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liberty-ca · 04-20-2026, 07:10 PM

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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August 16 – August 28, 1996 | Games 123–134 | Eighty-Eight and Forty-Six

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SIXTEEN STRAIGHT WINS, CLINCHING WITHIN REACH — AND ANDRETTI HAD THE WORST OUTING OF HIS CAREER

Sixteen consecutive wins is a number that requires some context to appreciate fully. In sixteen games Sacramento outscored opponents by somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred runs. The rotation produced start after start of controlled excellence — Strickler, Rubalcava, Andretti, Espenoza cycling through like a well-maintained machine. The lineup scored seventeen runs in Nashville on August 18th and eleven in ten innings against Charlotte on August 23rd and ten against Washington on August 22nd.

And somewhere in the middle of that Charlotte game on August 23rd, Bernardo Andretti threw two-thirds of an inning, gave up eight runs on eight hits including a Hernandez two-run home run, recorded a game score of two, and walked to the dugout to let six relievers piece together the remaining nine and a third innings while the lineup scored eleven. Sacramento won eleven to ten in ten innings. Andretti got a no-decision.

The question I want to answer first is whether that start means anything. The short version: it doesn't. But — there is always a "but" — he went back out four days later and allowed five runs in six innings against Seattle, tooking his fourth loss of the year. His ERA moved from 2.98 to 3.33.

The team is now eighty-eight and forty-six on the season, and the magic number is one. Cruz and Perez both left games with injuries in back-to-back days. The window for clinching division is this weekend.

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DID YOU CATCH THAT GAME? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

@ Nashville, August 16-18 (3-0)

Strickler on August 16th went seven innings and held Nashville to three runs — a Jessee two-run double in the fourth was the primary damage — while the lineup scored four, including solo home runs by Hernandez, Cruz, Choi, and Musco in back-to-back first and fifth/sixth innings. The formula was clean: four home runs, seven quality innings, Medina's thirty-fourth save. Four to three.

Rubalcava on August 17th threw eight innings of three-hit ball with zero walks. I want to note the zero walks specifically because Rubalcava's primary issue this year has been control — he had walked five batters in the Washington start on August 22nd. Against Nashville he walked nobody. Three to two, Sacramento, on Bonilla's sacrifice fly and a Musco RBI single.

August 18th was a seventeen-to-nothing shutout demolition with Andretti throwing eight innings of two-hit ball. Lozano hit two home runs, including a grand slam in the eighth off Edgar. Lopez went three for five and scored four times. Florez drove in four. The lineup collected eighteen hits total off a Nashville staff that has allowed six or more runs in nearly forty percent of its starts this year. Seventeen to nothing. The Nashville series swept six-to-nothing on the year.

vs. Washington, August 20-22 (3-0)

Espenoza on August 20th gave up five runs in three and two-thirds innings — Garza hit a three-run homer in the fourth, Washington led five to one at the time — and then the bullpen shut the door entirely for five and a third innings while the offense came back to win seven to five. Scott held three and a third scoreless. The win made it thirteen consecutive. Espenoza's ERA climbed back to 3.32 before he righted it later in the stretch.

Strickler on August 21st threw eight innings and allowed two runs. Ten strikeouts, two runs, game score of seventy-four. MacDonald doubled in the go-ahead run in the seventh, Mollohan homered in the eighth. Four to two.

Rubalcava on August 22nd went five innings and allowed two runs while walking five — nothing spectacular, so to speak — but Lawson held two innings and Prieto two more, and the offense scored ten including Lopez's twenty-first home run, Lozano's twenty-second, and Perez's eighteenth. Ten to four. Fifteen straight.

vs. Charlotte, August 23-25 (3-0)

The August 23rd Charlotte game deserves its own paragraph before I continue. Andretti entered the game as the AL ERA leader and allowed eight runs in two-thirds of an inning. Here is the summary of the damage: a Torres triple, then a Hernandez two-run homer, then doubles by Lassiter and others, then the hook at thirty pitches. His game score was two. The six subsequent relievers held Charlotte to two runs over nine and a third innings while the lineup scored eleven, including MacDonald going four-for-five with a triple and a home run. Mollohan drove in the winning run with a sacrifice fly in the tenth. Medina won in relief. Sixteen consecutive wins.

What made the Charlotte game remarkable beyond Andretti: Hernandez hit his fifty-eighth home run off Andretti in the first inning. He now has sixty. The Hot Corner has been watching this since April and has nothing adequate to add.

