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liberty-ca · 06-16-2026, 11:04 PM

THE HOT CORNER
Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL

THE INFIELD IS FALLING APART — LOZANO, GARCIA, AND DEVORE ALL HURT

Lozano has shoulder tendinitis and went on the injured list after being hurt throwing in the June 27th game. Fernando Garcia has a sore elbow and has been out since June 24th. Cody DeVore developed knee tendinitis and is listed as day-to-day. Three of Sacramento's infielders are unavailable simultaneously, which on most rosters would constitute a genuine crisis. On this roster, it has produced: Vic Cruz going three and zero with a 2.29 ERA over three starts, Jang going three and zero with a 2.45 ERA over five starts, Andretti posting a 2.21 ERA over three starts, and Espenoza allowing zero runs in his last eight appearances. Four Sacramento pitchers on simultaneous hot streaks, during a week when the infield behind them was being rebuilt with utility players and, please forgive me unintentional pun, daily prayers.

Sometimes the only way a pitching staff can protect a shaky defense is to not need it. These four have found a way.

______________________________

DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

@ Seattle, June 19-21 (1-2)

Jeon allowed seven runs in five innings on June 19th. Seattle's Garza tripled and doubled. Welsh tripled. The last-place Lucifers won seven to one in a performance that belongs in the category of things that happen to defending champions who have been playing very good baseball for a long time and are due for a difficult evening. One bad start is one bad start.

June 20th ended Medina's streak. After twenty-seven consecutive scoreless appearances, he entered with Sacramento trailing three to two in the eighth inning and allowed five runs in two-thirds of an inning — a Matthews two-run double, a Matney two-run double — and the game was over. His ERA, which had been sitting at 0.75, jumped to 2.55. Every streak ends. The way Medina's ended, in an inherited-runner situation in Seattle, while his starter had already left him nothing to protect, is the least catastrophic way of how a twenty-seven-game scoreless run concludes, and I am sure he will be fine. Lopez hit his first home run of the season in this game — a leadoff shot in the first inning — which was the one positive note in a seven-to-three loss.

Gunn rebounded on June 21st with five innings of two-hit shutout ball through a rain delay that lasted nearly an hour. When play resumed, Sacramento scored five runs in the seventh on a bases-clearing double from Gil Cruz. Seven to nothing, a clean series split that would have been a cleaner road trip if Jeon had been better in the opener.

vs. Portland, June 22-24 (3-0)

Cruz on June 22nd: six and one-third innings, six hits, one run, nine strikeouts, zero walks. His ERA sits at 3.67 and falling. When Vic Cruz is working with that kind of control — ninety pitches and not a single walk issued — he is as difficult to score against as anyone in the rotation. Navarro had a two-run single in the third to stake him the early lead and the bullpen held it. Four to one.

June 23rd was eleven innings of something approaching controlled chaos. Andretti threw six and one-third fine innings before Musselman allowed an inherited run and Medina surrendered a Deveney two-run homer in the eighth to give Portland a three-to-two lead. In the bottom of the ninth Sacramento tied it, the game extended to the eleventh, and in the end Chavarria was hit by a Sullivan pitch with the bases loaded to force in the winning run. Four to three. The win went to Benson, who threw two scoreless innings — his record now is eight and three in 2001.

Jeon won June 24th start with six and one-third innings of two-run ball. Shinohara's double in the eighth scored the decisive run. Gutierrez and Medina closed it out. Garcia was injured while throwing the ball during this game; the elbow issue that has sidelined him for the foreseeable future.

@ Los Angeles, June 25-26 (1-1)

June 25th was Florez's day. Three for four, four runs scored, two RBI, a home run in the second inning, and energy from the bottom of the lineup that Sacramento needed after Garcia's injury forced another roster shuffle. Jang allowed four earned runs in five innings but Sacramento scored twelve. Navarro homered. Alvarez hit his thirteenth. Mollohan was hurt in a base collision during this game — a day-to-day minor issue that he shook off quickly enough to play two days later.

On June 26th Gunn allowed five runs in five innings — his third start in the last six where he has surrendered four or more earned runs — and the offense couldn't overcome it. A Schoff pinch-hit single in the sixth scored the go-ahead run off Luna and Sacramento lost five to four. Gunn's ERA climbed to 3.77 and the question of whether his occasional roughness represents a pattern worth monitoring has returned.

vs. Salt Lake City, June 27-28 (2-0)

Cruz pitched six and two-thirds innings on June 27th and Sacramento scored eleven times. Lozano was hurt in the fourth inning throwing the ball and left — DeVore came in at third base and contributed a two-RBI double in the sixth. The win was straightforward and the injury was not.

