Leidos Field at Ripken Stadium - Aberdeen IronBirds

Winston-Salem Dash (CHW) @ Aberdeen IronBirds (BAL)

August 24, 2024

IronBirds 2, Dash 1 (10 inn)

W: Zane Barnhart
L: Bryce Willits

Attendance: 3,215
Time of Game: 2 hours, 38 minutes

Stadium Facts

Location: Aberdeen, MD
Opened: 2002
Capacity: 4,000
Level: High A
League: South Atlantic

My 2024 Minor League ballpark tour ended the same way it started:  with a High A South Atlantic League game at a ballpark just off I-95 that I had driven past many times before but had never actually visited.  Those parks in Wilmington and Aberdeen are only separated by about 40 miles too.  Having missed out on stopping in Aberdeen at the tail end of my New England trip, I drove back up there a few weeks later for a Saturday night game between the Orioles' affiliate Aberdeen IronBirds and the Winston-Salem Dash, my first (and only) time seeing any White Sox affiliated team in 2024.

The IronBirds are owned by the Iron Man himself, Cal Ripken Jr and his brother Billy, natives of Aberdeen.  While the town of Aberdeen is quite small for being the home of an affiliated squad, the location is ideal for Orioles fans who want to make the quick trip up from Baltimore, or from anywhere else in Maryland for that matter.  I-95 runs just a little ways beyond the right field wall.  Ripken Stadium is just one part of a huge sports complex appropriately named the Ripken Experience.  It was one of the few parks I attended this year that had ample onsite parking that was free.  The stadium has a brick exterior that closely resembles Oriole Park at Camden Yards.  Another nod to the parent club is an on premise hotel that looks an awful lot like the Eutaw Street Warehouse at Camden Yards.  But this hotel is not located within the ballpark perimeter and is actually in foul territory beyond third base rather than right field.  The main seating bowl extends most of the way around the park in foul territory with party areas down each line.  There are no outfield seats.  There is a spacious concourse above the main seating area.  This was the third straight High A park I visited with an artificial playing surface, which was installed when Aberdeen was upgraded to this level from the defunct NY/Penn short season league in 2021.  Judging strictly by the park and not its surroundings, it is a tough call between this stadium and Jersey Shore for my favorite High A stadium I visited this year.  Maybe a slight edge to Jersey Shore for having real grass.

There have been very few games played by any team associated with the White Sox that have been worth watching this year, and especially over the past couple months.  But I lucked out with this one.  Earlier in the week, the Sox announced that their first round draft pick, fifth overall pick in this July's draft, Hagen Smith would be making his professional debut with Winston-Salem in this game in Aberdeen.  The left handed pitcher out of the University of Arkansas was on a very limited pitch and innings limit as they eased him into pro ball following an extremely impressive season on the mound for the Razorbacks.  He did not disappoint.  He pitched three scoreless innings, allowing two hits, no walks and four strikeouts.  His most impressive moments came in the third after a couple of groundball base hits put two men in scoring position with just one out.  Smith then proceeded to strike out the final two batters he would face, one on a nasty chase slider and another on a fastball looking.  This was quite a pitchers duel throughout.  IronBirds starter Trey Gibson doesn't have the prospect hype of Smith, but he has been one of the best pitchers in the Orioles system this season splitting time between Low A Delmarva and Aberdeen.  Gibson allowed a couple hits in the third inning and one of those runners scored on a wild pitch.  But other than that, he was pretty much perfect.  He pitched four innings with just those two hits and one run allowed, no walks and eight strikeouts.  The Dash had trouble putting the ball in play against the IronBirds pitchers who would follow Gibson as well.  They wound up striking out 14 times in the game.  Aberdeen scored a run in the fourth to tie the game at one.  Neither team came particularly close to scoring the next several innings.  Winson-Salem blew what should have been a golden opportunity to pull ahead in the eighth inning.  Leading off the inning, diminutive second baseman Rikuu Nishida lined one into the right-center field gap that the right fielder took a very poor route towards, allowing the ball to roll all the way to the wall.  Nishida would have had an easy stand-up triple, but the third base coach waved him in to attempt the inside-the-park home run.  He was thrown out by at least 20 feet.  Considering the score and situation, tied game top of the 8th with no outs and the heart of the order due up, it was one of the worst sends home I've ever seen in a professional game.  And wouldn't you know it, it proved to be quite costly.  Winson-Salem didn't score again, including in the top of the tenth inning with a free runner starting at second.  Then the second thoroughly frustrating moment occurred for me as someone interested in seeing a Dash win.  They opted to use a position player to pitch the bottom of the tenth inning.  While I understand they had their hands tied with a starting pitcher limited to just three innings, I'm still not sure how they could run out of pitchers in a game in which they allowed one run in the first nine innings after having thrown a shutout the night before.  Anyway, with infielder Bryce Willits on the mound, you can probably guess how this one ended.  A bunt single moved the free runner to third and then Aron Estrada hit a sacrifice fly to center to walk it off for a 2-1 IronBirds victory.

