Phillies Baseball

Phillies prospect Jason Donald helped to fuel an incredible run scoring outburst in an Arizona Fall League game earlier this week.

The Mesa Solar Sox knocked out the Surprise Rafters 28-1. The Solar Sox collected the 28 runs on 24 hits with the help of 8 Rafters errors.

Donald, a top infield prospect in the Phillies organization, went 4-7 with a homerun, a double, four RBIs and four runs scored.

The outburst raised his average to .417 through 12 games played.

Donald is on fire through the first 12 games of the AFL season. He has 8 RBIs, two triples, four doubles, 12 runs scored and 15 hits.

Donald was an Eastern League All-Star in 2008 with Double-A Reading and played on the 2008 Futures Game USA Team at Yankee Stadium.

He hit .307 with 14 homers, 19 doubles and 54 RBIs in 92 games.

His teammate from the same AFL squad, Phillies outfielder Jeremy Slayden, went 3 for 7 with 3 runs scored and 2 RBIs. He raised his average to .314 and his league leading RBI total to 13.

The Phillies sent lefty reliever Fabio Castro to the Blue Jays as the player to be named later in the trade for Matt Stairs.

Stairs hit his second homerun as a Phillie in the season finale on Sunday as a pinch hitter. He went back to back with rookie catcher Lou Marson, who hit his first career homerun before Stairs hit his.

Castro has spent time in the Majors with the Texas Rangers in 2006 and the Phillies in 2006, 2007 and 2008. Castro was called up in 2008 but did not pitch in a game for the Phillies.

He spent the majority of the season at Double-A Reading, going 8-2 with a 4.40 ERA in 27 games, 16 of them starts. He struck out 95 batters in 110.1 innings pitched. He went 0-2 with an 8.10 ERA at Triple-A Lehigh Valley.

For his Major League career, Castro is 0-1 in 30 games with a 3.30 ERA. He has 32 strikeouts in just over 47 innings pitched.

Castro was acquired by the Phillies on June 29, 2006 when they sent Daniel Haigwood to the Rangers for the lefty reliever. Haigwood was one of the players acquired by the Phillies from the White Sox for Jim Thome.

The Phillies farm system is scarce.

It is so scarce that their Triple-A affiliate, Lehigh Valley, doesn’t even have a 10-game winner in their starting rotation. Continue Reading »