August 21, 2022: SABR 50 attendees watch Yankees’ farm team romp in Bowie

New York Yankees right fielder Giancarlo Stanton didn’t hit any home runs during his brief rehabilitation stint with the Somerset (New Jersey) Patriots of the Double-A Eastern League in August 2022. In fact, the former National League Most Valuable Player and five-time All-Star went hitless in seven at-bats.

But Stanton, the possessor of 347 major-league homers entering the 2022 season,1 might have given some power pointers to his younger Patriots teammates, who erupted for four round-trippers in Stanton’s second and last rehab game, on August 21.

The Patriots romped over the Bowie (Maryland) Baysox, 13-3, in front of a crowd of 1,931 fans – including about 15 members of the Society for American Baseball Research, who attended as part of the SABR 50 annual convention being held in Baltimore, about 30 miles away. Before the game, SABR members met with Baysox broadcaster Adam Pohl and Billy Facteau, the team’s development coach.

The Eastern League used a split-season format, with division champions from each half of the season qualifying for the four-team postseason playoffs. Somerset, a Yankees farm club, had punched a ticket to the playoffs by winning the Northeast Division first-half title with a 44-25 record. They were making a run for the second-half title as well: They entered the day with a 24-19 record, placing them second in the division, 1½ games behind the Portland (Maine) Sea Dogs, a Boston Red Sox affiliate.2

Bowie, a Baltimore Orioles affiliate, had gone 27-42 in the first half to finish last in the Southwest Division.3 They’d picked up the pace in the second half, going 29-15.4 The Baysox had beaten Somerset in three straight games, and their 5-3 win on August 20 had vaulted them into a tie for first place with the Erie (Pennsylvania) SeaWolves, a Detroit Tigers farm team. Stanton struck out twice in three at-bats the previous night, and his teammates left the tying and go-ahead runs on base in the ninth inning.5

Somerset gave the start to 23-year-old righty Clayton Beeter, a native Texan, a former pitcher at Texas Tech, and the second-round draft pick of the Los Angeles Dodgers in June 2020. Just five days earlier, Beeter had pitched 2⅔ innings of one-hit shutout ball in a start against Bowie. This was consistent with his previous usage pattern as an “opener”: Beeter had not worked more than four innings in any of his 20 previous starts. Since baseball scoring rules require a starter to pitch five innings for a win, Beeter brought an 0-3 record into the game, along with a 5.27 ERA. In his second season as a pro, Beeter was still looking for his first win, having gone a combined 0-6 at High A and Double A in 2021.6

The Baysox started 25-year-old righty Garrett Stallings, a fifth-round draft pick of the Los Angeles Angels in 2019 and a former collegiate pitcher at the University of Tennessee. Stallings, also a second-year pro, entered the game with a 5-9 record and a 6.34 ERA. He had started and lost against Beeter five days earlier, though he’d pitched well, giving up only four hits and two runs in six innings. Stallings also started against Somerset on July 8, pitching six shutout innings but getting no decision.7

As he had the day before, Stanton started at designated hitter and batted second as he returned from left Achilles tendinitis.8 After a leadoff walk to shortstop Anthony Volpe, Stanton popped out to second base and catcher Austin Wells struck out.

Volpe, rated by MLB.com as the Yankees’ top prospect as of August 2022,9 entered the game with 40 stolen bases. He used his speed as a weapon once again, stealing second and third bases as center fielder Everson Pereira drew a walk. A wild pitch by Stallings allowed Volpe to score and Pereira to take second – the fifth time in the season that Volpe scored on a wild pitch.10 A groundball single by left fielder Elijah Dunham scored Pereira for a 2-0 Somerset lead.

The Patriots did more two-out damage in the second. After a pair of strikeouts, first baseman Mickey Gasper walked and Volpe tripled him home on an 0-and-2 count. Stanton stranded the runner and ended the inning with a soft grounder in front of the plate fielded by catcher Maverick Handley.

With two outs in the home half of the third inning, center fielder Colton Cowser collected Bowie’s first hit, a groundball single into center field. Somerset manager Dan Fiorito yanked Beeter in favor of reliever Nick Ernst, who got the third out on a fly to right.

Somerset ran its lead to 4-0 in the fourth inning. Right fielder Brandon Lockridge reached when Bowie third baseman Coby Mayo misplayed his grounder for a two-base error – one of seven committed by Mayo in 20 games at the hot corner.11 Gasper’s line single to right scored Lockridge.

The Patriots, on a roll, doubled their lead in the fifth in dramatic fashion. After Stanton led off with a foul pop to the catcher, Wells walked and Pereira grounded a single to right. Pitcher Stallings fielded Dunham’s grounder and threw the ball away, allowing Wells to score. Third baseman Andres Chaparro – who ended the previous night’s game by flying out with the bases loaded – then parked his 13th homer of the season over the left-field wall for an 8-0 Somerset lead. Reliever Griffin McLarty replaced Stallings and got the final two outs of the frame.

Handley led off the Bowie fifth with his 10th homer of the year to break Somerset’s shutout. But the Patriots stormed right back in the sixth. Gasper was hit by a pitch to lead off, and Volpe’s grounder bounced off pitcher McLarty and went for a single. Stanton struck out on a foul tip, but Wells delivered the runs by homering to left-center field for an 11-1 Somerset lead.