Andretti turned in seven and two-thirds innings on June 28th. Zero walks. Inning after inning of absolute command through a lineup that had no answer for his sequencing and location. His ERA dropped to 4.03. The offense provided eight runs. Eight to two.

______________________________

THE INFIELD SITUATION

Lozano, Garcia, and DeVore are all unavailable, all with different timelines. Lozano with a shoulder tendinitis will be sidelined for a minimum of seven weeks — a timeline that doesn't align well with the kind of early-July schedule Sacramento can manage with depth. Garcia's sore elbow, as the early indication from training personnel suggests, will require about a month to heel.

What replaces them in the interim: DeVore's knee has taken him off the field, Gil Cruz has been moving between second base and shortstop amid his own recurring hip strain that keeps surfacing whenever he runs hard, and Schmitt and Navarro are absorbing the bulk of the third-base innings. The good news is that Sacramento built a roster with this kind of redundancy specifically because the 2000 season demonstrated how quickly an injury list can compound. The less-good news is that compounding is exactly what has happened in the past ten days.

______________________________

THE ROTATION IN JUNE

Four Sacramento starters have simultaneous hot streak going. Jang is three and zero over his last five starts with a 2.45 ERA. Cruz is three and zero over three starts with a 2.29 ERA. Andretti is one and zero over three starts with a 2.21 ERA. Espenoza has zero runs allowed in his last eight relief appearances. This does not happen often. When it does, it tends to carry a team through periods where the offense and defense are not performing at their ceilings, which is exactly the function it is serving right now.

Cruz and Jang have been the most consistent. Cruz's evolution from late-May struggles — where his ERA briefly climbed toward five — back to the pitcher who threw seven shutout innings at Seattle in early June represents the rotation's most significant individual improvement. Andretti continues to provide the old-professional quality start four out of every five times he takes the ball. Jeon remains the one rotation variable: capable of one-hit performances like the June 3rd Seattle game and seven-run disasters like the June 19th Seattle game, sometimes in consecutive starts against similar competition.

______________________________

THE SEVEN-GAME LEAD

Sacramento leads the AL West by seven games with about eighty games remaining. San Jose is forty-seven and thirty-three — a record that would lead the AL Central by three games over Detroit and Charlotte right now. They are a good team losing ground to a better one.

The Haddix injury, the five-game losing streak in late May and early June, and the inability to gain ground during Sacramento's two-game Seattle stumble have combined to put Sacramento in a position where the division race — not yet over — is beginning to look like a formality. Seven games with eighty to play is the kind of lead that requires a specific kind of catastrophic month to overcome, and so far Sacramento has shown no inclination to have that month.

______________________________

AROUND THE LEAGUE

Charlotte and Detroit are tied atop the AL Central at forty-six and thirty-four, which makes the Central the most competitive division race in the league. The NL is shaping up around Long Beach, El Paso, and Cleveland — all above fifty wins, all looking like October participants. Marco Corral of Vancouver leads the league in strikeouts at a hundred and thirty-two, which is the kind of number that makes the fact that he was on the mound against Sacramento in the World Series last October feel recent and relevant.

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Roksana Wiśniewska of Sacramento's Woodlake neighborhood, a kindergarten teacher, who asks: "Medina's twenty-seven-game scoreless streak finally ended. Was the streak sustainable at all, or was the end inevitable?"

All streaks are eventually inevitable to end — the question is always when and how. What made Medina's run remarkable was the consistency of the circumstances in which he was deployed: inherited runners, high-leverage middle innings, against lineups that were actively trying to score. He was not stringing together scoreless outings against weak opponents in blowout games. He was holding leads when the starters left the game with problems unresolved. The Seattle ending — five runs in two-thirds of an inning with two inherited runners already on base — was rough, but the losses those runs produced were already structural before he threw a pitch. His ERA over the season remains 2.55. He has been one of the two or three most important bullpen arms in the American League in 2001. A bad inning in Seattle does not change what he has built, and the two subsequent appearances in which he allowed nothing suggest the rust shook off quickly.

