The forgotten Minor League team : The Venezuelan Summer League Reds

They play in the Venezuelan Summer League. The team is quite young, there is only one player over the age of 21 on the roster. There are also 22 players on the roster under the age of 20. I figure they are 21 games into the season, lets take a look at some of the players and the numbers they have put up so far this season. First we will start off with the position players.

Player	Age	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	SB	OBP	SLG	AVG	OPS	E
Jose Gualdron	18	90	17	34	6	2	4	24	7	12	3	.434	.622	.378	1.057	9
Jorge Tang	20	85	22	28	5	0	0	7	9	16	7	.400	.388	.329	.788	1
Humberto Sosa	20	74	11	23	5	0	0	11	22	11	1	.474	.378	.311	.853	1
Luis Gomez	19	61	9	19	4	1	0	3	3	10	3	.354	.410	.311	.764	1
Efrain Contreras	19	75	16	23	1	2	3	16	8	11	3	.418	.493	.307	.911	0
Carlos Mendez	19	49	7	15	3	0	0	6	4	4	0	.352	.367	.306	.719	11
Luis Sierra	18	50	12	14	2	0	0	3	6	12	1	.390	.320	.280	.710	5
Xavier Hernandez	19	59	8	16	1	0	2	10	6	17	0	.357	.390	.271	.747	0
Gustavo Omana	21	60	8	16	2	0	0	7	11	12	2	.380	.300	.267	.680	1

Jose Gualdron looks to be pretty good with the bat. .378/.434/.622 looks really good from an 18 year old. He seems like the only power hitter that is on the team, with an exception of maybe Efrain Contreras. Humberto Sosa has a 2-1 walk to strikeout ratio, which really caught my eye. I would like to think we will see some of these guys playing in the States sometime in the short future. Gualdron looks like he needs some work with his glove, but his bat looks to be quite good over his 90 at bats this season. Over the season, I will do some more updates on these guys.

Now lets take a look at the pitchers for the VZL Reds.

Player	Age	W	L	ERA	G	GS	SV	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	SO	WHIP
Oscar Castro	17	4	0	0.87	4	3	0	20.2	11	2	2	0	3	8	0.68
Carlos Fajardo	21	2	0	0.92	5	4	0	19.2	7	2	2	1	3	30	0.51
Leonardo Astorga	20	1	0	1.50	4	3	0	18.0	9	3	3	0	2	14	0.61
Yoel Contreras	20	0	1	2.16	6	1	0	16.2	12	9	4	0	10	7	1.32
Ramon Rodriguez	18	0	1	2.51	4	3	0	14.1	10	4	4	0	4	17	0.98
Jose Salazar	19	0	0	3.38	8	1	2	13.1	10	6	5	0	4	17	1.05
Herman Colmenarez	19	0	0	3.55	9	0	1	12.2	14	8	5	1	5	9	1.50
Giovanni Izquierdo	19	0	1	8.49	7	1	1	11.2	11	12	11	2	8	6	1.63
Alexis Hernandez	17	1	2	6.94	4	2	0	11.2	17	15	9	1	5	4	1.89
Jesus Ruiz	18	0	2	10.64	6	3	0	11.0	14	16	13	0	9	8	2.09
Luis Machuca	18	2	0	3.60	8	0	0	10.0	12	6	4	1	4	7	1.60
Hugo Calderon	18	1	0	6.75	8	0	0	9.1	14	8	7	0	5	6	2.04
Nestor Delgado	20	0	0	0.00	8	0	2	9.0	1	0	0	0	5	13	0.67
Daniel Tineo	21	0	2	4.26	6	0	0	6.1	4	4	3	0	4	0	1.26
Andoni Ortiz	22	1	0	0.00	3	0	0	4.2	0	0	0	0	3	7	0.64
David Rincon	18	0	0	6.75	2	1	0	2.2	4	4	2	0	2	2	2.25

Well, there are a lot of young guys pitching on this team. There are two 17 year olds in Oscar Castro and Alexis Hernandez. There are 8 guys who are either 18 or 19 years old also. So combined there are 10 guys under the age of 20 on the pitching staff. The guys who jump out at me right away are Oscar Castro (17), Carlos Fajardo (21), Leonardo Astroga (20) and Ramon Rodriguez (18). Without knowing much about any of these players, it is really hard to have any real type of projection of what they could be. Castro, who is just 17, seems to be pretty dominating. He is not striking guys out, but he isn't allowing base runners either. Carlos Fajardo is striking guys out at an incredible rate, and has a 10-1 strikeout to walk ratio. HIs ERA is under 1 and his WHIP is 0.51, both numbers are very good. Ramon Rodriguez is just 18 and is striking out more than 1 guy per inning pitched. He has a good WHIP at 1.05. Leonardo Astroga is 20 and is showing he is one of the better pitchers around the league in the short season thus far.

Overall, it looks like this team has some future potential players who might see the States one day and hopefully the Cincinnati Reds