Shorebird of the Week - July 17, 2008

While he's the lowest draft choice among Shorebird hurlers, righthander Cliff Flagello has carved out a useful niche on the Shorebirds staff as a dependable middle reliever. With most pitchers at this level limited to 5-7 innings per start, a guy like Cliff who can come in a couple times a week and give a team 2 or 3 innings to set up the closer gets plenty of chances to impress.

Obviously Cliff has done as asked because he's settled into the long relief role nicely. In 27 appearances for the Shorebirds this season he's pitched 59 1/3 innings but only allowed 42 hits, holding the opposition to a .195 batting average. While he's a little bit susceptible to giving up the base on balls (32 thus far, or about 5 per 9 innings) Cliff has managed to pitch around them and amass an ERA of 2.88. It makes for a WHIP of 1.25, a number right at the staff's overall average. (That composite WHIP places the Delmarva pitchers fourth out of the sixteen teams in the SAL.)

As I noted, Cliff was the lowest draft pick among the current Shorebird pitchers, picked in the 25th round last season. In part this may have been from toiling at the heretofore unknown to me Shorter College, an NAIA institution in Rome, Georgia (home of another SAL franchise, the Rome Braves.) After being assigned to Bluefield last season he did well enough to move up the ladder to Delmarva, where's he actually improved on most of his Bluefield numbers except for walks.

The 23 year old hurler certainly is taking advantage of his shot at moving up through the Orioles' chain and may become a fixture in the same task up in Frederick next season. For now, Cliff will hopefully continue to take care of the middle innings for Delmarva manager Ramon Sambo.