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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May 31 – June 13, 1996 | Games 55–67 | Forty-One and Twenty-Six
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ANDRETTI THREW SEVEN SHUTOUT INNINGS AND LOST TO SAN JOSE
Let me start with the single most aggravating event of the past two weeks, because it deserves to be named before anything else. On June 8th, Bernardo Andretti took the ball at San Jose Grounds and held a twenty-three-and-forty team to two hits over seven innings. He walked four and struck out five and did not allow a run. He walked off that mound with a one-to-nothing lead and an ERA of 2.55 and a game score of seventy-four. Andy Benson entered the game in the eighth inning and allowed two runs. Sacramento lost two to one.
I have spent two months this season explaining why Andretti is the best pitcher in the American League. I stand by that. The June 8th start is the most complete evidence I have ever produced in this column's history — a game score of seventy-four, no runs allowed, and a loss that landed in someone else's hands. The ERA is 2.55. He leads all of baseball. And he lost to a forty-loss team on June 8th because the bullpen couldn't hold a one-run lead for two thirds of an inning.
The rest of the stretch: seven and six, forty-one and twenty-six, fifteen ahead of Seattle in the loss column, and a San Jose series that I intend to document in the most unsparing terms available because three losses to a team that is twenty-four and forty is not a sequencing issue or a scheduling quirk. It is a problem, and I am not going to skirt around it.
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DID YOU CATCH THAT GAME? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY
@ Portland, May 31 – June 2 (2-1)
Strickler on May 31st — eight innings, one earned run, seven strikeouts, game score of seventy-six. Cruz homered in the fifth, Alonzo drove in the insurance run. Medina saved his eighteenth. Four to three, Sacramento. The good-start Strickler now has a 1.36 ERA over his last six appearances, which I want on the record for context when the bad-start version inevitably reappears.
St. Clair on June 1st held eight innings of one earned run against Portland despite surrendering eight hits, which is exactly the ground-ball pitcher profile that makes his good starts resilient in ways that his bad starts are not. Rodriguez and Choi homered. Medina saved his nineteenth. Then Lopez hurt himself running the bases and Perez left with a base collision injury, both in the same game, which is the kind of injury bulletin that makes a perfectly fine four-to-two win feel less comfortable than it should.
Rubalcava on June 2nd allowed six runs in five and two-thirds innings. Portland pitcher Eddie Marin was better — eight innings, two runs, eight strikeouts, one eighteen pitches. Rosenzweig doubled in two in the sixth, Marin held the rest. Eight to three, Portland.
@ St. Louis, June 3-4 (2-0)
Sacramento's first ever trip to St. Louis to play expansion Faith. Two clean wins against a twenty-six-and-thirty-two team. Andretti on June 3rd went seven and two-thirds innings, won his ninth game, Mollohan hit an eighth home run, Lopez tripled in two. Four to two, Sacramento.
Espenoza on June 4th was the good version — six and two-thirds innings, three runs allowed, seven strikeouts, a WHIP that ranks fifth in the AL. Choi hit his eleventh home run. Cruz stole two more bases. Lopez homered in the ninth. Seven to three, Sacramento. Espenoza four and five on the year, which understates what his good starts look like and overstates nothing about his bad ones.
vs. Albuquerque, June 5-6 (1-1)
Lozano hit two home runs in the seventh and eighth innings against Albuquerque on June 5th, both off Reeves, the second a solo shot with two out in the eighth. Six to one, Sacramento. Strickler held five and two-thirds innings of one-run ball before Lawson closed it with two and a third of zeros.
June 6th was St. Clair allowing five runs in six and a third innings — three home runs, including two in the sixth and seventh when Albuquerque erased a four-to-one Sacramento lead. Cruz hit two home runs and drove in four and it wasn't enough. Six to five, Albuquerque. St. Clair is five and three, which is a respectable record attached to a pitcher whose ERA of 4.40 reflects a fairly consistent pattern of starts that begin well and erode by the fifth inning when a lineup gets into the secondary pitches.
@ San Jose, June 7-9 (0-3)
I will be direct. Sacramento went to San Jose and lost three games to a team that entered the series twenty-two and forty. I watched all three scorecards and here is what happened.
June 7th: Rubalcava allowed six runs in two innings — a Perfelti three-run home run in the second, a complete collapse from which five relievers could not recover. Eleven to one, San Jose. Multiple injuries again: Perez re-aggravated the hamstring, Prieto was hurt while pitching, and the team left San Jose Grounds having used five pitchers against a rotation whose collective ERA does not warrant that kind of punishment.
June 8th: Andretti's masterpiece that became a loss. Seven shutout innings. Benson entered, allowed a single, gave up another hit, and the two-run frame ended the night. Two to one, San Jose. There is no analytical response to that game except to note that it happened and to suggest it might be the cruelest single game log I have encountered in three years of covering this organization.
June 9th: Espenoza lasted three and a third innings. Reza hit a three-run home run in the third, Adams hit another home run in the same inning, Ortega went deep in the fourth. Reza has fourteen home runs on the year, which is fourteen more than I expected from him in April. Cruz went four for five with a home run and it wasn't enough because Espenoza allowed seven runs before leaving. Nine to six, San Jose. Three losses in a row to a forty-loss team. I have nothing else to say, just this: that was humiliating.
vs. Baltimore, June 11-13 (2-1)
Ian Thompson came to Cathedral Stadium on June 11th and threw nine innings of four-hit shutout baseball while striking out thirteen batters, tying the Baltimore regular season game record. He said he was struggling. Thirteen strikeouts and four hits allowed while struggling is information that should embarrass everyone who stood in the batter's box that night. Strickler allowed two home runs in the first inning and the lineup never recovered. Four to nothing, Baltimore.
