Winter tales

Shawn Blackwell
3-0, 0.00 in 19 innings
in Texas Winter league

Winter baseball leagues geared toward independent league hopefuls seem to be gaining in popularity. There were two operating this year, one a 10-team league based in Palm Springs, Calif., the other a six-team league in San Antonio.

Two players who spent much of last season in Washington participated in the winter leagues, either to get ready for the Frontier League season or to attract interest from major league scouts.

Right-handed pitcher Shawn Blackwell, who was 4-10 with a 5.36 ERA in 19 games (18 starts) for the Wild Things, has been the talk of the Texas Winter League. Blackwell has been the league's best pitcher, compiling some off-the-chart numbers: 19 innings, 9 hits allowed, 1 run (unearned), 3 walks, 34 strikeouts. He has a 3-0 record and 0.00 ERA in 5 outings.

Blackwell has attracted some serious interest from the Philadelphia Phillies.

"If I had $1,000, I'd bet (Blackwell) gets another chance at a major league organization," said John Harris, Blackwell's manager in the Texas Winter League.

It's hard to judge the level of competition that Blackwell is pitching against in San Antonio. It does appear that the California league might be a notch about the Texas circuit, though that's just an educated guess on my part.

I found it interesting that the the player currently second in the Texas league in batting average is a former Bethel Park High School player, John Sciullo, who played college ball at Marietta.

Wild Things manager Bart Zeller held the same title for a team in the California league this winter, where two of his players were outfielder Scott Kalamar, who played in 55 games for Washington last year, and designated hitter Tim Leary, who played in 13 games with the Wild Things in 2012. Kalamar struggled at the plate with the Wild Things, batting only .185. In California, Kalmar, a former Seton Hall player, batted .241 in 13 games. The 6-8, 260-pound Leary batted .433 in 11 games and had six doubles, a triple and two home runs among his 13 hits.

According to the California Winter League website, the Wild Things have signed pitcher Casey Cannon, a pitcher out of Le Moyne College in Syracuse. Cannon had a 13-9 career record and struck out 161 in 194 innings. Cannon's best season came as a junior in 2012, when he had an impressive 9-0 record and one save, allowing only 48 hits in 82 1/3 innings.