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liberty-ca · 06-17-2026, 07:44 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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June 29 – July 8, 2001 | Fifty-Eight and Thirty-One | Van Ham Signs Five-Year Extension | Columbus Sweeps Sacramento at Home

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NEWS ON THE INJURY FRONT TELL EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS STRETCH

When Jang walked off the mound in the third inning at Philadelphia, the rotation math started assembling itself in a very unpleasant direction in the minds of everyone watching. Eight and two, best ERA in the rotation, and then — a trainer, a slow limping walk, an early exit. The diagnosis arrived in hours: mild hamstring strain, around five days for recovery. We dodged the bullet, folks — Jang started warming up again before most people had finished catastrophizing. The rotation stayed intact.

The genuine bad news belongs to Cody DeVore, whose broken kneecap confirmed officially as a season-ending injury this week, and to Daniel Lozano, who is five weeks away from possibly returning from shoulder tendinitis. Those losses are real and the roster has been managing around them with functional improvisation. But they are not the rotation, and the rotation is fine. Vic Cruz just won the AL Pitcher of the Month award for June. Tim Van Ham won Player of the Week and then signed a five-year extension before the ink on the award was dry. Sacramento enters the All-Star break tied with Long Beach for the best record in professional baseball.

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VIC CRUZ — AL PITCHER OF THE MONTH

The June numbers: five starts, five wins, a 2.17 ERA, thirty-seven and one-third innings, thirty-nine strikeouts, opponents hitting .199 against him. The baseball writers noticed what the box scores had been reporting since the first week of the month — that the pitcher who struggled in late May had found something, corrected something, and become one of the most difficult starters to score against in the American League. The Pitcher of the Month award is recognition of what anyone watching already knew.

What Cruz found in June was location. His secondary pitches — the changeup and the two-seam fastball — stopped arriving middle-out and started arriving down and away, which is the difference between pitches hitters attack and pitches hitters beat into the dirt. His ground-ball rate in June was the highest it has been all season. Hitters were not getting the ball in the air. When hitters cannot get the ball in the air against Vic Cruz, they cannot score against Vic Cruz. That is the equation, and he executed it for five consecutive starts. On the year he stands at eight and four with a 3.95 ERA — the last number slightly inflated by a rough July 7th outing against Philadelphia. The June version is the pitcher the Prayers paid for.

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TIM VAN HAM — PLAYER OF THE WEEK AND FIVE-YEAR EXTENSION

The week that produced the Player of the Week recognition: ten for sixteen, .625 batting average, four home runs, eleven RBI. Those are not numbers that require explanation. A triple and a homer against Philadelphia, four hits and four RBI in the July 2nd Washington blowout including a three-run shot in the seventh. The American League voters made the obvious selection.

The front office responded with something more consequential than a minor award: a five-year extension at $337,200 per year, keeping Van Ham in Sacramento through 2006. He entered 2001 as the fourth outfielder, the depth chart player whose name appeared in the lineup when Lopez tore his ACL and Choi fractured a finger and the other options ran thin. What he has become since then — seventeen home runs, a .262 average, a sustained contributor rather than a temporary solution — is the kind of player franchises retain precisely because he is difficult to replace at his cost. The extension is the organization making a decision that should have been obvious by May: Van Ham is more then a hot-streaking hitter. He is a really valuable player, and Sacramento wants him for the next five years of what looks increasingly like a genuine championship window. Lets now talk about how things were unfolding for the Prayers over last stretch heading in to All-Star break one game at a time.

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DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

vs. Columbus, June 29 - July 1 (0-3)

Jeon pitched seven solid innings on June 29th and received nothing for it. Benson gave up a Gil single in the tenth that scored the go-ahead run. Three to four — Sacramento lost a game it controlled for most of nine innings.

Jang gave up five runs in five innings on June 30th — a Palacios two-run homer, a Strait solo shot — and the offense could not overcome the deficit. Shinohara hit his nineteenth home run. Four to five, Columbus again.

