THE HOT CORNER
Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL
By Claude Playball | Baseball Insider & Analyst | Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast
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April 1 – April 14, 1996 | Games 1–13 | Nine and Four
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CHOI ARRIVED, STRICKLER STRUGGLED, AND MUSCO IS CARRYING THIS TEAM
The Hot Corner spent most of Spring Training telling anyone who would listen that Ha-joon Choi would be in a Sacramento uniform before July. Ha-joon Choi entered the first game of the 1996 season as a pinch substitute in the fifth inning at Portland, hit a three-run home run in the sixth, hit a solo home run in the eighth, and the Prayers won ten to six. By the time Sacramento got home from Portland the kid had two home runs, four RBI, and a batting average of 1.000. He has since come back down to earth at .300 with three home runs and six RBI in limited action, but the statement of that debut was loud enough that I don't need to editorialize further.
The more complicated story from the first two weeks involves two rotation concerns, one Lopez situation that needs to be addressed plainly, three injuries to key contributors, and one thirty-six-year-old shortstop who is somehow playing the best baseball of the opening month. Edwin Musco leads this team in batting average, home runs, and RBI through thirteen games. He is hitting .327 with four home runs and fourteen RBI and has been the best offensive player in Sacramento's lineup by a margin that is not close.
The team is nine and four, leading the AL West by one and a half over Seattle. The foundation is intact. The issues are real and worth documenting.
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DID YOU CATCH THAT GAME? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY
@ Portland, April 1-3 (1-2)
The opener on April 2nd was Choi's introduction and Rubalcava's shaky opening — five and two-thirds innings, five runs allowed, two home runs surrendered. Sacramento won anyway because the lineup scored ten runs and Choi hit two of them out of the ballpark in his first two at-bats as a Prayers player. Rubalcava was fine in the sense that his team won. He was also not fine in the sense that two home runs in his first start of the year continues a pattern the Hot Corner has been noticing since September. Ten to six, Sacramento.
Game two of the doubleheader on April 2nd was Andretti allowing two home runs to Portland right fielder Pablo Bocanegra — the second one a game-winner in the eighth — in what was otherwise a game Andretti pitched adequately. He threw eight innings against a Portland team finishing forty games under .500 last year and lost three to two because a reliever who probably should not be in high-leverage situations was the only warm arm available. Four to three, Portland. The loss was frustrating and the analysis of it is short.
Game three on April 3rd was Strickler allowing eight runs in two-thirds of an inning. Eight runs. Two-thirds of an inning! A game score of — I kid you not! — one. Against a Portland Apocalypse team that has a starting rotation ranked twenty-seventh in baseball. The specific breakdown: a McKenzie three-run home run with two outs in the first inning off a pitch that sat in the middle of the zone, preceded by a Bragg double with two on. Lawson held the next two and a third innings cleanly, Prieto worked three clean innings, Scott worked two clean innings — the bullpen gave up nothing after Strickler left — and it did not matter because eight runs in two-thirds of an inning created a deficit that ten Sacramento hits could not close. Eight to one, Portland. The road trip ended one and two.
vs. San Jose, April 5-7 (3-0)
Lopez came home and went three for four with a home run, a double, and three RBI on April 5th in a five to two win over San Jose. Espenoza threw six and two-thirds innings of one-run baseball. The performance from both men was encouraging. Cruz injured his foot on a defensive play and left the game, which was the other development from April 5th worth noting.
St. Clair on April 6th threw six clean innings of three-hit ball with no runs allowed, Gonzalez held, Benson held, Medina saved it, and Sacramento won three to nothing. Musco hit a two-run home run in the sixth. St. Clair moved to one and zero with a 0.00 ERA and is quietly making the best case in the rotation for consistency in the first two weeks of the season.
April 7th was Rubalcava allowing five runs in four innings — three home runs across two starts now — before the lineup scored six against San Jose pitching to rescue the win in a six to five game that required Lawson, Ryan, and Benson to cover the final five innings. Musco went four for five with a home run and three RBI. Six to five, Sacramento.
vs. Seattle, April 8-11 (3-1)
Andretti threw eight innings and struck out eleven against Seattle on April 8th in the kind of start that makes you question everything you thought you knew about the variance documented in this space across three seasons. Four hits, one run, eleven strikeouts. He is one and one on the year but his performance against Seattle was the best individual pitching performance of the opening month for this organization. Six to one, Sacramento.
Strickler on April 9th allowed three home runs in six and a third innings and was outpitched by a Seattle starter named Carlos Dieguez who has not previously appeared on our radar and threw eight and two-thirds innings of shutout baseball against the defending World Series champions. Six to nothing, Seattle, in a game where Sacramento managed three hits total. Strickler's ERA through three starts: 16.71. Shocking.
Espenoza on April 10th worked five and a third innings against Seattle, allowed two runs, and departed with a lead that Lawson, Ryan, Benson, and Medina held for a five to two win. Musco hit a triple and a two-run home run. Hernandez doubled twice. Five to two, Sacramento.