From Sébastien Mbeki of Sacramento's Colonial Heights neighborhood, a software developer, who asks: "Lozano, Garcia, and DeVore are all hurt. Can this roster actually absorb three infield injuries at once?"

The evidence from this ten-game stretch suggests yes — barely and inelegantly, but yes. Gil Cruz has played through a recurring hip strain. Navarro has absorbed some third-base innings while also managing his own earlier rib-cage soreness. Schmitt, who has been the first utility infielder off the bench all season, has accumulated seven home runs in limited playing time and shown he can handle more than pinch-hit appearances. DeVore, before his knee issue arrived on June 28th, delivered a four-RBI double in what turned out to be his final healthy at-bat of the stretch. The infield depth is thinner than the pitching depth — but when Lozano and Garcia return, the depth picture will look considerably better again. The organization planned for two concurrent injuries. Three at once is the kind of thing that tests planning beyond its design limits. Sacramento is at the edge of that threshold but not past it.

From Kenji Watanabe of Sacramento's Arden Acres neighborhood, an accountant, who asks: "With a seven-game lead and the rotation pitching like this, is it time to start preparing for October planning?"

It is not time to prepare for October, because July and August still exist on the calendar and baseball tends to punish teams that declare victory before September. What the seven-game lead does allow is a shift in risk tolerance — Sacramento can absorb a rough week or even a rough series without it constituting a genuine threat to the division. It can afford to manage Andretti's innings more carefully. It can afford to bring Lozano and Garcia back from their respective injuries at a pace that prioritizes their long-term health rather than their short-term availability. Those are real advantages produced by a real lead. They are not, however, a championship. The team that won the 2000 World Series trailed in every playoff series at some point and found ways to win anyway. The 2001 team leading by seven games in late June needs to maintain its focus as much as any version of this franchise ever has, because seven games feels large right now and will feel different if October arrives with a rotation that has been mismanaged or a third baseman who has been pushed back too quickly from a shoulder injury. The October planning begins when the division is clinched. Until then, there are games to play.

______________________________

Fifty-four and twenty-six. Seven games up. The Prayers will face Columbus and Washington at home this week. The rotation is the best it has been all season and the infield is being rebuilt underneath it.

