Last week, I posted about Mets pitching prospect Mark Cohoon who currently heads the starting rotation for the Savannah Sand Gnats. At the time, Cohoon had thrown his second consecutive shutout allowing just three hits and a walk over nine innings while striking out five. I ended that post with the following,
Keep an eye on this one, because he is ripe for a promotion to Binghamton and could advance through the minors quickly.
At the beginning of this week he won his second consecutive “Player of the Week” award for the South Atlantic League.
So what does Cohoon do for an encore?
He throws another shutout as the Gnats topped the Rome Braves 7-1 last night.
That’s his third straight shutout, a 4-hit masterpiece in which he struck out seven and improved to 7-1 on the season with a league leading 1.30 ERA.
“I had my whole arsenal,” he said. “When I got in tight spots, I just trusted my two-seam fastball and threw it over the plate for ground balls. I was able to throw all my pitches for strikes, and when I got ahead of the count I put guys away with my curveball.”
Cohoon’s arsenal includes a two and four seam fastball, a plus curveball and a very effective circle-change, and he throws all of them for strikes.
He now has a 0.94 WHIP and has struck out 75 batters (third best in the Sally Lg.) while walking just 17 in 90.1 IP. Quite an impressive K/BB ratio, to say the least.
Cohoon has not allowed an earned run since May 22, nearly a month ago.
Making his achievements even more notable is that on May 5th, Cohoon threw nine shutout innings, but didn’t get the decision in a 12 inning 1-0 win for the Gnats. He could have very easily earned a shutout victory for this game as well.
No pitcher in any league, Majors or Minors, can boast three shutouts as of today.
Well done, Mark, well done indeed…
Last season, while pitching for the Brooklyn Cyclones, Cohoon also had a solid season season finishing with a 9-2 record and a 2.15 ERA and earned a nod on the All Star team. Batters hit just .210 against him and he had an impressive 20 BB to 70 K ratio.
He was selected in the 12th round of the 2008 draft out of North Central Texas College, and he has been nothing short of spectacular since signing with the organization.
It won’t be long until Cohoon gets promoted to Class-AA Binghamton where I expect him to continue to pitch at this level against some of the better prospects in the minors. Once that happens, you will see Cohoon begin to climb up those top prospects charts as more scouts take notice.
