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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July 13 – 25, 2000 | Sixty-Seven and Thirty-Four | Cruz 12-5 After Recovering From a One-Third-Inning Disaster | Navarro's Monster Month
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EIGHT AND TWO-THIRDS SCORELESS INNINGS AGAINST THE AL'S BEST PITCHER, A BENCH-CLEARING BRAWL, AND STRICKLER IMPLODING TWICE — SACRAMENTO'S JULY IN A LINE
Eight wins in twelve games. Rubalcava's July 19th near-shutout against Ebizo Suzuki — eight and two-thirds innings, zero runs, three hits, with the AL's win leader on the other mound — was the defining performance of the stretch. Cruz came back from a one-third-inning meltdown at Portland to win eight consecutive innings at Fort Worth and reach twelve victories on the year. Andretti threw eight consecutive shutout innings to open the Portland series. Espenoza continues building one of the strongest second halves in the rotation.
And Strickler. He is on yet another cold streak at 15.43 ERA across his last two starts after briefly being up in his form. Choi has a strained oblique and is day-to-day for a week. The Fort Worth extra-inning loss on July 24th came when Medina allowed two doubles in the tenth. DeVore has torn his ACL at Triple-A and is done for the year.
Sixty-seven and thirty-four. Tied in wins with Brooklyn for the best record in the American League.
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DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY
@ Portland, July 13-16 (3-1)
July 13th: Andretti eight shutout innings on five hits, Sacramento generated nine runs on eleven hits including two home runs from Mollohan and one from Florez, and Portland was dispatched nine to one. Clean.
July 14th: Rubalcava six and two-thirds innings, two earned runs. Alvarez's two-run single put Sacramento ahead in the first and the offense extended leads throughout. Six to two.
July 15th: In the bottom of the first inning, a pitch threw Choi and Portland's Galvan into a confrontation that cleared both benches and ejected both. Cruz then took the mound and retired two batters while allowing seven runs before being removed. Morales and Flores absorbed the remainder. David Perez — Sacramento's former first baseman — hit a three-run homer off Cruz in the first inning. Portland won ten to five. Sacramento's one loss against a team that is 40-61.
July 16th: The response was exactly what a quality team produces after an ugly game. Twenty hits. Sixteen runs. Nakazawa went four for five with two doubles and three RBI. Cruz doubled home a bases-clearing hit in the fourth with the score thirteen to nothing. Strickler allowed five runs in three and one-third innings but Lawson threw one and two-thirds innings of shutout ball for the win. Sixteen to six.
@ San Jose, July 18-20 (2-1)
July 18th: Andretti lasted one-third of an inning and allowed five runs as San Jose scored early and repeatedly. Sacramento chipped back throughout with Alvarez hitting two home runs off Marmolejo, but never recovered from the first-inning collapse. Seven to five.
July 19th: Rubalcava versus Suzuki. Rubalcava threw eight and two-thirds innings, allowed three hits and one walk, struck out one, and gave up nothing. Suzuki allowed six runs in five innings. Choi hit a three-run homer. Shinohara homered. Lozano hit a three-run shot in the eighth. Ten to nothing — Sacramento winning by that margin against a team with Suzuki on the mound is the most complete offensive and pitching performance of the second half.
July 20th: Cruz six and two-thirds innings, three earned runs. Navarro went four for five with two doubles. Shinohara hit a two-run triple in the fifth. Sacramento led comfortably before the bullpen allowed two late home runs to make the final look closer. Nine to six.
vs. Charlotte, July 21-23 (2-1)
July 21st: Strickler lasted three and two-thirds innings and allowed seven runs, including a Salcevo grand slam and home runs from Thibeault and Kitagawa. Lawson allowed two more in mop-up. Sacramento's offense generated twelve runs, eighteen hits, and still lost thirteen to twelve. Charlotte's bullpen held Sacramento scoreless across five innings after the starter departed with two runs allowed.