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

06-16-2026, 11:04 PM	#389
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 571	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *June 19 – 28, 2001 \| Fifty-Four and Twenty-Six \| Medina's Streak Ends in Seattle \| The Lead Is Seven Games* ______________________________ THE INFIELD IS FALLING APART — LOZANO, GARCIA, AND DEVORE ALL HURT Lozano has shoulder tendinitis and went on the injured list after being hurt throwing in the June 27th game. Fernando Garcia has a sore elbow and has been out since June 24th. Cody DeVore developed knee tendinitis and is listed as day-to-day. Three of Sacramento's infielders are unavailable simultaneously, which on most rosters would constitute a genuine crisis. On this roster, it has produced: Vic Cruz going three and zero with a 2.29 ERA over three starts, Jang going three and zero with a 2.45 ERA over five starts, Andretti posting a 2.21 ERA over three starts, and Espenoza allowing zero runs in his last eight appearances. Four Sacramento pitchers on simultaneous hot streaks, during a week when the infield behind them was being rebuilt with utility players and, please forgive me unintentional pun, daily prayers. Sometimes the only way a pitching staff can protect a shaky defense is to not need it. These four have found a way. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY @ Seattle, June 19-21 (1-2) Jeon allowed seven runs in five innings on June 19th. Seattle's Garza tripled and doubled. Welsh tripled. The last-place Lucifers won seven to one in a performance that belongs in the category of things that happen to defending champions who have been playing very good baseball for a long time and are due for a difficult evening. One bad start is one bad start. June 20th ended Medina's streak. After twenty-seven consecutive scoreless appearances, he entered with Sacramento trailing three to two in the eighth inning and allowed five runs in two-thirds of an inning — a Matthews two-run double, a Matney two-run double — and the game was over. His ERA, which had been sitting at 0.75, jumped to 2.55. Every streak ends. The way Medina's ended, in an inherited-runner situation in Seattle, while his starter had already left him nothing to protect, is the least catastrophic way of how a twenty-seven-game scoreless run concludes, and I am sure he will be fine. Lopez hit his first home run of the season in this game — a leadoff shot in the first inning — which was the one positive note in a seven-to-three loss. Gunn rebounded on June 21st with five innings of two-hit shutout ball through a rain delay that lasted nearly an hour. When play resumed, Sacramento scored five runs in the seventh on a bases-clearing double from Gil Cruz. Seven to nothing, a clean series split that would have been a cleaner road trip if Jeon had been better in the opener. vs. Portland, June 22-24 (3-0) Cruz on June 22nd: six and one-third innings, six hits, one run, nine strikeouts, zero walks. His ERA sits at 3.67 and falling. When Vic Cruz is working with that kind of control — ninety pitches and not a single walk issued — he is as difficult to score against as anyone in the rotation. Navarro had a two-run single in the third to stake him the early lead and the bullpen held it. Four to one. June 23rd was eleven innings of something approaching controlled chaos. Andretti threw six and one-third fine innings before Musselman allowed an inherited run and Medina surrendered a Deveney two-run homer in the eighth to give Portland a three-to-two lead. In the bottom of the ninth Sacramento tied it, the game extended to the eleventh, and in the end Chavarria was hit by a Sullivan pitch with the bases loaded to force in the winning run. Four to three. The win went to Benson, who threw two scoreless innings — his record now is eight and three in 2001. Jeon won June 24th start with six and one-third innings of two-run ball. Shinohara's double in the eighth scored the decisive run. Gutierrez and Medina closed it out. Garcia was injured while throwing the ball during this game; the elbow issue that has sidelined him for the foreseeable future. @ Los Angeles, June 25-26 (1-1) June 25th was Florez's day. Three for four, four runs scored, two RBI, a home run in the second inning, and energy from the bottom of the lineup that Sacramento needed after Garcia's injury forced another roster shuffle. Jang allowed four earned runs in five innings but Sacramento scored twelve. Navarro homered. Alvarez hit his thirteenth. Mollohan was hurt in a base collision during this game — a day-to-day minor issue that he shook off quickly enough to play two days later. On June 26th Gunn allowed five runs in five innings — his third start in the last six where he has surrendered four or more earned runs — and the offense couldn't overcome it. A Schoff pinch-hit single in the sixth scored the go-ahead run off Luna and Sacramento lost five to four. Gunn's ERA climbed to 3.77 and the question of whether his occasional roughness represents a pattern worth monitoring has returned. vs. Salt Lake City, June 27-28 (2-0) Cruz pitched six and two-thirds innings on June 27th and Sacramento scored eleven times. Lozano was hurt in the fourth inning throwing the ball and left — DeVore came in at third base and contributed a two-RBI double in the sixth. The win was straightforward and the injury was not. Andretti turned in seven and two-thirds innings on June 28th. Zero walks. Inning after inning of absolute command through a lineup that had no answer for his sequencing and location. His ERA dropped to 4.03. The offense provided eight runs. Eight to two. ______________________________ THE INFIELD SITUATION Lozano, Garcia, and DeVore are all unavailable, all with different timelines. Lozano with a shoulder tendinitis will be sidelined for a minimum of seven weeks — a timeline that doesn't align well with the kind of early-July schedule Sacramento can manage with depth. Garcia's sore elbow, as the early indication from training personnel suggests, will require about a month to heel. What replaces them in the interim: DeVore's knee has taken him off the field, Gil Cruz has been moving between second base and shortstop amid his own recurring hip strain that keeps surfacing whenever he runs hard, and Schmitt and Navarro are absorbing the bulk of the third-base innings. The good news is that Sacramento built a roster with this kind of redundancy specifically because the 2000 season demonstrated how quickly an injury list can compound. The less-good news is that compounding is exactly