Down On The Farm: Harrison Musgrave

May 23, 2015; Denver, CO, USA; General wide view of Coors Field during the third inning of the game between the San Francisco Giants against the Colorado Rockies. Mandatory Credit: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports

Down on the farm, Colorado Rockies’ minor league lefty Harrison Musgrave was nearly perfect this week in Modesto for the Class A-Advanced Nuts of the hitter-friendly California League. 

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Any way you slice it, the California League is a hitter’s league, with small parks, wind-swept fields, high elevations, and some crazy game scores. It’s such a hitter’s league, in fact, that some teams have considered bumping their prospects immediately from Low-A to AA to avoid the High-A hitter’s havens in the central California valley.

Well, good thing nobody told the Colorado Rockies and Harrison Musgrave about all that, right?

Musgrave was perfect for more than five innings Monday afternoon for the Modesto Nuts, and ended up tossing seven innings of one-hit ball while striking out ten batters in the Nuts’ 2-0 victory over Visalia.

Musgrave spoke to MiLB.com about the outing, telling Kelsie Heneghan:

"“It’s awesome. The whole point is to keep offense off the board, and it’s been awhile since I was able to do that. It was a nice change of pace where our offense didn’t have to go out and try to score five runs just to give me a win or keep us in the game.”"

Awesome, it is.

Musgrave, a West Virginia University product, has been pretty awesome himself this year, thus far going 5-1, 3.42 in nine starts for a very talented Nuts team, and with 44 strikeouts against just 12 walks, Musgrave is showing the Rockies that he may be on the fast track for a promotion.

Drafted in the 8th round in 2014 out of WVU and his hometown of Bridgeport, West Virginia, Musgrave has already been fast-tracked once; after playing rookie ball in Grand Junction in 2014, he missed Low-A Asheville altogether and jumped right to Modesto this season.

Now, perhaps the 6’1″ left-hander ought to figure into the Rockies’ prospect plans moving forward – and get himself a shot at AA New Britain – at some point this season. At the very least, West Virginians are noticing their homegrown hurler.

Though it hasn’t yet been confirmed on the Nuts’ site, it would stand to reason Musgrave will likely throw in this weekend’s series at Visalia, against the very same team he dominated on Monday.