July 1st was Gunn's roughest outing since May: five innings, ten hits, four earned runs against a Columbus lineup that had no business being this difficult against home team. Gil, the Heaven's catcher who had been a nonfactor for most of the series, went three for four and hit a three-run homer in the seventh to break a game Sacramento was still close enough to win. Seven to five, final. Sacramento had been swept at home by a team that entered the series below .500. The division lead fell from seven games to five and a half in three days.

vs. Washington, July 2-4 (2-1)

Cruz won July 2nd with five and two-thirds innings of one-run ball, and the offense did everything else. Van Ham had four hits and four RBI, including a three-run homer in the seventh. Alvarez hit a three-run homer. Schmitt added a two-run shot. Fifteen to seven, Sacramento, and the series was off in the right direction — though Gil Cruz was hurt in a base collision during the game and is a week away from returning with back tightness.

July 3rd was Choi's first game back from the fractured finger. He went three for three with a home run, two singles, and two walks. Game started with a bang, as Chavarria and Washington's Montalvo were ejected in the first inning for their respective roles in a bench-clearing brawl. Then DeVore hit a solo homer — his first of the season, and as it turned out, his last — he was hurt later in a base collision and was forced to leave the game. The broken kneecap diagnosis was made public shortly thereafter. Sacramento won the game seven to three, with England — the second baseman acquired from Nashville in a minor transaction to address an emergency situation with Sacramento's infield — contributing a double in his second game in a Prayers uniform. Great win, terrible development with yet another injury to a roster player.

July 4th: Jeon threw seven fine innings and absorbed the loss despite strong showing — Ke surrendered a Taylor triple in the eighth that broke a tie. Three to four, Washington, on a holiday that for the home side ended without celebration.

@ Philadelphia, July 6-8 (2-1)

The July 6th win required ten innings and produced the Jang scare. He left after three and one-third innings, but the bullpen thankfully held on, and Shinohara's bases-loaded sac fly in the tenth off Young won it six to five. Medina got the win, Benson recorded his nineteenth save, and the Jang's postgame diagnosis — mild hamstring strain, five days — arrived to general relief.

July 7th was Cruz's worst start in two months: four and two-thirds innings, six earned runs, followed by a Ke appearance that featured a Gonzalez grand slam in the fifth. Philadelphia won eleven to seven, which is the kind of result that appears occasionally on every team's schedule and is best processed quickly and forgotten entirely.

The July 8th gamer was a true statement, in my opinion. Lopez went three for four with a home run, two singles, two walks, three runs scored, and three RBI. Van Ham hit his seventeenth homer. Navarro had three hits and two RBI. Gunn threw six innings and won his eighth game. Sixteen to six against a last-place team, which is the appropriate response to any preceding ugliness.

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DEVORE AND THE INFIELD

It pains me to say this, but Cody DeVore is done. The broken kneecap ended a season that had already been unusual — he came to Sacramento as a depth piece, was thrust into regular action by Lozano and Garcia's injuries, homered in his final at-bat, and then broke his knee on the same play. He is twenty-three years old. The organization loses the infield depth it had assembled, which was already operating near its limits with Lozano five weeks away on his shoulder tendinitis.

What fills the gap in the interim is the same patchwork that has been operating since late June: Schmitt at third, Navarro and Gil Cruz sharing the middle infield workload when both are healthy, England adding depth at second base, and the hope that Lozano's return in mid-August comes on schedule. It has worked well enough to stay two and a half games ahead of where Sacramento stood when Lozano first went down. That is the most accurate measure of how the team has managed a situation that would have been plainly unworkable for most rosters.

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THE ALL-STAR BREAK IN CONTEXT

Shinohara was named to the American League All-Star roster: .297 batting average, nineteen home runs, twenty-six stolen bases, a 141 wRC+ and 4.0 WAR. The selection was not debated. Gutierrez also made it — five wins, no losses, a 2.32 ERA, fifty-one innings of relief work that represents some of the most consistent middle-inning production in the league from any arm. Two Sacramento players on the AL roster is appropriate recognition for a franchise currently tied for the best record in baseball.