what has happened in the past ten days. ______________________________ THE ROTATION IN JUNE Four Sacramento starters have simultaneous hot streak going. Jang is three and zero over his last five starts with a 2.45 ERA. Cruz is three and zero over three starts with a 2.29 ERA. Andretti is one and zero over three starts with a 2.21 ERA. Espenoza has zero runs allowed in his last eight relief appearances. This does not happen often. When it does, it tends to carry a team through periods where the offense and defense are not performing at their ceilings, which is exactly the function it is serving right now. Cruz and Jang have been the most consistent. Cruz's evolution from late-May struggles — where his ERA briefly climbed toward five — back to the pitcher who threw seven shutout innings at Seattle in early June represents the rotation's most significant individual improvement. Andretti continues to provide the old-professional quality start four out of every five times he takes the ball. Jeon remains the one rotation variable: capable of one-hit performances like the June 3rd Seattle game and seven-run disasters like the June 19th Seattle game, sometimes in consecutive starts against similar competition. ______________________________ THE SEVEN-GAME LEAD Sacramento leads the AL West by seven games with about eighty games remaining. San Jose is forty-seven and thirty-three — a record that would lead the AL Central by three games over Detroit and Charlotte right now. They are a good team losing ground to a better one. The Haddix injury, the five-game losing streak in late May and early June, and the inability to gain ground during Sacramento's two-game Seattle stumble have combined to put Sacramento in a position where the division race — not yet over — is beginning to look like a formality. Seven games with eighty to play is the kind of lead that requires a specific kind of catastrophic month to overcome, and so far Sacramento has shown no inclination to have that month. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE Charlotte and Detroit are tied atop the AL Central at forty-six and thirty-four, which makes the Central the most competitive division race in the league. The NL is shaping up around Long Beach, El Paso, and Cleveland — all above fifty wins, all looking like October participants. Marco Corral of Vancouver leads the league in strikeouts at a hundred and thirty-two, which is the kind of number that makes the fact that he was on the mound against Sacramento in the World Series last October feel recent and relevant. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Roksana Wiśniewska of Sacramento's Woodlake neighborhood, a kindergarten teacher, who asks: "Medina's twenty-seven-game scoreless streak finally ended. Was the streak sustainable at all, or was the end inevitable?" All streaks are eventually inevitable to end — the question is always when and how. What made Medina's run remarkable was the consistency of the circumstances in which he was deployed: inherited runners, high-leverage middle innings, against lineups that were actively trying to score. He was not stringing together scoreless outings against weak opponents in blowout games. He was holding leads when the starters left the game with problems unresolved. The Seattle ending — five runs in two-thirds of an inning with two inherited runners already on base — was rough, but the losses those runs produced were already structural before he threw a pitch. His ERA over the season remains 2.55. He has been one of the two or three most important bullpen arms in the American League in 2001. A bad inning in Seattle does not change what he has built, and the two subsequent appearances in which he allowed nothing suggest the rust shook off quickly. From Sébastien Mbeki of Sacramento's Colonial Heights neighborhood, a software developer, who asks: "Lozano, Garcia, and DeVore are all hurt. Can this roster actually absorb three infield injuries at once?" The evidence from this ten-game stretch suggests yes — barely and inelegantly, but yes. Gil Cruz has played through a recurring hip strain. Navarro has absorbed some third-base innings while also managing his own earlier rib-cage soreness. Schmitt, who has been the first utility infielder off the bench all season, has accumulated seven home runs in limited playing time and shown he can handle more than pinch-hit appearances. DeVore, before his knee issue arrived on June 28th, delivered a four-RBI double in what turned out to be his final healthy at-bat of the stretch. The infield depth is thinner than the pitching depth — but when Lozano and Garcia return, the depth picture will look considerably better again. The organization planned for two concurrent injuries. Three at once is the kind of thing that tests planning beyond its design limits. Sacramento is at the edge of that threshold but not past it. From Kenji Watanabe of Sacramento's Arden Acres neighborhood, an accountant, who asks: "With a seven-game lead and the rotation pitching like this, is it time to start preparing for October planning?" It is not time to prepare for October, because July and August still exist on the calendar and baseball tends to punish teams that declare victory before September. What the seven-game lead does allow is a shift in risk tolerance — Sacramento can absorb a rough week or even a rough series without it constituting a genuine threat to the division. It can afford to manage Andretti's innings more carefully. It can afford to bring Lozano and Garcia back from their respective injuries at a pace that prioritizes their long-term health rather than their short-term availability. Those are real advantages produced by a real lead. They are not, however, a championship. The team that won the 2000 World Series trailed in every playoff series at some point and found ways to win anyway. The 2001 team leading by seven games in late June needs to maintain its focus as much as any version of this franchise ever has, because seven games feels large right now and will feel different if October arrives with a rotation that has been mismanaged or a third baseman who has been pushed back too quickly from a shoulder injury. The October planning begins when the division is clinched. Until then, there are games to play. ______________________________ Fifty-four and twenty-six. Seven games up. The Prayers will face Columbus and Washington at home this week. The rotation is the best it has been all season and the infield is being rebuilt underneath it. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.