St. Clair on August 24th went six and two-thirds innings and gave up three runs while Bonilla hit his first Major League home run in the third inning — the ninth-best prospect in the organization, called up on August 15th, homered in his second game. Florez hit a two-run homer in the eighth. Gonzalez got the win in relief. Six to four.

Espenoza on August 25th held seven innings of one-run ball. Florez hit a two-run homer in the fifth and a two-run triple in the sixth. It is worth mentioning, that Espenoza is now tied for fourth in the AL in quality starts with seventeen, which understates what he has been: his ERA is 3.24, second in baseball, and his performance over his last seven games — five and one, 2.09 ERA — is the best sustained stretch of his career. Five to one was the final score. Seventeen straight wins.

Perez left the game with an intercostal strain. He is expected to return in approximately six days.

vs. Seattle, August 26-28 (1-2)

The streak ended August 26th when Pedro Hernandez — a pitcher with a 5-and-15 record and a 6.17 ERA — threw six innings of shutout ball. Strickler allowed three home runs in three innings, Oregel, Mendez, and Lara all going deep, and the offense mustered two runs in the eighth. Five to two, Seattle. The streak ended at sixteen.

Rubalcava on August 27th responded with eight innings of three-hit ball. Lopez homered in the third, Musco doubled in a run in the sixth. Medina saved his thirty-ninth despite a Holst three-run home run that made the final more dramatic than it needed to be. Four to three. Rubalcava's ERA: 3.18, first in the AL.

Andretti on August 28th allowed five runs in six innings — Penela doubled twice, the Strahan sacrifice fly broke a tie in the sixth — and lost his fourth game. Eight to four, Seattle. The ERA moved to 3.33. He is now eighteen and four.

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THE STORIES THAT DEFINE THIS STRETCH

The Sacramento rotation occupies the top three spots in the AL ERA leaderboard — At the end of August: Rubalcava first at 3.18, Espenoza second at 3.24, Andretti third at 3.33. Three pitchers from the same staff holding the top three ERA spots in the American League simultaneously is something I have not seen in three years covering this franchise. Strickler sits at 3.55 and is approaching two hundred strikeouts. St. Clair has a 3.91 ERA and nine wins. This rotation going into September is the defining characteristic of the 1996 Sacramento team.

Strickler has one hundred and ninety-nine strikeouts and will almost certainly cross two hundred — He leads the American League. He is second in baseball behind Gillon of Fort Worth at one hundred and ninety-six. The first time Strickler's name appeared in a Hot Corner article about the strikeout leaderboard was in April, when I noted the rate was elite even through inconsistent results. The results have largely stabilized. One hundred and ninety-nine strikeouts is not accidental — it is the product of an 8.9 per nine strikeout rate that has been consistent all year.

Cruz and Perez injured in back-to-back games is the most significant September concern — Cruz injured running the bases on August 24th. Perez injured running the bases on August 25th. Perez is expected back within the week. Cruz's status is less defined. Both are in the top two in team RBI — Perez at eighty-seven, Musco at eighty-six — and both are central to any October lineup construction. The timing is manageable if both return before the final two weeks of September. It is less manageable if either requires extended recovery.

Bonilla homered in his second game as a Sacramento Prayer — I want to underscore this not because one home run defines a player's contribution, but because Bonilla was purchased from Triple-A on August 15th to replace Rodriguez while he rehabilitates a hip injury, and in his second game he hit a home run against Charlotte on August 24th. He is the ninth-best prospect in the organization. He is playing every day at the Major League level with the team positioned to clinch the division any day.

MacDonald is quietly having the best stretch of his career — Four for five with a triple and a home run against Charlotte. Three RBI in the Washington game. Ten home runs, twenty-eight RBI, batting .312. MacDonald is thirty years old and has functioned for three seasons as a useful reserve. What he has done in August as a part-time starter — occupying DH and first base while Perez and others have missed time — is the kind of contribution that does not appear in season summaries but wins individual games.

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AROUND THE LEAGUE

Columbus is eighty-seven and forty-seven. They have cooled in August — four and six over their last ten — but the magic number for the AL Central title is nineteen and the ALCS destination remains Columbus in every realistic scenario. Detroit is ten back. Houston has six wins in their last seven and is seventy-four and sixty at thirteen and a half back of Columbus.

The ERA leaderboard for the league now reads: Rubalcava 3.18, Espenoza 3.24, Andretti 3.33, Gonzalez of Detroit 3.34. Three of the top four pitchers in baseball by ERA are in the same rotation. I think it is absolutely remarkable and deserves all the accolades we can think off.

Hernandez continues his amazing season and has now sixty home runs and one hundred and fifty-three RBI. The record is broken. The Hot Corner will stop counting and simply observe whatever the final number becomes.

