Opening Day
What a great day, the fresh-cut grass, the birds are singing and everyone's hopes are up as everyone starts the season 0-0 with playoff chances dancing in their heads.
Opening Day Lineup (Spring Stats)
SS Matt Arrington .226-0-2
2B Frank McDonald .378-2-5
1B Henry Hansen .375-2-15 also had 4 3B to rank among CBA leaders
CF Bart Evans .261-2-10
LF Rafael Mendez .367-2-5
C Pedro Castro .244-0-4
3B Brent Wells .286-1-2
RF Craig Gill .125-0-1
P Patrick Shaw 18 IP, 32 H 7.50 ERA
The rest of the Starting Rotation will be ...
Jose Franco 20 IP, 23 H, 4.95 ERA
Doug Randolf 19.1 IP, 23 H, 6.05 ERA
Walter Hines 13.2 IP, 16 H, 5.27 ERA
Travis Roberts 17.1 IP, 27 H, 7.27 ERA
The Bullpen will consist of...
Joaquin Alonso 10.2 IP, 16 H, 9.28 who will be the long reliever and showed some decent outings towards the end of Spring.
Bill Davis 16 IP, 11 H, 2.81 ERA Along with Alonso are my only RH Relievers
Cisco Saldana 15 IP, 19 H, 3.60 ERA
Julio Vargas 13 IP, 11 H, 4.15 ERA
Juan Ybarra 9.1 IP, 12 H, 10.61 ERA
Lorenzo Zambrano 7.2 IP, 11 H, 9.39 ERA
Edison Austin 7.1 IP, 3 H, 1.23 ERA will be my closer.
The Positional Bench includes...
C Doug Lynn (Rule 5) .273-0-1
2B Jorge Rodriguez .176-0-2
IF Roberto Silva .324-0-2
3B Pablo Rodriguez .114-0-1
OF Mike Cook .302-0-5
So the first game had the Generals taking on the Brooklyn Knights. The momentum of the last 2 Spring Training games must have given these boys some confidence as the Generals played a great game.
The 12 million dollar man
Tank Shaw led the way with a 5 hit CG shutout of the Brooklyn Knights. He struck out 6 in going the distance. He took league-wide #1 star honors for Opening Day.
CF Bart Evans was the #2 star of the day going 3-4 with 2 2B, HR, BB and 4 RBI on the day. I am not sure there will be a better game than this one all year long. There were many smiling faces after the game in the locker room, let's hope they can stick around for 161 more games!