardinals with his win-
ter ball turn as a reliever. He came to spring
training with a chance to win a spot as a
lefty reliever and struggled. The Cardinals
wondered if he was exhausted from an
extended season.
An early cut from camp, Cabrera
returned to starting at Triple-A and the
extra innings expanded his game.
He started utilizing his curveball more
often, becoming more deft with it, and
tossed back-to-back quality starts with 10
strikeouts total to earn the promotion.
“The main thing here is, I can’t miss
twice,” Cabrera said of his spin through the
majors. “You can miss once. But the second
time they will hit you.”
Returned to Memphis, Cabrera had an
assignment to polish the knots out of his
mechanics and erase the tells from his
delivery. His sinker has enough sizzle, if hit-
ters don’t know when it’s coming.
“(He can) help us for sure,” Shildt said. “I
believe it will be this year. He’s got work on
his craft.”
—DERRICK GOOLD
SAN DIEGO
PADRES
As expected, the home run numbers at
Triple-A have ticked up with the big league
baseball in play. The effect on lefthander
Logan Allen’s stuff in the earlygoing was
a bit more nuanced as he searched for the
right feel with the new ball’s smaller seams.
“It was my focal point,” Allen said. “My
split-changeup last year, I could literally
throw it to (the batter’s) chest and drop it
to their knees. The big laces helped. Now I
have to have a smaller visual point, a little
more pinpoint control so I don’t leave the
ball up.”
The 21-year-old Allen was learning the
hard way at El Paso.
The Double-A Texas League pitcher
of the year in 2018, Allen had an outside
chance to win a rotation spot this spring
after receiving his first invitation to big
league camp.
One problem: Allen noticed the differ-
ence in the ball immediately.
“I knew I was going to have to make an
adjustment,” Allen said. “I just had a hard
time figuring out what that adjustment was
going to be.”
Clearly.
Allen allowed 13 earned runs in 9.1
Cactus League innings and 11 more in his
first two starts (five innings) in the Pacific
Coast League. Compounding his trouble
was an ill-advised decision to essentially
shelve his changeup as he worked through
the adjustment in side sessions.
“I used my changeup a lot to change
speeds and have that real pitch differential,”
Allen said. “I wasn’t throwing it in games
and I was wondering why I was getting hit.”
He wasn’t changing speeds enough,
prompting him to reintroduce his change-
up in games.
“Even if it was not as good as it was, I
was still getting swings and misses. I was
still getting weak contact—and that set up
all my other pitches.”
The tinkering seemed to work.
Allen recorded a 1.74 ERA in his next
six starts while striking out 28 and walking
eight in 25.2 innings.
Caveat: Allen left his May 11 start after
being struck in the left arm by a comeback-
er in the first inning.
—JEFF SANDERSSAN FRANCISCO
GIANTS
Though a knee injury in late April side-
lined Heliot Ramos for a few weeks, the
Giants remain enthused about their 2017
first-round pick. So enthused, in fact, that
members of the organization—and even
Ramos himself—need to occasionally be
reminded that he’s only 19 years old.
“Sometimes you’ve got to pump thebrakes and let a guy develop at his own
pace,” farm director Kyle Haines said. “So, I
think we all have to be reminded of that...
but at the same time, he’s done everything
on his part to show us that we don’t need
to rein him in too much.”
Listed at 6-foot-1 and 188 pounds,
Ramos didn’t have a great first full pro
season with low Class A Augusta last year
(.245/.313/.396), but he hit .282/.312/.476
with six triples in August, providing an indi-
cation of his abilities.
He carried that progress into April
with high Class A San Jose, where he hit
.270/.420/.587 with five home runs before
suffering the knee injury.
When the Giants drafted Ramos, they
said he could become a five-tool player.
They’re sticking with that assessment.
“He’s a good defender in center field. He
can throw. He can run,” Haines said. “He’s a
strong, very well put-together athlete. He
kind of reminds me a lot of (Cardinals out-
fielder) Marcell Ozuna, but maybe a little
better plate discipline at this point that he’s
shown in High A.”
Ramos has drawn 14 walks in 83 plate
appearances with San Jose after drawing
just 35 walks in 535 plate appearances with
Augusta in 2018.
Of course, what the righthanded hitter
from Puerto Rico does when he makes
contact is what has the Giants most excited
about his future.“I would call him a doubles hitter (who)
can hit it as far as anybody,” Haines said.
“He’s not just a guy swinging straight uphill,
trying to hit it as high as he can. He can hit
a line-drive missile into right-center just
as he is capable of pulling a long home run.”
—STEVE KRONERWASHINGTON
NATIONALS
Now in his second year with a reworked
swing, Rhett Wiseman has found hitting
for power to be “more second nature.” And
that has been bad news for the pitchers in
the Double-A Eastern League.
A third-round pick out of Vanderbilt in
2015, Wiseman was hitting .298/.360/.636
and leading the league in both slugging
percentage and home runs (11) through
121 at-bats for Double-A Harrisburg.
The lefthanded-hitting outfielder saw
improved results last season after putting
in work with Nationals minor league hitting
coordinator Troy Gingrich, and this year
Wiseman has broken out even more.
“Going into spring training last year, I
had some ideas of things that I wanted to
accomplish from an offensive perspective,”
Wiseman said. “Troy is the best, and we did
a ton of work in spring training, tweaking
my swing to the point where it became
more of a lower-body swing where I could
incorporate where all my strength is.”
The 6-foot, 200-pound Wiseman spent
two full seasons at high Class A Potomac.
With his old swing, he hit .229/.283/.391
with 13 home runs in 2017. Those statistics
improved to .253/.361/.484 with 21 home
runs at the same level in 2018.
“There were parts of last season where
it was really good, and there were parts
of last season where I’d fall into habit,”
Wiseman said. “What Troy kept reiterating
to me was that it was going to take a lot
longer than two or three months to change
habits you’ve had for the past 10 or 15
years.”
Gingrich puts on a hitting camp in
San Diego each offseason for several
Washington farmhands, and Wiseman has
attended the past two winters.
“Rhett’s in Double-A now, so the strike
zone gets a little bit smaller,” Gingrich said.
“Some of those pitches that were called
strikes are now becoming balls, which he
knew all along.
"It’s just a credit to him. Now it’s
less about mechanics and more about
approach, which is a good place to be.”
Though Wiseman primarily plays right
field for Harrisburg, he has practiced at
all three outfield positions before games.
With his hitting improvements, that added
defensive versatility could come in handy.
—LACY LUSKNATIONAL LEAGUEPadres lefthander Logan Allen had to adjust to life with the new Triple-A ball and its smaller, lower-profile seams.