Hurricane Elena struck the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Cuba this week. Multiple Sacramento players have family in the affected regions. Several league players have pledged significant aid in these trying times for everyone impacted by the disaster.

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THE INBOX — Questions worth answering

From Armen Davtyan of Fresno, a man who repairs antique clocks for a living and who once spent eleven months restoring a single pocket watch belonging to a woman who insisted the watch "just needs a little work," who asks: "Does the Andretti's Charlotte disaster worry you about October?"

Armen, two-thirds of an inning and eight runs is not what you want to see on the ledger going into the playoffs. But his next two starts produced zero runs in eight innings and five earned in six innings. The season line is eighteen and four, 3.33 ERA. The Charlotte outing is already three starts behind him. It worries me the way any unusual data point worries me — I am watching it, I am not catastrophizing it.

From Marlena Suarez of Stockton, a dental hygienist who has cleaned teeth professionally for nineteen years and who believes she can tell everything she needs to know about a person's discipline from a single appointment, who asks: "Is the division officially clinched yet?"

Marlena, the magic number is one. Sacramento needs one win or one Columbus loss to clinch the AL West. The next game is Friday in San Jose. Given that this article publishes before that game, the answer is not yet — but probably by the time you are reading this.

From Noel Bettencourt of Redding, a high school history teacher who has been explaining the causes of World War One to sixteen-year-olds for twenty-two years and has developed a genuine philosophical acceptance of things that seem impossible to explain, who asks: "How do you think about the Seattle loss ending the streak?"

Noel, I think about it the way I think about June — a cluster of bad outcomes against teams that should not produce them, followed immediately by the team re-establishing exactly what it is. Seattle ended the streak with a pitcher who is five and fifteen on the year. Then Rubalcava went out the next night and threw eight innings against the same lineup. The 16-game winning streak is over. Everything comes to the end eventually, lets just move on.

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San Jose this weekend, then Milwaukee. Rodriguez is eligible to come off the IL. Perez is expected back. The rotation cycles to Strickler, Andretti, Espenoza. Strickler needs one strikeout to reach two hundred.

Eighty-eight wins. Magic number is one. The division title arrives when it arrives.

Got a question for the mailbag? Find the Hot Corner wherever you get your podcasts.

