Whitecaps Brantly Promoted to Lakeland
West Michigan’s catcher to date and Midwest League All-Star Rob Brantly has been promoted to the High Class A Lakeland Flying Tigers of the Florida League as of yesterday. The twenty-two year-old was leading the Whitecaps with a .303 batting average and .440 slugging percentage. He also tallied 44 RBI’s, 86 hits, seven homers, and 42 runs scored. He also played 52 games with the ‘Caps last season, hitting .255 with 21 RBI’s and 25 runs scored. He was pretty impressive this season the times we’ve seen him play. Good luck to him moving up through Detroit’s system.
“I’m excited, and ready to play some more baseball,” Brantly told the Grand Rapids Press. “I just want to go there and keep swinging the bat, and work on the things I’ve learned here. I just want to keep improving.”
Brantly has been replaced in West Michigan with 2011 Draft Pick Curt Casali. He was the Tigers 10th round pick out of Vanderbilt. Casali comes up from the short season Connecticut Tigers where he batted .278 with ten hits and two RBI’s in ten NY-Penn League games. Also joining the ‘Caps from Connecticut is right-handed relief pitcher Melvin Mercedes who was 3-0 with a 3.60 ERA in eight appearances. Mercedes de-thrones short stop Dixon Machado as having the coolest name on the Whitecaps 2011 roster.
Photos property of M.I.B.
Minoring In Baseball
Dixon is a cool name!
—Mark Gauthier
http://cubden.mlblogs.com/
Nice to see the Tigers’ youngest prospects are moving up through the system as planned. Melvin Mercedes is a pretty cool name…though one wonders how the coaches will fashion a nickname out if it ending in “ie” that isn’t too girly.
Can’t make it to the show without a nickname ending in “ie” afterall.
– Kristen
I personally like Curt Casali over either name. Alliterations always win with me.
Catherine
How cool that you get to watch these guys work their ways up the ladder! “Just keep improving” Brantly says.. pretty good life lesson there.
–Jeff
Mark-it’s a very cool name…
Kristen-I’m going with Me-Me or MelMerc…then again…maybe not…
Catherine-C.C. is always a built in nick-name
Jeff-it’s a lot of fun looking at the ‘Caps team sets and seeing the guys now with the Tigers.
–Mike