LaFreniere quietly effective in Danville’s clobbering of Pulaski

Revue de presse

By: DAMIEN SORDELETT, GoDanRiver, July 31, 2012

A quick look at the line score of Frank LaFreniere’s night on the mound for Danville doesn’t do the Canadian right-hander justice.

His line of three runs on three hits and three walks in six innings is the most misleading tell of how consistent the 47th-round selection of the 2010 draft was Tuesday night against Pulaski. Aside from a 23-pitch second inning where he allowed three walks and an eight-pitch stretch in the fourth inning where he surrendered his lone hits, LaFreniere quickly worked his way through the innings in the Braves’ 8-3 victory at Dan Daniel Park.

LaFreniere, who improved to 4-1 on the season with the victory, threw eight, six and eight pitches in the third, fifth and sixth innings, respectively, when he set the Mariners (13-24) down in order.

“That’s always what I’m trying to do — I try to get deep in games and sometimes it doesn’t go my way,” LaFreniere said, “but I try to do as good as I can and sometimes I get good results out of it.

Photo ci-dessus : François Lafrenière. (Photo Guy Lafrenière)

“It’s all about just trying to focus on the next pitch you’re going to throw. It doesn’t really matter what happened in the past, sometimes they’re going to get you and that’s how the game is, and just try to focus on the next pitch.”

The Quebec native settled down after his 23-pitch second inning by throwing 37 pitches over the next four frames. He threw 25 of those pitches for strikes, which included a string of three consecutive hits highlighted by Gilmer Lampe’s two-run home run that gave Pulaski a 3-2 lead in the fourth.

“He’s been our most consistent guy all year. He goes out, he’s a sinker-slider guy, he pounds the zone every time and that’s what he did tonight,” D-Braves catcher Troy Snitker said. “Besides one inning when he got the ball up just a little bit and they got to a few pitches, that was it. They had really no chance with him tonight.”

Danville (21-17) responded to the Mariners’ three-run fourth with a pair of runs in the fifth to take the lead for good. Trenton Moses (1-for-3) hit an RBI single to right that scored Ronald Luna for the go-ahead run. The Braves added three more in the eighth, highlighted by Blake Brown’s two-run single, and that was plenty for the bullpen.

D-Braves left-handed relief pitcher Carlos Perez had his second electric stint in a row out of the bullpen. Perez struck out six of the seven batters he faced on four pitches or less and he stranded the only batter (Felipe Burin) who reached base.

“When Carlos has got his mechanics and everything going in one piece, he’s as good as they get,” Snitker said. “The way his ball was coming out of his hand tonight is pretty awesome. He was probably sitting around 93 from the left side with a lot of run tonight; you could tell he was in sync and throwing a lot of strikes and having one guy on their team who could square up well off him.”

Mike Hashem got a double play to erase a leadoff walk in the ninth and worked around a two-out single by Lampe (2-for-4) to finish off the victory for Danville, which got a needed sweep after losing eight straight to fall into second in the Appalachian League East.

Danville got on the board early with RBI singles from Aris Alcantara and Casey Kalenkosy (2-for-4, two RBIs) to spot LaFreniere a 2-0 lead after the first inning.

Kurt Fleming went 3-for-4 with a pair of doubles and a run scored in the fifth inning.

“It’s good to get out early. That’s one thing we haven’t been doing lately, but we got back out tonight and got a few on the board early,” Snitker said. “Then we had our big inning that we haven’t been having during the losing streak that we had. … It was good again to go out and get another win.”

Revue de presse publiée par Jacques Lanciault