______________________________
Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.

04-20-2026, 07:10 PM	#305
liberty-ca Major Leagues Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 443	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *August 16 – August 28, 1996 \| Games 123–134 \| Eighty-Eight and Forty-Six* ______________________________ SIXTEEN STRAIGHT WINS, CLINCHING WITHIN REACH — AND ANDRETTI HAD THE WORST OUTING OF HIS CAREER Sixteen consecutive wins is a number that requires some context to appreciate fully. In sixteen games Sacramento outscored opponents by somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred runs. The rotation produced start after start of controlled excellence — Strickler, Rubalcava, Andretti, Espenoza cycling through like a well-maintained machine. The lineup scored seventeen runs in Nashville on August 18th and eleven in ten innings against Charlotte on August 23rd and ten against Washington on August 22nd. And somewhere in the middle of that Charlotte game on August 23rd, Bernardo Andretti threw two-thirds of an inning, gave up eight runs on eight hits including a Hernandez two-run home run, recorded a game score of two, and walked to the dugout to let six relievers piece together the remaining nine and a third innings while the lineup scored eleven. Sacramento won eleven to ten in ten innings. Andretti got a no-decision. The question I want to answer first is whether that start means anything. The short version: it doesn't. But — there is always a "but" — he went back out four days later and allowed five runs in six innings against Seattle, tooking his fourth loss of the year. His ERA moved from 2.98 to 3.33. The team is now eighty-eight and forty-six on the season, and the magic number is one. Cruz and Perez both left games with injuries in back-to-back days. The window for clinching division is this weekend. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THAT GAME? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY @ Nashville, August 16-18 (3-0) Strickler on August 16th went seven innings and held Nashville to three runs — a Jessee two-run double in the fourth was the primary damage — while the lineup scored four, including solo home runs by Hernandez, Cruz, Choi, and Musco in back-to-back first and fifth/sixth innings. The formula was clean: four home runs, seven quality innings, Medina's thirty-fourth save. Four to three. Rubalcava on August 17th threw eight innings of three-hit ball with zero walks. I want to note the zero walks specifically because Rubalcava's primary issue this year has been control — he had walked five batters in the Washington start on August 22nd. Against Nashville he walked nobody. Three to two, Sacramento, on Bonilla's sacrifice fly and a Musco RBI single. August 18th was a seventeen-to-nothing shutout demolition with Andretti throwing eight innings of two-hit ball. Lozano hit two home runs, including a grand slam in the eighth off Edgar. Lopez went three for five and scored four times. Florez drove in four. The lineup collected eighteen hits total off a Nashville staff that has allowed six or more runs in nearly forty percent of its starts this year. Seventeen to nothing. The Nashville series swept six-to-nothing on the year. vs. Washington, August 20-22 (3-0) Espenoza on August 20th gave up five runs in three and two-thirds innings — Garza hit a three-run homer in the fourth, Washington led five to one at the time — and then the bullpen shut the door entirely for five and a third innings while the offense came back to win seven to five. Scott held three and a third scoreless. The win made it thirteen consecutive. Espenoza's ERA climbed back to 3.32 before he righted it later in the stretch. Strickler on August 21st threw eight innings and allowed two runs. Ten strikeouts, two runs, game score of seventy-four. MacDonald doubled in the go-ahead run in the seventh, Mollohan homered in the eighth. Four to two. Rubalcava on August 22nd went five innings and allowed two runs while walking five — nothing spectacular, so to speak — but Lawson held two innings and Prieto two more, and the offense scored ten including Lopez's twenty-first home run, Lozano's twenty-second, and Perez's eighteenth. Ten to four. Fifteen straight. vs. Charlotte, August 23-25 (3-0) The August 23rd Charlotte game deserves its own paragraph before I continue. Andretti entered the game as the AL ERA leader and allowed eight runs in two-thirds of an inning. Here is the summary of the damage: a Torres triple, then a Hernandez two-run homer, then doubles by Lassiter and others, then the hook at thirty pitches. His game score was two. The six subsequent relievers held Charlotte to two runs over nine and a third innings while the lineup scored eleven, including MacDonald going four-for-five with a triple and a home run. Mollohan drove in the winning run with a sacrifice fly in the tenth. Medina won in relief. Sixteen consecutive wins. What made the Charlotte game remarkable beyond Andretti: Hernandez hit his fifty-eighth home run off Andretti in the first inning. He now has sixty. The Hot Corner has been watching this since April and has nothing adequate to add. St. Clair on August 24th went six and two-thirds innings and gave up three runs while Bonilla hit his first Major League home run in the third inning — the ninth-best prospect in the organization, called up on August 15th, homered in his second game. Florez hit a two-run homer in the eighth. Gonzalez got the win in relief. Six to four. Espenoza on August 25th held seven innings of one-run ball. Florez hit a two-run homer in the fifth and a two-run triple in the sixth. It is worth mentioning, that Espenoza is now tied for fourth in the AL in quality starts with seventeen, which understates what he has been: his ERA is 3.24, second in baseball, and his performance over his last seven games — five and one, 2.09 ERA — is the best sustained stretch of his career. Five to one was the final score. Seventeen straight wins. Perez left the game with an intercostal strain. He is expected to return in approximately six days. vs. Seattle, August 26-28 (1-2) The streak ended August 26th when Pedro Hernandez — a pitcher with a 5-and-15 record and a 6.17 ERA — threw six innings of shutout ball. Strickler allowed three home runs in three innings, Oregel, Mendez, and Lara all going deep, and the offense mustered two runs in the eighth. Five to two, Seattle. The streak ended at sixteen. Rubalcava on August 27th responded with eight innings of three-hit ball. Lopez homered in the third, Musco doubled in a run in the sixth. Medina saved his thirty-ninth despite a Holst three-run home run that made the final more dramatic than it needed to be. Four