July 22nd: Espenoza six and one-third innings, two earned runs. Navarro went four for five with three doubles and three RBI — each double came in a critical moment. Sullivan allowed three runs in six innings for Charlotte but Sacramento squeezed ahead with a Florez homer in the fourth and Navarro's decisive seventh-inning double. Six to four, Benson's twenty-fifth save.
July 23rd: Andretti seven innings, one run. Nakazawa hit a solo homer in the fifth. The eighth inning became a situational emergency when Medina allowed four runs and then Lawson blew the save. Nakazawa then hit a sacrifice fly in the bottom half to put Sacramento ahead for good. Benson's twenty-sixth save. Seven to six, a win that required contributions from six pitchers and a catcher's two decisive moments.
@ Fort Worth, July 24-25 (1-1)
July 24th: Rubalcava six and two-thirds innings, three runs. Sacramento tied it with a run in the ninth and then Ke threw two and one-third clean innings of extra-inning work. Medina entered in the tenth with Sacramento tied, allowed two consecutive doubles, and the Spirits walked off. Six to five.
July 25th: Cruz eight innings, two earned runs, zero walks, five strikeouts. The offense scored in five different innings with Van Ham's two-run triple providing the decisive blow in the fourth. Navarro homered in the seventh. Eight to five, Cruz is now twelve and five.
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RUBALCAVA AT THE SEASON'S TURNING POINT
The question entering this stretch was whether Rubalcava's sore back from late June had compromised his second-half reliability. The answer from three starts across two weeks is emphatically no. He is 3-0 with a 1.88 ERA in his last four games, 5th in the FBL in ERA at 3.34. His career win percentage of .724 has held through a season that included an April command crisis, two separate injury scares, and now a back diagnosis. What the July 19th Suzuki performance added to the Rubalcava file is a data point about ceiling — eight and two-thirds innings of three-hit ball against the pitcher with the second-most wins in the AL is the kind of start that a Cy Young voter notices.
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STRICKLER: THE ROTATION'S PERSISTENT PROBLEM
In the span of three weeks, Strickler went from being hot (10-2 record, quality starts against Detroit and Nashville) to cold again (15.43 ERA across his last two starts). The July 21st Charlotte game was his worst of the year — three and two-thirds innings, seven runs, a grand slam, two home runs, and a final that Sacramento's offense nearly rescued before the Charlotte bullpen held. His ERA is now 5.26, the worst in the rotation by over a run.
The mechanical inconsistency has been the recurring subject of this column since May, and the pattern is now established enough that it is not a hot streak or a slump. It is Strickler's 2000 identity — genuinely excellent when his delivery is right, genuinely problematic when it isn't, with no predictable sequence between the two versions. At ten and two on the season, his record flatters the underlying situation. Manager Aces will need to make decisions about how to use him in September and October that his record doesn't fully justify and his ERA can't comfortably defend.
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THE BRAWL AND CHOI'S OBLIQUE
The July 15th first inning at Portland produced a bench-clearing incident involving Choi and Portland pitcher Galvan, both of whom were ejected. The team absorbed the loss that day and won three of four against Portland regardless.
The medical consequence arrived on July 24th at Fort Worth, when Choi was injured running the bases and was subsequently diagnosed with a strained oblique. He is day-to-day for one week and not on the IL, which suggests the organization believes the recovery timeline is short. Choi is batting .295 with 18 home runs and 73 RBI — the team's second-leading run producer behind Shinohara. A week without Choi shifts lineup construction toward Van Ham, Puga, and Nakazawa in supporting roles.
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AROUND THE LEAGUE
Brooklyn is 67-33 and on a nine-game winning streak. Sacramento and Brooklyn are tied in wins, with Brooklyn holding two fewer losses. Both teams have a genuine case for the AL's best record entering August.
Detroit is 64-36 and leads Charlotte by six games in the Central. Charlotte at 58-42 is the primary wildcard contender along with San Jose (54-47, on a seven-game losing streak that has put their second-half momentum on hold).