The American League won the All-Star Game ten to four. Nashville's Jose Morales was the day's featured performer. The result has no bearing on October but serves as a useful reminder of where the league's best currently sit, and Sacramento's two representatives were not embarrassed in the company they kept.

The midseason prospect update delivered two pieces of news worth tracking. Zamora holds the ninth overall ranking with twenty-four saves for Oxnard at Triple-A level and a 3.63 ERA — a legitimate prospect timeline that suggests a potential call-up option if the bullpen situation deteriorates. Kashiwabara, who opened the season ranked sixth overall, dropped off the top ten after hitting .177 at Triple-A. The ceiling that generated the preseason ranking has not lowered. The gap between that ceiling and his current performance has simply become visible. He is still a prospect. He is simply not a near-term solution.

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AROUND THE LEAGUE

Detroit has won nine straight and sits at fifty-five and thirty-four, the best record in the AL Central by four and a half games over Charlotte. The Preachers are the most dangerous team in the league not named Sacramento or San Jose. Long Beach at fifty-eight and thirty-one shares the best record in professional baseball with Sacramento — two franchises from the western half of the continent, neither of whom has shown meaningful vulnerability for the better part of two months. Cleveland at fifty-eight and thirty leads the NL Central and is the third team in the conversation for best record in the sport. October is taking shape in the standings.

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THE INBOX

From Nnamdi Eze of Sacramento's College Greens neighborhood, a paramedic, who asks: "Cruz wins Pitcher of the Month, then goes out and gets roughed up in Philadelphia. How do you read the rotation going into the second half?"

The July 7th Philadelphia game is noise, not signal. Cruz pitched badly for four and two-thirds innings against a below-.500 lineup on a warm night in a ballpark that plays small. Every pitcher in the American League has a game like that somewhere in his season. What matters is the surrounding context: dominant starts on either side of that performance, an ERA that has come down thirty points since the end of May, and a command profile that is demonstrably better than anything he showed in April. The rotation entering the second half is Jeon, Jang, Cruz, Gunn and Andretti — five starters who each have quality-start stretches on their resume and each have rough games as well. It is not the 1927 Yankees, and it is not what Jang and Cruz would have been at full health in a perfect world. But it is a rotation that can win a division and survive a playoff round. I would not trade it for what San Jose is currently assembling.

From Astrid Magnusdóttir of Sacramento's Arden Park neighborhood, a piano teacher, who asks: "The Van Ham extension locks him up through 2006. Is the franchise making a long-term bet on him, or is this primarily about the current window?"

Both, and the two are not in conflict. The current window — the one built around Shinohara, Navarro, Alvarez, Cruz, Lozano — runs through at least 2004 based on existing contracts. Van Ham's five-year extension ensures he is present for the entirety of that window and beyond. What makes this more than a short-term convenience move is that Van Ham is twenty-four years old and has not yet been asked to carry lineup responsibility in a full healthy season. His power has developed ahead of schedule. His on-base skills — a .357 OBP entering the break — suggest a hitter who does more than swing hard at elevated fastballs. The franchise is betting that what they are seeing now is not the ceiling of what he becomes. Based on the trajectory, that is a defensible bet at $337,200 per year.

From Andriy Kotick of Sacramento's Boulevard Park neighborhood, a structural engineer, who asks: "Sacramento was swept at home by Columbus, a team that was below .500. The lead dropped from seven to four. Should Prayers fans be worried?"

No. And here is the simplest way I can explain why: Columbus won three games from Sacramento in three days at Sutter Health Park, and despite that, the division lead is still four games. That is the nature of a seven-game cushion — it absorbs a bad series, it even absorbs a bad week, and it still leaves the team in first place with the second half ahead. The sweep by Columbus was a genuine rough stretch: Jang uncharacteristically poor in his start, Gunn allowing ten hits in five innings in the finale, the offense going quiet against three pitchers who had no particular reason to dominate Sacramento. None of that is structural. None of it changes the fact that this team has played .652 baseball for nearly ninety games. San Jose would need Sacramento to go something like twenty and thirty in the second half for the lead to evaporate entirely, and the team that spent the first half building a seven-game lead is not going to play .400 ball for the next sixty days. Be watchful. Be informed. Don't be worried.