And thus concluded my 2024 Minor League Ballpark tour.  I managed to make it to 20 different ballparks covering pretty much the entire Northeast corridor of the country.  I saw a lot of really cool stadiums with not a single one that I decisively disliked.  I got to visit a bunch of fun cities that were mostly brand new to me.  And I was extremely lucky to see a lot of thoroughly entertaining baseball games.  In total, home teams went 14-7 including an incredible six walk-off victories.  There were very few games that weren't in doubt in the final innings.  Seems unlikely I'll be able to repeat that in future years, but we shall see!  I absolutely intend to continue this tour of the minors next year, but have not decided where I will be going other than a likely trip to North Carolina to see most of the White Sox affiliates.  Until then, perhaps I will go back and publish a post or two to document my 2021-2022 MLB Tour at some point this winter.  Don't expect that to be anything other than links to photo albums and scorecards though.

Photo Album

Next ballpark:  TBD 2025

Heritage Financial Park - Hudson Valley Renegades

Jersey Shore BlueClaws (PHI) @ Hudson Valley Renegades (NYY)

August 2, 2024

Renegades 7, BlueClaws 1

W: Cam Schlittler
L: Mitch Neunborn

HR: Kiko Romero (HV)

Attendance: 2,486
Time of Game: 2 hours, 3 minutes

Stadium Facts

Location: Wappingers Falls, NY
Opened: 1994
Capacity: 4,500
Level: High A
League: South Atlantic

After spending an extra day in Massachusetts, it was back to New York on Friday, but a much different part of New York.  The Hudson Valley Renegades play at Heritage Financial Park which has a postal address of Wappingers Falls, but is really located in the town of Fishkill, just about a mile east of the Hudson River and 60 miles north of New York City.  It would really be unfair to compare either this ballpark or its surrounding area to any of the other stops on this trip because it is so much different.  This is a very traditional lower level minor league park in a relatively small town.

Heritage Financial Park is located just off of I-84, so it is pretty easy to get to.  There just isn't a lot going on in the area.  Other than the parking lots, the only things surrounding the park are trees.  It is a pretty run-of-the-mill park built 30 years ago.  It doesn't have a true exterior wall to it.  Basically all of the concessions are on the concourse below the single level seating bowl that is pretty much only separated from the exterior of the park by fencing.  A walkway splits the main seating bowl that extends just beyond first and third bases.  A handful of luxury boxes sit atop those sections.  There is a club/party area that wraps around the left field foul pole, which I believe is a recent addition to the park.  Besides that, there are no outfield seats.  Both of the High A ballparks I visited on this trip, Brooklyn being the other, have artificial playing surfaces.

