masn-baseballs-orioles.jpgWhen Mike Boulanger was hired by Dan Duquette in January as the Orioles’ minor league hitting coordinator, Boulanger told me he would track something he called productive team plate appearances both by O’s minor league players and teams.

PTPA, similar to something Buck Showalter referred to as productive outs for Orioles (or POFO), can be a hit, a walk, a sac bunt, a sac fly, hitting behind the runner or making the pitcher work with an eight-pitch at-bat. You get the point. It’s a plate…When Mike Boulanger was hired by Dan Duquette in January as the Orioles’ minor league hitting coordinator, Boulanger told me he would track something he called productive team plate appearances both by O’s minor league players and teams.

PTPA, similar to something Buck Showalter referred to as productive outs for Orioles (or POFO), can be a hit, a walk, a sac bunt, a sac fly, hitting behind the runner or making the pitcher work with an eight-pitch at-bat. You get the point. It’s a plate appearance that helps the team win. A batter can often help his team without even getting a hit.

Boulanger provided me with the top 10 list of O’s minor leaguers who provided the most PTPA this season:

1. Ty Kelly
2. Robbie Widlansky
3. LJ Hoes
4. Brendan Webb
5. Glynn Davis
6. Jonathan Schoop
7. Brandon Waring
8. Joe Mahoney
9. Antoan Richardson
10. Jeremy Nowak

Boulanger said those players impressed the minor league staff.

“These guys, to have that many productive team plate appearances, they are doing something right, a lot of things right. All these guys have things they can work on, but overall, their season as a whole, there was a lot of positive things that happened. We’d like to see other guys do what they did. Because those things help teams win games. You have to remember not many guys hit .300 in the big leagues, so you have to be able to do other things to help the team,” he said.

Earlier this week, I interviewed Boulanger to get his take on his first season in his new position with the Orioles.

Another note from the minor leagues. Schoop and lefty pitcher Mike Belfiore have been named to play for the East team in Saturday night’s Rising Stars Game in the Arizona Fall League. The game will be televised live at 8 p.m. Eastern time by MLB Network.

In 14 games for the Mesa Solar Sox, Schoop is batting .310 (13-for-42) with four doubles, two homers, seven RBIs and an OPS of 1.000. Belfiore is 0-1 with an ERA of 5.63 over eight games. In eight innings, he has allowed 10 hits with two walks and nine strikeouts.

Coming soon: I’ll get Boulanger’s take on Kelly, Hoes and Schoop.

Coming tomorrow in this space: I had a chance today to interview Baseball America’s Matt Forman, who put together the Orioles top 10 prospects list this year. The list was published this week. Tomorrow, I’ll get Forman’s take on Dylan Bundy and Kevin Gausman and next week have much more from that interview with Matt.