St. Clair on April 11th went seven innings with two runs allowed and moved to two and zero, 1.38 ERA. Benson held. Medina saved his fourth. Orozco injured his throwing arm and left the game. Four to two, Sacramento.
vs. Detroit, April 12 & 14 doubleheader (2-1)
Rubalcava on April 12th held six and two-thirds innings against Detroit — one run, six strikeouts — before Gonzalez blew the save in the eighth by allowing a two-run home run, and Scott worked two and two-thirds innings to hold and pick up the win when Berrios singled home the winning run in the eleventh off Lorenzo Lopez. Five to four, Sacramento. The win required eleven innings, a blown save, and a walk-off single from the backup catcher, but the Prayers ground it out. That version of Rubalcava is the one that wins October. Certainly a sight that is encouraging to observe, but too early to tell if it is going to hold.
April 14th was a doubleheader completed from a weather suspension. Game one was Andretti allowing four runs in three innings against Detroit and the Prayers losing eight to three in the rain. Eight to three, Detroit.
Game two was Strickler finally pitching a game worth keeping. Six and two-thirds innings, ten strikeouts, three runs allowed against a Detroit lineup that had scored eight runs in the morning game. He moved to one and two with an ERA that remains atrocious at 10.54 for the season even for a small sample size, but the underlying performance — ten strikeouts, three earned runs in six and two-thirds innings — looks nothing like the Portland disaster and everything like a rotation anchor finding his footing. Five to three, Sacramento. Medina saved his fifth.
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THE STORIES THAT DEFINE THIS STRETCH
The Lopez situation needs to be addressed directly — The Hot Corner told Ara Nazarian from Arden-Arcade three weeks ago not to worry about Lopez's spring numbers. The spring numbers were thirteen hits in forty-four at-bats. In thirteen regular season games Lopez is hitting .222 with two home runs. More concerning than the batting average is the specific mechanical explanation that was quietly confirmed by Sacramento's development staff: the two-strike adjustment Lopez worked on during spring training — shortening his swing to put the ball in play — backfired in a significant way. The adjustment carried over into his overall mechanics, depressing his power and simultaneously degrading his pitch recognition because the focus on contact was causing him to chase pitches outside the zone more frequently than he had all of last season. This is not a slump. It is a mechanical regression with a specific cause, and the appropriate response is for the coaching staff to help Lopez discard the adjustment entirely and return to the swing that produced thirty-six home runs and sixty-nine stolen bases in 1995. The Hot Corner will monitor this weekly. The concern is real. The diagnosis is specific. Is there a fix?
Ha-joon Choi is the player the Hot Corner has been predicting for eight months — Two home runs in his first game. Three total in limited action. A .300 average in the sample available. His spring wRC+ of one forty-seven suggested this was coming. What the spring could not fully capture is the specific ease with which he processes major league pitching at twenty-one years old — no hesitation in the box, no adjustment period, no looking like a prospect in a big league game. He looked like a player who belongs here. The Hot Corner predicted his arrival before July. He arrived April 2nd. The prediction was technically accurate and also probably undersold how ready he was.
Strickler's April is a two-start story masquerading as a trend — Two starts in Portland and Seattle looked unsteady: eight runs in two-thirds of an inning, then three home runs in six innings. The April 14th game against Detroit looked like the real Strickler: ten strikeouts, control of the strike zone, the same pitcher who went three and zero in October. The ERA of 10.54 is an artifact of two bad starts against two opponents he should handle. The Hot Corner is treating Strickler's season as properly begun after April 14th. Natural wear and tear are still there, and the workload management the front office needs to apply across one hundred and sixty-two games becomes more important, not less, when the early-season starts reveal that his tolerance for certain conditions — cold weather, windy stadiums, particular matchups — may be narrower than his regular season numbers suggest.
Musco is thirty-six years old with a lengthy list of serious ailments and is leading this team in everything — Four home runs. Fourteen RBI. A .327 batting average. The shortstop who partially tore his labrum in April of last year and came back to win the World Series MVP is now the best hitter on the Sacramento roster through two weeks of 1996. He had a four-hit game against San Jose, a two-hit two-run-home-run game against Seattle, and a walk-off in the Detroit eleven-inning game. His age and injury history both remain factual. The performance through thirteen games is equally factual and in direct contradiction to what those age and injury history are supposed to predict. The Hot Corner has learned to stop betting against Edwin Musco.
The rotation hierarchy has rearranged itself after two weeks — By ERA through thirteen games, the order is Lawson at 0.77 and St. Clair at 1.38 leading all starters, then Espenoza at 1.50, then Andretti at 3.79, then Rubalcava at 5.51, then Strickler at 10.54. The Hot Corner is not submitting this as a definitive statement about the rotation's true quality — thirteen games is not enough innings to conclude anything permanent about a pitcher. But the specific fact that thirty-two years old St. Clair is two and zero and leading all Sacramento starters in ERA is the most pleasant surprise of the early season. He is eating innings cleanly, holding lineups to minimal damage, and performing like a three-and-four starter should in a championship rotation.
