Right handed starter, Hector Noesi, who has been dominant at High-A Tampa, has been promoted to Double-A Trenton. He will be thrown right into the fire, and should pitch on Thursday at the division leading New Hampshire Fisher Cats. His first home start should be May 25th against Erie. Since I last wrote about Noesi, he had another good start on Saturday, pitching 5 scoreless innings, striking out 6, and walking 1 in a no decision at Lakeland. He continues to maintain a very impressive 11K/9 IP while walking only 6 over 43 innings. Despite one very bad outing in April in which he gave up 9 runs in 4 innings, Noesi’s stats for 8 starts at Tampa are very good: 43 IP, 35 H, 13 ER, 3 HR, 6 BB, 53 K, 2.72 ERA, 2.06 FIP, 0.953 WHIP
Ranked as the 24th best prospect in the Yankee system by Baseball America in December, Noesi is on the Yankees 40 man roster. Signed by the Yankees out of the Dominican as a 17 year old, he had been plagued by injuries and a 50 game drug suspension early in his career. He appears to be fully recovered and has been a starter for over a year now. The 23-year-old control specialist is a little older than the competition and has been dominant in High-A ball. It will be very interesting to see how he performs after this big jump to Double-A Trenton. If he does well, I think the hype will start building, and I don’t think it would be farfetched that we could soon be hearing talk of a call up to the majors, at least in September.
The Thunder, which has won 10 games in a row, will move Ryan Pope, who has been struggling as a starter, to the bullpen to make room for Noesi in the rotation.