Unfortunately, my rainy week continued.  For the second time in three days, I was at a game that started in a delay which lasted about two hours.  But the good news was, this time they waited it out and got the game in.  Apparently in the minors, they can opt to shorten games when there is a significantly delayed start.  So this became a seven inning game that started around 9 p.m.  Not surprisingly, the weather and long delay meant there was a pretty small crowd on hand for this one.  Credit to the Renegades fans though, they brought the energy.  A group of fans sitting behind the Renegades dugout did the player roll call chant in the first inning, like the big league affiliates' bleacher fans do at Yankee Stadium.

More than three months removed from seeing the Phillies' High A affiliate Jersey Shore last play at home, it was not surprising that only one player remained from that April starting lineup, Hendry Mendez.  But new to the lineup was one of the top Phillies prospects, shortstop Aidan Miller, their '23 first round draft pick.  On the other side, while I've seen a bunch of Yankees affiliate games this year, this was my first look at Hudson Valley.  These teams are currently locked in a tight race for the South Atlantic League North Division second half championship, which would earn them a playoff spot.  On this night though, Hudson Valley was the much more impressive team.  Their starting pitcher, righty Cam Schlittler was pretty dominant.  He went five innings, allowed six hits, one walk and struck out nine.  He was promoted to AA soon after this game.  The Renegades scored first in the bottom of the second, an unearned run after Garrett Martin reached on an error, stole second on a play where he was actually tagged out but was ruled safe due to fielders interference, and then scored on a single by Anthony Hall.  Hudson Valley doubled their lead on a solo homer to right by Kiko Romero in the fourth.  The only BlueClaws run against Schlittler came in the fifth.  Miller sliced a two out double down the right field line and scored on a single by Keaton Anthony.  Jersey Shore failed to score a leadoff double in the top of the sixth and then things got out of hand in the bottom half.  The first three batters reached base safely, including a RBI double by Antonio Gomez.  The next two runs scored on a passed ball and a wild pitch.  Then Romero added a triple to his earlier homer.  He too would score when a throw home on a fielder's choice hit him in the back.  One more run scored after that.  The five run frame gave the Renegades a 7-1 lead with just one half inning to play in the shortened game.  Jersey Shore went down in order to end the game.

I was supposed to make one final stop on this trip in Aberdeen, Maryland on my way home the next day.  But the weather wasn't any better in Aberdeen Friday or Saturday.  Their Friday night game was suspended part way through and the forecast for Saturday was dicey.  Since I was going to be driving through Aberdeen on my way home regardless, I decided to play it by ear.  As I got near, I made the decision to skip the stop and drive the rest of the way home.  That proved to be a wise decision.  While they did complete the suspended game, the regularly scheduled game that evening was postponed.  So what was originally supposed to be an eight game in eight city tour turned into eight games in seven cities, with three of the games being of the seven inning variety.  I decided to wait a couple weeks to make the relatively short drive back up to Aberdeen when they were hosting the White Sox High A affiliate Winston-Salem.  That was just a few days ago, so I will be writing about my final minor league visit of the year very soon.

Photo Album

Next ballpark:  Leidos Field at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen, MD

Polar Park - Worcester Red Sox

Buffalo Bisons (TOR) @ Worcester Red Sox (BOS)

August 1, 2024

Game 1:  Red Sox 9, Bisons 8

W: Justin Hagenman
L: Mason Fluharty

HR: Will Robertson (BUF)

Time of Game: 2 hours, 53 minutes

Game 2:  Bisons 8, Red Sox 5

W: Adrian Hernandez
L: Zach Penrod

S: Jimmy Burnette

HR: Will Robertson (BUF), Vaughn Grissom (WOR), Nathan Hickey (WOR), Chase Meidroth (WOR)

Attendance: 7,725
Time of Game: 2 hours, 4 minutes

Stadium Facts

Location: Worcester, MA
Opened: 2021
Capacity: 9,508
Level: Triple A
League: International

