It took Drew Storen just 13 pitches to plow through the away team's last five outs in a long Arizona Fall League game Friday afternoon between Storen's Phoenix Desert Dogs and the visiting Surprise Rafters. The Washington Nationals' second first-round pick, taken 10th overall in the 2009 MLB First-Year Player Draft out of Stanford, Storen was called upon to get the Desert Dogs out of bases-loaded one-out jam in the eighth, and though he let one run in on a sac fly on the first pitch he threw to left-handed hitting Cardinals' catching prospect Bryan Anderson, (who was ranked 5th overall in St. Louis' system by Baseball America before this season), the Nationals' 6'2'' right-handed reliever allowed just the one run to cross when he induced a two-out groundout in the next AB to end the Rafters' eighth.
In the top of the ninth, Storen struck out Daryl Jones, (ranked 7th overall in the Cards' organization by Baseball America), with three pitches, two called strikes and a third swinging, before back to back groundouts ended a quick 10-pitch frame. All told, after three hours and twenty minutes, when the Desert Dogs/Rafters game ended, 27 runs had scored on 30 hits, 4 HR's, 6 doubles and 1 triple, and two errors had been committed, one by each squad. Washington Nationals' first base prospect Chris Marrero was Phoenix's DH in this one, finishing 1 for 5 with a run scored and an RBI, as the only other DC prospect in action.
• Storen's line: 1.2 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 1 K, 13 pitches, 10 strikes.
• Storen/AFL Stats - (0-0, 0.00 ERA), 4 G, 4.2 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 5 K's, .263 BAA.
• Marrero/AFL Stats - 11 for 28, .393 AVG, 3 2B, 2 HR, 6 RBI's, .500 OBP, .714 SLG, 1.214 OPS.
• Final Score - Rafters 15, Desert Dogs 12. - MLB.com's GameDay.
Desert Dogs now 6-4.
(ed. note - "Next game is a night game, tonight (Sat. 10/24) with the Scottsdale Scorpions, who feature prospects from the Rockies', Giants', Pirates', Phillies' and D-Backs' systems. Game time 9:35 pm EST.)