The Baysox juggled their lineup at the start of the seventh, bringing in new pitcher Tyler Burch and right fielder Cody Roberts and juggling the positions of several other players. The new lineup didn’t provide noticeably better results: Second baseman Jesus Bastidas hit still another home run, his 15th of the season, for a 12-1 lead. In the bottom half, first baseman Andrew Daschbach and Cowser hit consecutive two-out singles, but Roberts grounded out to the mound.

Héctor Pérez entered as Bowie’s fourth pitcher at the start of the eighth inning. Volpe gave him the Patriots’ now-standard welcome, cranking a 2-and-2 pitch to left field for his 17th homer of the season and Somerset’s fourth of the game. Eric Wagaman, who had pinch-hit for Stanton the previous night, did the same in this game; he was the first of three straight Patriots to fly out.

Bowie’s final pitcher, Clayton McGinness, worked around a leadoff walk and managed a shutout inning – the first goose egg thrown by a Baysox pitcher since the third inning. The Baysox scored two more runs for pride with two out in the bottom half, as designated hitter Toby Welk grounded a single to left and Daschbach hit his 11th homer of the season, to left-center field. Cowser struck out to wrap up the 13-3 game in 3 hours and 7 minutes.

Ernst, who worked 2⅔ innings of one-run ball, got the win to run his record to 4-0. Somerset’s four pitchers combined for 12 strikeouts. Meanwhile, Stallings took the loss to fall to 5-10. He ended the season with a 6-10 record, tied for second-most losses in the league. He also led the EL in earned runs and home runs allowed and was second in hits allowed.

Volpe ended the game a double short of hitting for the cycle. His 31 doubles in 2022 placed him second in the EL – one shy of Hartford’s Aaron Schunk. The 21-year-old Volpe wasn’t in Double A for the full season, though. He earned his first promotion to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, where he hit .236 in 22 games.

Stanton returned to the Yankees lineup on August 25, and managed to do a few things he didn’t do in Double-A: He collected a hit, a walk, and three RBIs. He finished the season hitting .211 in 110 games. The Yankees won the AL East and beat the Cleveland Guardians in the AL Division Series before being swept out of the playoffs by the eventual World Series champion Houston Astros in the AL Championship Series.

The Baysox finished the second half of the season in a tie for first with the Erie SeaWolves.12 Erie was awarded the playoff spot for the second-half winner, though, because the SeaWolves beat the Baysox in their season-long head-to-head matchup.13 For the full season, the Baysox finished in fourth place in the six-team Southwest Division at 68-70, 12 games behind first-place Erie.

The Patriots finished the second half in second place but closed the full season in first in the Northeast Division with an 83-53 record, 6½ games ahead of the Hartford Yard Goats. Somerset and Erie met in the EL’s postseason playoff finals. Somerset clinched the championship in memorable fashion on September 28, winning 15-0 on a combined no-hitter – an even more dominant victory than the one they’d dropped on Bowie on August 21.14

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Mike Huber and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for general player, team and season data. The author thanks SABR member Peter Coolbaugh, who attended the game, for reviewing the draft of this article and providing information.

Neither Baseball-Reference nor Retrosheet provides box scores of minor-league games, but MiLB.com, the official website of Minor League Baseball, published a box score. The box score includes an inning-by-inning, play-by-play account that provided much of the detail for this story.

Photos of Giancarlo Stanton and the scoreboard were provided by SABR member Jeff Orner, who also attended the game.

Notes

1 He hit 31 more homers in 110 games with the Yankees in 2022.

2 Eastern League standings as printed in the Maine Sunday Telegram (Portland, Maine), August 21, 2022: C3.

3 Eastern League standings as printed in LNP (Lancaster, Pennsylvania), June 29, 2022: A18. The author compared these standings to those published in the Meriden (Connecticut) Record-Journal, June 29, 2022: B4, to confirm that the standings in the Lancaster newspaper reflected the end of the full first half of play.

4 Eastern League standings as printed in the Maine Sunday Telegram (Portland, Maine), August 21, 2022: C3.

5 Bowie Baysox website via MiLB.com, “Bowie Takes Third Straight from Somerset, Moves Into Tie for First Place.” Posted August 20, 2022; accessed October 31, 2022.

6 Clayton Beeter page on MiLB.com. Accessed November 3, 2022.

7 Garrett Stallings page on MiLB.com. Accessed November 3, 2022.

8 ESPN.com, “New York Yankees Star Giancarlo Stanton Placed on the 10-Day IL Because of Achilles Tendinitis.” Posted July 26, 2022; accessed November 3, 2022.

9 Bryan Hoch, “Here’s the Yankees’ New Top 30 Prospects List,” MLB.com. Published August 17, 2022; accessed October 31, 2022.

10 Somerset Patriots website, “Slugfest in Series Finale Leads Somerset to Six-Game Split.” Posted August 21, 2022; accessed November 3, 2022.

11 Mayo closed the 2022 season with a fielding percentage of .821 as a third baseman at Bowie. He fared better in 61 games at third for High-A Aberdeen, committing 10 errors in 61 games and closing the season with a .924 fielding percentage.

12 Eastern League standings as printed in the Waterville Morning Sentinel, September 19, 2022: C2.

13 Glenn Jordan, “Red-Hot Sea Dogs Ready for Playoffs,” Portland (Maine) Press Herald, September 20, 2022: D1. Erie and Bowie played each other 18 times in 2022, and Erie won 11 of those games.

14 MiLB.com, “Somerset Patriots Win Eastern League Championship with 15-0 No-Hitter Shutout.” Posted September 28, 2022; accessed October 31, 2022.