WARNING: This post is long and contains many words. Feeling adventurous? Read on.
Some part of me wants to play a season's slate worth of B-squad spring training games, and maybe the
Pale Hose roster reflects that. But we're tied for first right now; no point in being hopelessly negative until we're at least five games out. And may as well take a look at some of these marginal guys and see if we've got anything here for when we are ready to take on the world.
So here's the first of three of those look-sees, with the hated opponent being bitter division rivals
Cleveland. A gander at our lineup:
SS
A. Cuevas
2B
A. Kennedy
LF
J. Reed
1B
F. Thomas
3B
E. Munson
CF
B. Anderson
LF
C. King
C
Y. Torrealba
SP
E. Blackburn
Their nine features
Joe Crede hitting cleanup, which made me giggle. But of all the names listed, the one I'm most interested in is our ninth name.
25 year old
Erick Blackburn is a college man, a fourth round pick two years back in the same draft that featured calamitous first round selection Mike Houchins, a now-25 year old OF who's not even in big league camp.
Blackburn's a crafty lefty, and like so many before him, he could go either way. Will he be
Adam Walker or
Jamie Moyer,
Kevin Bearse or
Tom Glavine? 60 innings probably wouldn't be enough to get a good read on
Blackburn, particularly considering that it typically takes time for crafty lefties to learn the art of nibbling at the major league level. One "spring training" game is pretty much meaningless. But I want to root for the skinny southpaw, or I want a reason to cut bait if he struggles this year. I want to make him more than '12-15, 3.02 ERA, 220.2 IP, 199 K'. Maybe six innings won't do that, but two were more than enough to turn
Enrique Wilson into
The Relief Ace. It's worth a try.
Fausto Carmona, one of the few real ballplayers playing in this backyard brawl, sets down our chaps in order in the first, and young
Blackburn strides out to the mound for his turn.
Ray Durham's a hell of a guy to debut against, and
Blackburn's nervousness shows when he bounces his first pitch, supposedly a hook, five feet in front of the plate. But his next is a fastball that runs in on the switch-hitting
Durham, and he pops it up into right-center.
Brian Anderson eases under it, squeezes it the two-handed, old-fashioned way, and
Blackburn's made a nice first impression. Four pitches and two outs later, he's turned that nice first impression into a nice first inning.
In the top of the second, free agent signing and likely starting third baseman
Eric Munson wallops a one-out shot to the left-center field wall that's good for two bags, and two batters later,
Clinton King turns on a
Carmona fastball and scalds it...fair! down the right field line and into the corner. He, too, gets two, and the
Pale Hose get one on the board. May only be spring training, but I couldn't help but pump my fist
like Jeter at that.
Yorvit Torrealba grounds to second to end the inning, and that puts young
Erick Blackburn in a most unfamiliar situation -- in a major league camp and pitching with a lead.
As for the latter of those, that really is unfamiliar territory, as he's 22-25 in his two-year pro career despite strong ERA's. Such is the Pale Hose minor league system.
And
Blackburn responds by inducing
Joe Crede to bounce to second on the second pitch, which is nice and all -- but, really, it's
Joe Crede. Not exactly a crowning achievement.
Coco Crisp strikes on out a
big 1-2 yellow hammer...but it's a guy named after a cereal. So what? Faced with toolsy
Alex Escobar,
Blackburn starts to doubt himself, doubt that he should be here, that he belongs. He tries to be perfect, instead handing out a walk.
Blackburn's panic attacks continue against monster prospect
Frankie Gutierrez, and he runs up the count on him. One ball away from a second consecutive walk, he puts a mediocre pitch over, and
Gutierrez clobbers it to the right side.
Adam Kennedy, perhaps in a tantalizing glimpse of the future, makes a wonderful stop, but that's all he can do. Two on now, two down, veteran
Scott Spiezio up. Pitching coach Jamison Bryan heads out to the mound.
After a short chat,
Blackburn eventually steps back on the rubber with purpose, with
that look in his eye. He challenges
Spiezio -- imperfectly, as he's just a green youngster -- but he goes after him, rather than trying to throw that knee-high fastball with late life on the outside corner five straight times.
Blackburn simply
pitches, nothing more. On the sixth pitch of the at-bat, with baserunners still looming on the paths,
Blackburn fires out a two-seamer on the outside half, and
Spiezio pops it up to left.
Jeremy "Fetal Position"
Reed makes the grab, and the inning's in the books, no sweat.
The third frame is quick on both ends, which suits me just fine, and after another quiet inning for our offense,
Blackburn runs into a bit of a jam in the second half of the fourth.
Joe Crede and
Coco Crisp, both real major league ballplayers, line solidly struck hits, and
Alex Escobar, who walked first time up, steps in with two on and only one down. But
Blackburn, utilizing that high poise rating, induces the pitcher's best friend on his fourth pitch -- a sharp bouncer to second. 4-6-3 double play, inning over.
And his spring training outing's over, as it turns out, as
Yorvit Torrealba doubles to start the fifth.
