Darin Ruf and Tyler Cloyd were named Phillies Minor League Players of the Month for April, the Phillies announced yesterday. The full release is below the fold.

Cloyd is 4-0 in five starts this year between Reading and Lehigh Valley, where he threw six perfect innings on Opening Day filling in for the suspended Dave Bush. He’s allowed a combined five runs in 31 innings with 28 strikeouts. Cloyd was with the BlueClaws in the first half of 2009. He was promoted after appearing in the All-Star Game and went 7-3, 3.05 with the BlueClaws that half.

Ruf was with Lakewood for a month in 2010, promoted on May 13th when Jonathan Singleton joined the BlueClaws. This year, he’s hitting a cool .356 with Reading to go along with 2 home runs and 11 RBIs.

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Cloyd also was Phillies Minor League Pitcher of the Week for last week, and has won that award 4 times in the last 8 weeks dating back to last year.

A pair of Reading Phillies has swept honors for the month of April. First baseman Darin Ruf is the Phillies Minor League Player of the Month, while the Pitcher of the Month is right-hander Tyler Cloyd.

Ruf, 25, batted .378 during April with 31 hits in 23 games. Selected in the 20th round of the 2009 draft, his month was highlighted by a 5-for-5 performance on April 17 at Richmond where he homered, scored four runs and drove in two. The Reading first baseman currently ranks in the top five in hits (31) and batting average (.360) in the Eastern League, helping the R-Phils to their best start (16-7) since 1995.

Cloyd, selected by the Phillies in the 18th round of the June 2008 draft, went 4-0 with a 1.45 ERA in five games between Lehigh Valley and Reading in April. A native of Papillion, Nebraska, Cloyd struck out 28 batters in 31.0 innings of work, while holding opponents to a .200 average.

The 6-foot-3 righty was called up from Reading to make an emergency start for the IronPigs on April 5 vs the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees. Cloyd did not allow a base runner while striking out eight in six innings of work.

Dating back to last year, the 24-year-old has secured the win in seven of his last nine starts.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 3rd, 2012 at 8:33 am and is filed under Around the Farm, Lehigh Valley IronPigs, Reading Phillies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.