(MiLB.com)

The Puerto Rican team clobbered Cuba last night by a score of 12-1 in the Caribbean Series and new Mets minor leaguer Andrew Barbosa got the win. Puerto Rico moved to to 1-1 in the Series while Cuba is now lost their first two games.

Barbosa was given an early 7-0 lead and proceeded to be aggressive against the Cuban hitters, pound the strike zone and throwing 40 of his 59 pitches for strikes. He went five innings allowing one run on three hits, striking out three and walking nobody. The tall left-hander retired Cuban slugger Alfredo Despaigne including striking him out in his first at bat.

Andrew was great in the Puerto Rican Winter League playoffs going 3-1 with a 1.66 ERA in 21.2 innings including three scoreless starts. He also gave up only run with seven strikeouts in 6.1 regular season innings in Puerto Rico.

Few observations for watching Barbosa pitch:

• Reminds me a ton of Chris Young with his 6 foot 8 frame and a pedestrian fastball but still gets hitters out using his unusual angle he throws from which I touched on in my profile of Andrew.
• Cross body thrower that also helps him hide the ball from the hitter.
• Athletic for his size like Young, moves well of the mound.
• Threw only a handful of breaking balls because of the large lead and I would say it was an average pitch.
• His best pitch is easily his changeup, good speed differential (8-11 MPH) and has very good downward movement. The two strikeouts I saw were on great changeups that were swung and miss at with two strikes.

T.J. Rivera is playing for Puerto Rico and was 1 for 4 with a double and a run scored last night while playing third base. He went 1 for 4 with a double in the first game of the tournament too.

The Caribbean Series had their Homerun Derby last night and former big leaguer Vladimir Guerrero participated hitting three homeruns in 26 swings which you can see here. In one picutre from the derby, Vladimir is surrounded by his family including his nephew Gregory Guerrero who was seen wearing a 27 Mets jersey. The Mets signed Gregory as an international free agent in July last year.

On Tuesday night, they had a mini-HR Derby that included the sons of former Reds closer Francisco Cordero, Red Sox slugger David Ortiz, and former Met Juan Uribe. You can see Uribe’s son here wearing a Mets uniform.