Rubalcava on June 12th answered with six and a third innings of one-run pitching, Mollohan homered in the first, Perez drove in a run with a double, and Gonzalez and Medina held the last three innings without allowing a run. Four to one, Sacramento. Twenty saves for Medina on the season.
St. Clair on June 13th made it feel effortless. Six and a third innings, zero runs, four hits, a game score of sixty-eight. Prieto held a run and two-thirds cleanly despite being listed as injured. Cruz sacrificed home the go-ahead run in the sixth. Medina saved his twenty-first. Two to nothing, Sacramento, and a series split that prevented what would have been four consecutive losses at Cathedral Stadium.
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THE STORIES THAT DEFINE THIS STRETCH
The San Jose series requires a specific kind of accountability — Three losses to a twenty-four-and-forty team. Rubalcava gave up eleven runs in seven innings of combined work. Espenoza gave up seven runs in three and a third. Andretti threw a near-masterpiece and lost because of the bullpen. The specific frustration is not that Sacramento lost three games to a bad team — that happens in any hundred-and-sixty-two game season. The frustration is that the three losses each had different culprits, which means there is no single fix available. The rotation faltered in two of the three games. The bullpen failed in the third. I do not have a clean corrective to prescribe.
The injury file is getting longer and I am beginning to notice it — Perez re-injured his hamstring at Portland on June 1st and is listed as day-to-day for two weeks. Lopez was hurt in the same game. Prieto was hurt pitching at San Jose. These are the kind of soft-tissue accumulation injuries that do not individually threaten the season but collectively start to reshape lineups and bullpen depth. The team is carrying Perez at day-to-day status while MacDonald fills in, and MacDonald's .129 average over thirteen games is the specific roster reality that Perez's hamstring has produced.
Strickler at 1.36 ERA over his last six starts continues to be the most interesting ongoing story in this rotation — Eight innings and one earned run at Portland on May 31st is the sixth consecutive quality start in a run that now extends back to late April. His ERA of 4.09 will continue normalizing downward as these games accumulate. He is not a solved problem — I have seen too many cycles to say that plainly — but I am watching a pitcher who has been better for six consecutive starts than he has ever been for six consecutive starts since arriving in Sacramento.
Gil Cruz is hitting .458 with three home runs over the last seven games and I want to document that specifically — Two home runs in the June 6th loss, another in the June 9th loss. Ten home runs on the year. Cruz is twenty-eight years old, five-year deal, and the AL MVP from 1994. He is reminding everyone why that award was not a fluke.
Columbus is forty-seven and twenty — Twenty-seven games over .500. I say this without comment, as a record that deserves to be stated plainly and returned to in October.
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AROUND THE LEAGUE
Ian Thompson of Baltimore struck out thirteen batters at Cathedral Stadium on June 11th while throwing nine innings of shutout ball. He claimed he was struggling. His ERA is 3.33, he has nine wins and ties Andretti for the most in the league. Baltimore is thirty-five and thirty-two and very much in the AL Wild Card picture.
Manuel Hernandez is at .391 with thirty-six home runs and ninety-three RBI in sixty-seven games. Ninety-three RBI through sixty-seven games. Columbus has him and Fujimoto and Salcevo. I do not know what else to say about Columbus except that they are going to be very difficult to beat in October, and I would like not to face Flores in a deciding game.
Columbus and Las Vegas are apparently in trade talks, which is the kind of transaction that could strengthen an already forty-seven-and-twenty team further. I will track this.
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THE INBOX — Questions worth answering
From Alina Timoshenko of Sacramento's Tahoe Park neighborhood, a competitive ballroom dancer who teaches foxtrot on weeknights and merengue on weekends and who is not entirely sure how she became a Prayers fan but suspects it had something to do with a very long rain delay in 1991, who asks: "How worried should we be about the San Jose series?"
Alina, on a scale of one to ten I am at a six, which is higher than I want to be about a team that is twenty-four and forty but lower than a full panic. Three losses to a bad team is embarrassing. It is not season-ending. We are still ten games up on Seattle.
From Kwame Osei of Sacramento's Curtis Park neighborhood, a licensed electrician who once rewired an entire Victorian house in twelve days on a bet he now regrets winning because the other guy stiffed him on the payout, who asks: "Is Andretti the Cy Young leader or not?"
Kwame, nine wins, 2.55 ERA, leads baseball. Yes. Next question.
From Valentina Cortes-Reyes of Elk Grove, a forensic accountant who spends her days finding other people's money and her evenings watching baseball to decompress, who asks: "What is happening with Lopez? He's basically invisible lately."
Valentina, the cold section says .100 over his last five games, which follows a hamstring and arm issue picked up at Portland. When Lopez's legs are right he is unstoppable. When they are not, he is a singles hitter who doesn't run. Right now he is somewhere in between. I expect him back to full speed by the time Philadelphia arrives. If I am wrong about that I will say so clearly in the next article.
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Philadelphia comes to Cathedral Stadium this weekend, then Portland again at home. Both series are winnable. The rotation is Andretti, St. Clair, Strickler, Rubalcava, Espenoza — in some order — and the two things I want to see in the next fourteen games are Perez healthy and the San Jose series becoming a footnote rather than a pattern.
Forty-one and twenty-six. Ten up on Seattle. The best ERA in the American League.
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Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.