to three. Rubalcava's ERA: 3.18, first in the AL. Andretti on August 28th allowed five runs in six innings — Penela doubled twice, the Strahan sacrifice fly broke a tie in the sixth — and lost his fourth game. Eight to four, Seattle. The ERA moved to 3.33. He is now eighteen and four. ______________________________ THE STORIES THAT DEFINE THIS STRETCH The Sacramento rotation occupies the top three spots in the AL ERA leaderboard — At the end of August: Rubalcava first at 3.18, Espenoza second at 3.24, Andretti third at 3.33. Three pitchers from the same staff holding the top three ERA spots in the American League simultaneously is something I have not seen in three years covering this franchise. Strickler sits at 3.55 and is approaching two hundred strikeouts. St. Clair has a 3.91 ERA and nine wins. This rotation going into September is the defining characteristic of the 1996 Sacramento team. Strickler has one hundred and ninety-nine strikeouts and will almost certainly cross two hundred — He leads the American League. He is second in baseball behind Gillon of Fort Worth at one hundred and ninety-six. The first time Strickler's name appeared in a Hot Corner article about the strikeout leaderboard was in April, when I noted the rate was elite even through inconsistent results. The results have largely stabilized. One hundred and ninety-nine strikeouts is not accidental — it is the product of an 8.9 per nine strikeout rate that has been consistent all year. Cruz and Perez injured in back-to-back games is the most significant September concern — Cruz injured running the bases on August 24th. Perez injured running the bases on August 25th. Perez is expected back within the week. Cruz's status is less defined. Both are in the top two in team RBI — Perez at eighty-seven, Musco at eighty-six — and both are central to any October lineup construction. The timing is manageable if both return before the final two weeks of September. It is less manageable if either requires extended recovery. Bonilla homered in his second game as a Sacramento Prayer — I want to underscore this not because one home run defines a player's contribution, but because Bonilla was purchased from Triple-A on August 15th to replace Rodriguez while he rehabilitates a hip injury, and in his second game he hit a home run against Charlotte on August 24th. He is the ninth-best prospect in the organization. He is playing every day at the Major League level with the team positioned to clinch the division any day. MacDonald is quietly having the best stretch of his career — Four for five with a triple and a home run against Charlotte. Three RBI in the Washington game. Ten home runs, twenty-eight RBI, batting .312. MacDonald is thirty years old and has functioned for three seasons as a useful reserve. What he has done in August as a part-time starter — occupying DH and first base while Perez and others have missed time — is the kind of contribution that does not appear in season summaries but wins individual games. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE Columbus is eighty-seven and forty-seven. They have cooled in August — four and six over their last ten — but the magic number for the AL Central title is nineteen and the ALCS destination remains Columbus in every realistic scenario. Detroit is ten back. Houston has six wins in their last seven and is seventy-four and sixty at thirteen and a half back of Columbus. The ERA leaderboard for the league now reads: Rubalcava 3.18, Espenoza 3.24, Andretti 3.33, Gonzalez of Detroit 3.34. Three of the top four pitchers in baseball by ERA are in the same rotation. I think it is absolutely remarkable and deserves all the accolades we can think off. Hernandez continues his amazing season and has now sixty home runs and one hundred and fifty-three RBI. The record is broken. The Hot Corner will stop counting and simply observe whatever the final number becomes. Hurricane Elena struck the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Cuba this week. Multiple Sacramento players have family in the affected regions. Several league players have pledged significant aid in these trying times for everyone impacted by the disaster. ______________________________ THE INBOX — Questions worth answering From Armen Davtyan of Fresno, a man who repairs antique clocks for a living and who once spent eleven months restoring a single pocket watch belonging to a woman who insisted the watch "just needs a little work," who asks: "Does the Andretti's Charlotte disaster worry you about October?" Armen, two-thirds of an inning and eight runs is not what you want to see on the ledger going into the playoffs. But his next two starts produced zero runs in eight innings and five earned in six innings. The season line is eighteen and four, 3.33 ERA. The Charlotte outing is already three starts behind him. It worries me the way any unusual data point worries me — I am watching it, I am not catastrophizing it. From Marlena Suarez of Stockton, a dental hygienist who has cleaned teeth professionally for nineteen years and who believes she can tell everything she needs to know about a person's discipline from a single appointment, who asks: "Is the division officially clinched yet?" Marlena, the magic number is one. Sacramento needs one win or one Columbus loss to clinch the AL West. The next game is Friday in San Jose. Given that this article publishes before that game, the answer is not yet — but probably by the time you are reading this. From Noel Bettencourt of Redding, a high school history teacher who has been explaining the causes of World War One to sixteen-year-olds for twenty-two years and has developed a genuine philosophical acceptance of things that seem impossible to explain, who asks: "How do you think about the Seattle loss ending the streak?" Noel, I think about it the way I think about June — a cluster of bad outcomes against teams that should not produce them, followed immediately by the team re-establishing exactly what it is. Seattle ended the streak with a pitcher who is five and fifteen on the year. Then Rubalcava went out the next night and threw eight innings against the same lineup. The 16-game winning streak is over. Everything comes to the end eventually, lets just move on. ______________________________ San Jose this weekend, then Milwaukee. Rodriguez is eligible to come off the IL. Perez is expected back. The rotation cycles to Strickler, Andretti, Espenoza. Strickler needs one strikeout to reach two hundred. Eighty-eight wins. Magic number is one. The division title arrives when it arrives. Got a question for the mailbag? Find the Hot Corner wherever you get your podcasts. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.