Ryan Kalish - RF Greenville Drive

A friend of mine scored club level seats to the Greenville Drive at Asheville Tourists game last night. "Club level" is basically nothing more than a bar area directly across from right field. I only mention this to help explain why I was so impressed with what I witnessed.

In the bottom of the first inning one of the Tourists hit a bomb off the top of the fence in deep CF (just missing a homerun). What was astonishing to me is how the CF cleared out of the way when he realized the ball was over his head (granted the ball drifted to RF a little but it was still clearly in the CF's range). Ryan Kalish, the Drive RF, was backing up the play and as the ball came down I watched him plant is left leg, field the ball, wheel and fire a bullet all the way to the third baseman. In my opinion his throw was never more than 15 feet off the ground (OK, maybe 20 at best) and the third baseman, who was setup over his bag like a catcher waiting on a pitch, hardly moved his glove. It was one of the most impressive throws I have ever seen. The Tourist player damned near snapped off both his legs trying to stop after rounding second on a dead run. A wild pitch later, with the runner moving up to third, the batter swatted late at a fastball and poked it down the RF line. Clearly the runner scored as the ball one hopped the fence and the batter tried for second. Kalish barehanded the ball, wheeled and fired to second. The cutoff man moved out of the way, otherwise the ball would have hit him in the face, and the shortstop caught the ball 10 inches of the ground in front of the bag. The runner was out by two and a half steps. There were at least 3 or 4 more balls hit off the RF fence by the Tourists during the game and NONE, not one, of those batters made it past first on the play. I've seen Francoeur make some throws and i've watched a few from Vlady over the years but I have NEVER seen someone throw that hard with as much accuracy as consistently as Kalish did last night. This kid has a golden arm, period! So what is this kids story? Top prospect or under the radar type guy? I knew very little about either team before I went last night but you can bet I will be following this kids career if for nothing more than to track the assists he racks up.