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Fifty-eight and thirty-one. Tied with Long Beach for the best record in baseball. Four games up on San Jose. Jang healthy. Lozano five weeks away. Seattle comes for four games starting Thursday, then San Jose visits for a three-games series that will tell us everything about the second half of the season.

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

06-17-2026, 07:44 PM	#390
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 572	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *June 29 – July 8, 2001 \| Fifty-Eight and Thirty-One \| Van Ham Signs Five-Year Extension \| Columbus Sweeps Sacramento at Home* ______________________________ NEWS ON THE INJURY FRONT TELL EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS STRETCH When Jang walked off the mound in the third inning at Philadelphia, the rotation math started assembling itself in a very unpleasant direction in the minds of everyone watching. Eight and two, best ERA in the rotation, and then — a trainer, a slow limping walk, an early exit. The diagnosis arrived in hours: mild hamstring strain, around five days for recovery. We dodged the bullet, folks — Jang started warming up again before most people had finished catastrophizing. The rotation stayed intact. The genuine bad news belongs to Cody DeVore, whose broken kneecap confirmed officially as a season-ending injury this week, and to Daniel Lozano, who is five weeks away from possibly returning from shoulder tendinitis. Those losses are real and the roster has been managing around them with functional improvisation. But they are not the rotation, and the rotation is fine. Vic Cruz just won the AL Pitcher of the Month award for June. Tim Van Ham won Player of the Week and then signed a five-year extension before the ink on the award was dry. Sacramento enters the All-Star break tied with Long Beach for the best record in professional baseball. ______________________________ VIC CRUZ — AL PITCHER OF THE MONTH The June numbers: five starts, five wins, a 2.17 ERA, thirty-seven and one-third innings, thirty-nine strikeouts, opponents hitting .199 against him. The baseball writers noticed what the box scores had been reporting since the first week of the month — that the pitcher who struggled in late May had found something, corrected something, and become one of the most difficult starters to score against in the American League. The Pitcher of the Month award is recognition of what anyone watching already knew. What Cruz found in June was location. His secondary pitches — the changeup and the two-seam fastball — stopped arriving middle-out and started arriving down and away, which is the difference between pitches hitters attack and pitches hitters beat into the dirt. His ground-ball rate in June was the highest it has been all season. Hitters were not getting the ball in the air. When hitters cannot get the ball in the air against Vic Cruz, they cannot score against Vic Cruz. That is the equation, and he executed it for five consecutive starts. On the year he stands at eight and four with a 3.95 ERA — the last number slightly inflated by a rough July 7th outing against Philadelphia. The June version is the pitcher the Prayers paid for. ______________________________ TIM VAN HAM — PLAYER OF THE WEEK AND FIVE-YEAR EXTENSION The week that produced the Player of the Week recognition: ten for sixteen, .625 batting average, four home runs, eleven RBI. Those are not numbers that require explanation. A triple and a homer against Philadelphia, four hits and four RBI in the July 2nd Washington blowout including a three-run shot in the seventh. The American League voters made the obvious selection. The front office responded with something more consequential than a minor award: a five-year extension at $337,200 per year, keeping Van Ham in Sacramento through 2006. He entered 2001 as the fourth outfielder, the depth chart player whose name appeared in the lineup when Lopez tore his ACL and Choi fractured a finger and the other options ran thin. What he has become since then — seventeen home runs, a .262 average, a sustained contributor rather than a temporary solution — is the kind of player franchises retain precisely because he is difficult to replace at his cost. The extension is the organization making a decision that should have been obvious by May: Van Ham is more then a hot-streaking hitter. He is a really valuable player, and Sacramento wants him for the next five years of what looks increasingly like a genuine championship window. Lets now talk about how things were unfolding for the Prayers over last stretch heading in to All-Star break one game at a time. