Stone Crabs' Cabrera finds his groove

For all the hard work Génesis Cabrera has put in in recent weeks, an outing like Tuesday's was well-deserved, according to his pitching coach, Doc Watson.
"If you go back to the begining of the year, his first two starts obviously weren't what he wanted," Watson said. "And he has spent the past two-plus weeks just really being focused on commanding himself on the mound and keeping his delivery under control."

Back in his groove, the Rays' No. 29 prospect  gave up two hits over a season-high seven innings as Class A Advanced Charlotte blanked Lakeland, 2-0, at Joker Marchant Stadium. He struck out five and issued a pair of walks.
Box score
The 20-year-old southpaw settled in early and notched three punchouts in the first two innings. He worked out of a two-on, no-out situation in the third and only allowed one baserunner -- on an error -- the rest of the way.
"He never really labored," Watson said. "He had a couple of long at-bats, but he wasn't breathing hard on the mound or had a tough time carrying on a conversation with you in the dugout. He pitched seven innings a couple of times last season, so we weren't worried about sending him back out there. We just turned the month of April over and for him to do this relatively early at this level, it's a really good thing to see."
Cabrera (2-3) is coming off his first full season, one in which he was named a Midwest League All-Star. But the native of the Dominican Republic got a bitter first state of the Florida State League. He surrendered six runs over 3 2/3 innings in his 2017 debut and gave up four more runs over 1 1/3 frames in his next start on April 11 before he and Watson went back to the drawing board.
"He'd get too quick with his delivery at times," Watson said. "He doesn't allow himself to get back on his back leg to a balance point and he would open up early and let his arm drag and get underneath pitches. But he just learned to slow himself down a bit to feel his balance point and continue to drive the baseball on-line to the catcher's glove."
Slowly but surely, Cabrera began to find the consistency in his delivery.
"There has been a couple of times where he'd come over into the bullpen when it wasn't his day to really do much and he would just do dry work to feel where he was in space, how his body was timing up with the separation of his hand and when he can release his stride foot," Watson said.
The results started to reflect Cabrera's labor. In his April 16 start against the same Lakeland team, the left-hander allowed an unearned run on one hit and one walk over five innings in a hard-luck loss.

"He told me before that start that he doesn't care about velocity, he just wants to throw strikes and locate the baseball, and that's what he did," Watson said. "It was all about feeling his delivery and being under control, and he saw he could do that and be successful. He just did the same thing tonight.
"When the ball got away from him a little bit in this one, he just made the adjustment on the next pitch. It didn't take him another inning or another hitter. He was able to just refocus and get himself back in the zone. It was a tremendous outing by him."
Brandon Lawson struck out one in the eighth and Bryan Bonnell notched his fourth save of the year by working around a hit in the ninth.
Brandon Lowe belted a solo homer for the Stone Crabs, but shortstop Jake Cronenworth saw his 25-game hitting streak -- the third-longest in Rays Minor League history -- come to an end with an 0-for-5 night.
Tigers No. 3 prospectBeau Burrows (3-1) took the loss after yielding one run on four hits while striking out six over four innings.