On Wednesday, I started my journey back home from Maine, but I still had a couple more stops to make on the way.  It was a pretty crazy weather day in Massachusetts as one minute it would be pouring rain and the next the sun would be out.  This pattern continued throughout the afternoon and into the evening.  As game time approached in Worcester, it was apparent they were going to wait for another line of showers to pass before getting the game started as the mound and plate areas were covered despite no rain at the time.  Indeed, another strong line of storms swept through which kept the game delayed for the better part of two hours.  Eventually, the game was postponed and rescheduled as a double header on Thursday afternoon.  I thought the postponement was perhaps a tad unnecessary because it did not rain much more after that.  But I'm sure the bar for postponement is much lower in the minors.  And I was okay with getting to see two games for the price of one the following day.  I was pretty fortunate that it took this long for my first postponement of the year.  And it came at an ideal time because I was able to simply push the rest of my schedule back a day since I was slated to return home on a Friday and had a weekend to spare.  So I got to spend an extra day in Massachusetts' second largest city.

For 50 years, the Red Sox AAA team was located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island before they relocated to Worcester in the brand new Polar Park for the 2021 season.  Polar Park is the newest ballpark I've been to this year and I'm pretty sure no other MLB affiliated teams anywhere have opened stadiums in the three years since, although that will change next year.  While I'm sure the PawSox were beloved too, Worcester is an ideal location for this franchise as it is just ~45 miles from Boston.  Fans from Boston could take the train to Union Station in Worcester and make the short walk to the park from there if they'd like.  Polar Park is located just south of downtown in an area that I have come to learn has been going through major revitalization in the years since this park opened.  Train tracks run just beyond the stadium perimeter in left field and I saw several freight and commuter trains pass by over the course of my two days at the park.  There are a ton of unique features to this park.  Unlike most minor league stadiums I've been to, there are actually several different entry points, including two along Summit Street which runs beyond the stadium in right field.  On game days, they shut down the street and essentially make it within the perimeter of the stadium, adding additional dining and entertainment options for ticket holders.  I'm not totally sure it is necessary because there are plenty of options within the walls of the park as well.  A concourse circles the entire stadium.  The concourse above the main seating areas in foul territory is impressively large for a minor league park, and came in handy when waiting out the rain on Wednesday.  There are multiple full service bars, food trucks, and traditional concession stands as well.  There is a party deck down the third base line and berm seating in left field which was filled with youth groups for the Thursday afternoon game.  And then there is the Worcester Wall in right field, another nod to Fenway's Green Monster.  Except this one is in right field, is blue and not quite as tall.  Like in Boston, there is seating available above the wall.  Unlike Fenway, anyone can at least make their way around those sections to see what the view is like.  Finally, there is plenty of luxury seating in the second level.  This park really has everything you could want in a baseball facility.  If I had to make one tiny complaint, it is also probably the most expensive minor league ballpark I've been to this year for both tickets and concessions.  I would say it is worth it though.

