May Awards: Beloit Snappers

In my final installment of May awards I am going to the Beloit Snappers who have not had a good first half at all. Hopefully, by recognizing the good things that have happened on the field it will take away from the negatives of a tough first half. I welcome your comments on this. Just to let you know I will be beginning my top 50 prospect list on Monday with Prospects 41-50 so check back on Monday and prepare to be amazed.

• Pitcher of the Month: Brad Tippett- On a team where there are not many pitchers throwing quality innings Brad Tippett put a month together that would of been good no matter where he was pitching. Brad was pretty good in April going 1-0 with a 4.05 era in 3 starts in April. How did he pull off an encore in May well just look at these numbers. In 5 May starts Tippett 4-1 with a 2.31 era for the Snappers. Tippett worked 35 innings which is 7 innings a start which is great, but is even better considering that no one else on that starting staff put together consistant quality outings besides Tippett. By having Brad Tippett go 7 innings every start it saved the bullpen so it could work in the other 4 starters games. In addition to that he only walked 9 batters in 35 innings to go along with 28 strikeouts. Most impressive to me though was he held batters to a very good .236 opponents batting average. Brad Tippett held together a very shaky pitching staff by consistantly going out there and giving the Snappers a chance to win and they won pretty much every time he started in May.
  
  
  
• Others under Consideration: Joe Testa, Matt Williams

• Hitter of the Month: Angel Morales- This is probably going to surprise some people because he is still only hitting .226. However, he has recovered from a horrible April to show the talent that we all know is there. In April Morales only hit .172 with a homer and 7 rbi's. He only reached base 20% of the time and only had a ops of .528 which is terrible. How did he respond in May, well he did what all good players do and shake it off and just go from there. In May Angel hit .265 with 5 doubles, a triple and an impressive 5 homeruns and 15 runs batted in. He still strikes out too much as his 30 strikeouts in 102 May at bats say, but he did also walked 12 times. He had a much improved .356 which is not bad for a middle of the order hitter he will become. His slugging % in May was an impressive .480 which brought his ops up to .836. That is the type of numbers you can expect Morales to put up through his minor league years and his April will be an anomaly. I really got to give him credit for coming back the way he did after the bad April and hopefully he will continue to get better and better as the summer rolls on.


• Others under Consideration: James Beresford, Nathan Hansen