Milwaukee at 67-33 mirrors Sacramento's win total and is running away with the NL Central. Cleveland at 57-43 has the best record in the NL among challengers. The NL playoff race in both wild-card positions is competitive and crowded.
Jorge Jaime has 48 home runs and 108 RBI. He is on pace for approximately 92 home runs — a number baseball has never seen — which will not happen, but the underlying production of his season remains one of the most extraordinary things in the sport this year.
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THE INBOX
From Cosimo Ferragamo of Sacramento's East Sacramento neighborhood, a restaurant owner, who asks: "Rubalcava went 8.2 innings against Suzuki and gave up nothing. How does a pitcher shut down a lineup that just won 12 games in a row?"
Command of three pitches in a single at-bat, applied across twenty-nine at-bats. Rubalcava's best starts share a ground ball to fly ball ratio that shows hitters making early contact on pitches below the zone — which means his fastball command to the lower half of the strike zone is setting up his secondary offerings rather than leaving them to work independently. Against San Jose on the 19th, thirteen ground outs to fourteen fly outs shows a night where the mix was working as designed. Suzuki is a strikeout pitcher who generates high chase rates by tunneling his pitches — the approach that beats him is the approach Rubalcava employed: generate contact early in counts on pitches you've located precisely rather than trying to match strikeout rates against a team that chases. The ten-nothing final also reflects that Sacramento scored six runs against Suzuki in five innings, which is not something most lineups accomplish. The two things together — Rubalcava holding San Jose scoreless, Sacramento solving Suzuki — made the game look like a statement and it was.
From Amabilis Ekwueme of Sacramento's Arden-Arcade neighborhood, a civil engineer, who asks: "Strickler is cold at 15.43 ERA in his last two starts. At 10-2, do wins matter more than ERA at this point in the season?"
They matter differently. The ten wins tell you Sacramento's offense and bullpen have bailed Strickler out of situations that a worse team would have lost. The 5.26 ERA tells you how often those bailouts have been necessary. In the regular season, wins are what accumulate in the standings and Strickler's record has contributed to Sacramento's 67-34 position. In October, when the sample is a best-of-five and every run in every inning has amplified consequence, the ERA predicts the outcome better than the win-loss record does. What the organization needs from Strickler entering the final month and a half of the regular season is not more wins added to a comfortable division lead — it is stability, specifically starts where he goes six innings and allows two or three runs consistently enough that the coaching staff knows what they have. The Tom House program was supposed to produce mechanical consistency. At ten-and-two with a 5.26 ERA and consecutive starts where he failed to reach the fourth inning, the program has produced a pitcher who is excellent or unusable with no reliable way to predict which version shows up.
From Brigitte Solberg of Sacramento's Land Park neighborhood, a retired professor, who asks: "Navarro is batting .282 with 13 home runs and 68 RBI from the shortstop position. Should Sacramento consider moving him back to first base when Rodriguez returns, or has he earned the shortstop job permanently?"
This is the most interesting positional question Sacramento will face heading into 2001. On one hand, Navarro's defensive profile at shortstop has improved across the season — the early error totals have stabilized, and his range and arm have shown at moments what the organization saw when they drafted him. On the other, Rodriguez was a Gold Glove shortstop before the elbow injury, and his defensive value at short is meaningfully greater than Navarro's if he returns to pre-injury form. The offensive production Navarro has shown in 2000 makes the case for keeping him in the lineup at any position rather than a platoon arrangement. The practical resolution is probably this: Rodriguez returns to short when healthy, Navarro moves back to first base or DH, and Sacramento has two quality players splitting innings at positions of strength. What 2000 has clarified is that Navarro is not a utility piece or a depth option — he is a legitimate offensive contributor whose 13 home runs and 68 RBI from the shortstop position make him one of the better players in the American League at any position this year. How the organization manages that resource going forward is a high-quality problem to have.
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Sixty-seven and thirty-four. Milwaukee comes to Sacramento next. Strickler's next start will define which version of the rotation arrives in August.
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Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.