In the minor leagues, doubleheaders are played as a pair of seven inning games, which was fine by me on this day because it was a quite steamy afternoon and the first game managed to last nearly three hours anyway.  This was a rematch of the Blue Jays and Red Sox AAA affiliates who I saw play each other in Buffalo in June.  Game 1 was the Enmanuel Valdez show.  Mostly for good reasons, but some bad too.  The second baseman who has spent time with the big league club in Boston each of the past two years managed to record five hits in a seven inning game.  He also committed two errors.  Sloppy defense was a major factor in this game for both teams.  Buffalo got on the board in the first on a RBI double by Will Wagner, son of all-time great closer Billy Wagner.  Wagner's double came in his first plate appearance with Buffalo after being traded by the Astros to the Blue Jays in the Yusei Kikuchi trade a few days prior.  Wagner didn't spend much time with Buffalo though as he has since made his MLB debut.  In the bottom of the first, Worcester had the bases loaded with two outs when Eddy Alvarez beat out a force attempt on a routine grounder to short allowing a run to score.  Not getting an out on that play proved quite costly for the Bisons as two more singles and an error plated another four runs to give the Red Sox a 5-1 lead after one.  Buffalo then had their big inning assisted by poor defense in the top of the third.  They tied the game, scoring four runs on five singles and a pair of errors.  Worcester immediately answered with a pair of runs to take a 7-5 lead, which they then gave back in an ugly top of the fourth.  Jonatan Clase, another guy new to Buffalo, acquired in a trade with Seattle, reached on Valdez's second throwing error in as many innings.  He then stole second and advanced to third and home on a pair of wild pitches.  There were also two walks and a hit batter in the inning which ultimately led to two Bisons runs without the benefit of a hit.  So through 3 1/2 innings, the game was tied at seven.  Not the crispest 3 1/2 innings I've ever seen.  Things settled a little bit after that.  After the WooSox scored one in the bottom of the fifth, Will Robertson came up with two outs and nobody on in the top of the sixth and lined a ball to center that center fielder Mark Contreras made a poor decision to lunge after and missed.  The ball rolled all the way to the wall and Robertson rounded the bases for an inside the park home run, which was also aided by a couple less than stellar relay throws.  I later learned that this was the first inside the park homer in Polar Park history.  The game remained tied into the bottom of the seventh, the last inning of regulation.  Worcester loaded the bases with one out on a couple singles, including Valdez's fifth of the game, and a walk.  Up came Jamie Westbrook, who had just been demoted from Boston the day before.  He lined a walk-off single to center to push the WooSox to a 9-8 victory.  It was my second straight game seeing walk-off hits, repeating something that happened on my trip in June, albeit on singles this time instead of homers.  Both of these walk-off winners were by Red Sox affiliates.  Additionally, both of the games between Worcester and Buffalo I had seen to this point ended in walk-offs.

After that 17 run, 23 hit, 4 error game, I didn't *really* need to see another game.  And most of the large crowd from the first game must have felt the same way because not many stuck around for the second.  But I didn't have anything better to do on a Thursday afternoon in Worcester.  Also, Game 2 allowed me to see a couple of interesting players who were held out of the WooSox lineup in Game 1 including rehabbing slugger Triston Casas and former top prospect Vaughn Grissom, who was the only player the Red Sox received in the Chris Sale trade last winter, a trade they would probably like to have back right about now.  Grissom did get this game off to a bang though as he and his teammates teed off on Buffalo's veteran right hander James Kaprielian.  In the bottom of the first after Cases reached on a hit by pitch, Grissom homered to left.  Three batters later, WooSox catcher Nathan Hickey absolutely demolished a ball over the Worcester Wall and the concession stand on the concourse behind it for another two run homer.  In the second, Chase Meidroth lined one over the left field wall for the third Red Sox homer of the game, giving them a seemingly safe 5-0 lead.  It was not actually safe.  Worcester starting pitcher Zach Penrod had an interesting afternoon.  At times, he was pretty dominant racking up seven strikeouts in three innings.  But most of the balls that were actually put into play did not find gloves, particularly in the rough third inning.  Buffalo had already scored two runs and reloaded the bases on three hits and two walks before Robertson, one of the few players to start both games, came to the plate.  Robertson won this lefty-on-lefty matchup slugging a grand slam to right center, giving the Bisons a 6-5 lead.  Quite a day for Robertson with homers in both games, an inside the parker and a grand slam.  The fourth was another rough inning for Worcester pitchers, with Jorge Benitez in for Penrod.  Alan Roden led off with a double for the second straight inning.  Two walks later, the Bisons had the bases loaded again.  Benitez hit Damiano Palmegiani to bring in a run.  Then he walked Gabriel Cancel to score another one.  The Bisons led 8-5 through 3 1/2.  The Red Sox released Benitez after this ugly appearance.  Turns out, the Worcester bats went cold after this as they did not record another hit after the third.  8-5 was the final, a double header split and Buffalo won the rubber match of the three games I saw these teams play this year.

That brought an end to my extra day in Worcester.  It was worth sticking around as I got to watch two games in one of the nicest minor league ballparks I've seen.  That was my final AAA stop of the year.  The next day, I headed west to Hudson Valley, New York.

Photo Album

Next ballpark:  Heritage Financial Park in Wappingers Falls, NY