Vote for the BCB Minor League Player of the Month for June!

I can’t believe that we’re already into July, but that means it’s time for everyone to vote for the Minor League Player of the Month for June! The rules take a slight change this month. Instead of the fifth candidate being a second player from one of the four full-season teams, the Eugene Emeralds get their first candidate of the year.

For anyone who might be new, here’s the story. I nominate five players, one from each team. Then you vote on the player you think had the best month of June. You can pick whatever statistics you want and you can add in defense and positional adjustments if you want. The one thing I ask you not to do is consider the player’s prospect status. We want to reward the player who had the best month of June 2018, not the player we think is going to have the best month of June 2021.

Voting will be open until Tuesday evening and I will announce the winner in Tuesday night’s Minor League Wrap. Tomorrow you will get a chance to vote for the best pitching performances for the month.

Clicking on the player’s name will take them to their milb.com page, where you can do more research if you wish.

With that said, the nominees are:

Iowa Cubs catcher Victor Caratini

This won’t make anyone happy who thinks Caratini shouldn’t even be in the minors in the first place, including Caratini. But Caratini didn’t sulk after getting demoted in a roster crunch on May 26. For the month of June, Caratini hit .323/.414/.510. with four home runs and 16 RBI in 26 games. He’s walked 14 times and struck out 20 in 109 trips to the plate. His bat has been so valuable that he’s been in the lineup pretty much every day, taking turns at DH and 1B when he’s not catching. He even played seven innings at third bases, flawlessly handling the one chance he had.

Tennessee Smokies third baseman Jason Vosler

Vosler had such a strong month for the Smokies that he got promoted to Iowa for the final six games. But in Double-A, Vosler hit .263/.371/.500 with three home runs in 21 games. In fact, fully 12 of Vosler’s 21 hits in June for the Smokies went for extra bases. In Triple-A, Vosler had 24 at-bats and had six hits, although one was a double and one was a home run. If you don’t want to do the math yourself, that’s a combined .262/.350/.485 with four home runs and 17 RBI for the month of June.

Myrtle Beach Pelicans second baseman Andruw Monasterio

It was a weirdly bad month of June for the Pelicans. They won their first nine games of the month before losing 15 of their next 17 games. They then won the final game of the month.

But the skid wasn’t Monasterio’s fault. In the month of June, the 21-year-old Venezuelan hit .326/.396/.404 with one double, one triple and one home run in 25 games. He reached base in 24 of those 25 games, only failing to reach on the last game of the month. He had nine multi-hit games.

South Bend Cubs outfielder Roberto Caro

The switch-hitting 24-year-old got promoted to Myrtle Beach over the weekend after a strong month of June. In low-A South Bend, Caro missed most of the first two months of the season with injuries, but he came back healthy and strong in June.

Caro played 20 games in June and hit a eye-popping .391/.480/.594 with one home run and nine stolen bases in 12 attempts. In 77 trips to the plate, he walked ten times and struck out 15. Caro bats leadoff, so he scored 17 times and had six RBI in those 20 games.

Eugene Emeralds centerfielder Fernando Kelli

It was a tough choice between Kelli and his fellow Ems outfielder Jonathan Sierra, but Kelli got the nod because his speed is so disruptive on both offense and defense.

Last season’s Dominican League MVP made his US debut in Eugene this month and did not disappoint. Kelli only hit .259, but he had a .328 on-base percentage and one home run. But what Kelli is best at is stealing bases, and he swiped 13 bases in just 15 games. (He was caught stealing three times.) He strikes out way too much right now (23 times in 48 at-bats so far) but if he can learn to make more contact, he’s a threat every time he’s running the bases.