Steve Dodge retired — Three months after being traded from Sacramento to San Antonio, a torn rotator cuff ended the career of the right-hander whose blown save in World Series Game Four last October was the hinge point of the series. He leaves the game at thirty-two. The Hot Corner spent a lot of words in October analyzing that specific pitch to Gumina. The retirement makes the trade look even more shrewd in hindsight — the front office moved a pitcher with a compromised shoulder while his value was recoverable and the return included a first-round draft pick that now belongs to Sacramento.
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AROUND THE LEAGUE
Charlotte leads the AL Central at nine and three. Columbus is nine and four. The two teams ahead of Sacramento in the AL Central standings represent the specific October bracket preparation the Hot Corner will be tracking through April. Charlotte with Raya is the same organization that nearly beat Sacramento in last year's ALDS. Columbus with Fujimoto at forty-one home runs last year and their bullpen ERA is the same organization Sacramento beat four games to one in the ALCS. Both have started hot.
Seattle is one and a half games back in the AL West at eight and six, which is tighter than the projection spread of twenty-six games suggested the early going would look. The Lucifers are not a serious threat to the division title but they are playing competitive baseball, and the four-game series just completed showed that Carlos Dieguez — a pitcher Sacramento has not faced before this year — held this lineup scoreless for eight and two-thirds innings in Game Two. Add him to the list of pitchers requiring preparation.
Vancouver Sins, first-year expansion franchise, is eight and five in the NL Pacific and tied for the division lead with Long Beach. The expansion franchise the Hot Corner expected to lose a hundred games is currently outplaying Los Angeles. Bill Marcos is their second baseman. This is the specific kind of thing that makes baseball interesting.
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THE INBOX — Questions worth answering
From Kevin Tran of Sacramento's Pocket neighborhood, a high school baseball coach who has been a Prayers season ticket holder since the first championship and asks: "You called Choi before July. He arrived April 2nd. Are you going to do a victory lap about this?"
Kevin, one small lap. The Hot Corner first flagged Choi in August of last year after the All-Star prospects game, listed him as a July arrival target in the offseason preview, and then upgraded that prediction to "sooner than July" after his spring training numbers came in at a wRC+ of one forty-seven. He arrived April 2nd in the fifth inning and hit two home runs in his first four plate appearances. The prediction was correct, the timing was even more aggressive than projected, and I will accept that as confirmation that prospect evaluation based on underlying metrics rather than narrative is worth the effort. Now the real prediction begins: Choi hits twenty-plus home runs before June. How's that for a hot take?
From Lisa Camacho of Sacramento's South Land Park neighborhood, a dental hygienist and twelve-year Prayers fan who asks: "Should I actually be worried about Lopez now that it's not spring training anymore?"
Lisa, yes — but with a specific framework for the worry. The Hot Corner previously said wait until June if the numbers are still poor. That guidance changes slightly given the mechanical information now available. What happened with Lopez is that an adjustment meant to help him hurt him instead, and the adjustment is still embedded in his mechanics in ways that are showing up in both his power numbers and his zone discipline. The worry is not that Lopez has lost his abilities — he is twenty-seven, physically intact, and this is a mechanical problem with a specific origin. The worry is the timeline for correcting it. A mechanical regression that has been reinforced across several months of training and early-season plate appearances does not disappear in a week. Give him until May. If the power and pitch recognition are not moving in the right direction by May 15th, the conversation becomes more serious.
From Otto Schwartz of Elk Grove, a retired electrician who drives to Cathedral Stadium for every home series and has not missed one in seven years, and asks: "Talk to me about Musco. What am I watching here?"
Otto, you are watching one of the more unusual physical phenomena in recent baseball. A thirty-six-year-old shortstop with a partially torn labrum in his history who plays with the timing and bat speed of a player a decade younger. I have been watching Musco closely since the 1993 season and have never fully been able to explain the gap between what his age and injury profile suggest he should produce and what he actually produces. My honest belief, after watching him for three years, is that Musco's durability comes from something the traditional player's evaluation cannot fully capture — his conditioning regimen, his mechanical discipline at the plate, and possibly some combination of genetics and obsessive preparation that keeps his body performing at standards his age does not predict. The fourteen RBI through thirteen games are not a fluke. They are Musco. They have always been Musco.
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Cruz returns from the foot contusion in the next few days. Adams returns from the abdominal strain around the same time. The team heads to San Jose for three, comes back to face Portland at home, then travels to El Paso and Houston. The rotation sorted itself out over the last week. The Lopez situation requires patience and monitoring. And somewhere in the lineup every night, Edwin Musco is hitting the ball hard.
Nine and four. Leading the division. Choi is already here.
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Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.