Ramon Vazquez pinch-hits for
Blackburn and sacrifices, but
Aneudi Cuevas strikes out for the second out. Even though it's only spring training, I couldn't help but drop an expletive there. But
Adam Kennedy hammers a high slider to the opposite field gap, and we notch our second run anyway.
Jeremy Reed, who's had a lousy three at-bats (cut his ass!), strikes out, but we have a nice little lead.
And
Mike Crudale.
No, I'm serious. "And"
Crudale, the journeyman right-hander, looks wonderful over the fifth and sixth innings, as minor league veterans tend to do. He allows but a single hit and caps off his two frames with something to tell the grandkids about, a strikeout of
Joe Crede. OK, so his little tykes would probably respond with, "We struck him out, too, Papa." It's still better than walking uphill 10 miles to school and walking uphill 10 miles home, isn't it?
Clint King begins the seventh by coming up about ten feet short of an opposite field blast to left, but he settles for his second two-bagger. I wish he'd have settled for a fly out, because now the stupid scout part of me wants to put him on the Opening Day roster, but it's easier to ignore it when he's off the basepaths, as he is after
Yorvit Torrealba sacrifices so poorly that
King is cut down at third.
Shea Hillenbrand grounds into a fielder's choice, and my first response is "Trade the faggot", but we get a run anyway as the middle infield tandem of
Aneudi Cuevas and
Adam Kennedy chases
Carmona with a pair of singles up the middle.
Jeremy Reed strikes out for the third time (is he really going to start for the
Pale Hose?), and we're nine outs away and three runs ahead.
Rule 5 Pick
Marcos Carvajal, faced with the bottom half of the lineup, is the choice for the seventh, and he starts off well enough by retiring
Coco Crisp on a tapper to the big lunk at third,
Eric Munson.
Alex Escobar scalds a single, but pinch-hitter
Shaun Larkin strikes out looking on a
97 mile an hour heater and we're one out away from moving on. But another pinch-hitter comes on -- a real, live one.
Randall Simon.
Carvajal wets himself, and throws three pitches, each one further off target than the last, with the third clanging off the backstop and allowing the runner to move to second. But
Carvajal, just 22 years old, steps off for a moment and has an epiphany.
With the pitcher on deck and the score 3-0 in our favor, it doesn't matter what
Randall Simon does. With that in mind,
Carvajal steps back on the rubber with a stupid, impish grin and exposes
Simon for the flawed hacker that he is. Fastball, BAM, strike one. Fastball, POP, strike two. A foul ball, and then -- cheddar, on the inside half.
99 mile an hour cheddar.
Simon taps it to second. Pitch. Out. Inning.
Carlos De La Cruz, who has somewhere between one and three words in his last name, pitches a fine eighth, and it's
Rick Hummel's turn for our side. Now, we actually know him a bit, so, predictably, he gives up two leadoff singles to bring the tying run to the plate.
Josh Bard flies out, easing my stress level temporarily (and yes, I know, I know, it's spring training), but then
Pokey Reese (!!) drives a hanging slider to deep right-center.
Brian Anderson takes off like a rocket, and scarcely has the thought, "How the f*** is he going to catch that?" crossed my mind before the sphere's flight suddenly dies out.
Anderson slows up some fifteen feet before the warning track and makes what turns out to be an easy grab.
Joe Crede bounces to second, the inning's suddenly over, and I'm struck with a brilliant nickname for
Crede, if only there was no damn character limit. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder."
Kaz Tadano bedevils us in our turn at-bat, and second year pro
Ray Butner is the obvious choice for the last of the ninth. The 22 year old Gamecock battled his control and older competition at AA Birmingham last year, but this ain't AA. It ain't quite the major leagues, either, but it's somewhere in between.
Jhonny Peralta's more or less a major leaguer, though, and he wallops
Butner's sixth pitch, a straight-as-an-arrow fastball, off the left field wall for two bags. But
Alex Escobar grounds out, rather than hitting a home run like I thought he might when
Butner tossed in another straight screamer. It moves
Peralta up, and when
Butner's wildness results in a pitch that
Yorvit Torrealba can't catch, our shutout's gone. Heralded prospect
Cooper "Mash"
Brimer draws a free pass, and our lead suddenly has a chance to be gone, too, with
Randall Simon in the box.
"
Nothing and one to Simon. The southpaw Butner to the stretch, to the set. He kicks and fires in a four-alarmer, and Simon raps it to second. Kennedy to Cuevas for one, down to Thomas at first in plenty of time for number two, and that'll win it for the Sox. Ray Butner tallies his twenty-third professional save in a 3-1 victory for Chicago in the Cactus League."
I know, I know, no one actually announces a spring training game. Doesn't count, it's no cause for celebration. But it's a nice feeling just the same.
CLE 1 CHW 3
WP: M. Crudale - 2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 2 K
LP: F. Carmona - 6.2 IP, 8 H, 3 R; 7-9, 3.93 ERA in 126 IP last year
S: R. Butner - 1 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 BB
Game Ball Goes To... Typically I would give it to the whole world, but something about
Erick Blackburn makes me think that giving it to him would be prescient. Four innings, three hits, a walk and a K. I know, it's only 57 pitches, but allow me to hope that we may just have something here.