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY vs. Columbus, June 29 - July 1 (0-3) Jeon pitched seven solid innings on June 29th and received nothing for it. Benson gave up a Gil single in the tenth that scored the go-ahead run. Three to four — Sacramento lost a game it controlled for most of nine innings. Jang gave up five runs in five innings on June 30th — a Palacios two-run homer, a Strait solo shot — and the offense could not overcome the deficit. Shinohara hit his nineteenth home run. Four to five, Columbus again. July 1st was Gunn's roughest outing since May: five innings, ten hits, four earned runs against a Columbus lineup that had no business being this difficult against home team. Gil, the Heaven's catcher who had been a nonfactor for most of the series, went three for four and hit a three-run homer in the seventh to break a game Sacramento was still close enough to win. Seven to five, final. Sacramento had been swept at home by a team that entered the series below .500. The division lead fell from seven games to five and a half in three days. vs. Washington, July 2-4 (2-1) Cruz won July 2nd with five and two-thirds innings of one-run ball, and the offense did everything else. Van Ham had four hits and four RBI, including a three-run homer in the seventh. Alvarez hit a three-run homer. Schmitt added a two-run shot. Fifteen to seven, Sacramento, and the series was off in the right direction — though Gil Cruz was hurt in a base collision during the game and is a week away from returning with back tightness. July 3rd was Choi's first game back from the fractured finger. He went three for three with a home run, two singles, and two walks. Game started with a bang, as Chavarria and Washington's Montalvo were ejected in the first inning for their respective roles in a bench-clearing brawl. Then DeVore hit a solo homer — his first of the season, and as it turned out, his last — he was hurt later in a base collision and was forced to leave the game. The broken kneecap diagnosis was made public shortly thereafter. Sacramento won the game seven to three, with England — the second baseman acquired from Nashville in a minor transaction to address an emergency situation with Sacramento's infield — contributing a double in his second game in a Prayers uniform. Great win, terrible development with yet another injury to a roster player. July 4th: Jeon threw seven fine innings and absorbed the loss despite strong showing — Ke surrendered a Taylor triple in the eighth that broke a tie. Three to four, Washington, on a holiday that for the home side ended without celebration. @ Philadelphia, July 6-8 (2-1) The July 6th win required ten innings and produced the Jang scare. He left after three and one-third innings, but the bullpen thankfully held on, and Shinohara's bases-loaded sac fly in the tenth off Young won it six to five. Medina got the win, Benson recorded his nineteenth save, and the Jang's postgame diagnosis — mild hamstring strain, five days — arrived to general relief. July 7th was Cruz's worst start in two months: four and two-thirds innings, six earned runs, followed by a Ke appearance that featured a Gonzalez grand slam in the fifth. Philadelphia won eleven to seven, which is the kind of result that appears occasionally on every team's schedule and is best processed quickly and forgotten entirely. The July 8th gamer was a true statement, in my opinion. Lopez went three for four with a home run, two singles, two walks, three runs scored, and three RBI. Van Ham hit his seventeenth homer. Navarro had three hits and two RBI. Gunn threw six innings and won his eighth game. Sixteen to six against a last-place team, which is the appropriate response to any preceding ugliness. ______________________________ DEVORE AND THE INFIELD It pains me to say this, but Cody DeVore is done. The broken kneecap ended a season that had already been unusual — he came to Sacramento as a depth piece, was thrust into regular action by Lozano and Garcia's injuries, homered in his final at-bat, and then broke his knee on the same play. He is twenty-three years old. The organization loses the infield depth it had assembled, which was already operating near its limits with Lozano five weeks away on his shoulder tendinitis. What fills the gap in the interim is the same patchwork that has been operating since late June: Schmitt at third, Navarro and Gil Cruz sharing the middle infield workload when both are healthy, England adding depth at second base, and the hope that Lozano's return in mid-August comes on schedule. It has worked well enough to stay two and a half games ahead of where Sacramento stood when Lozano first went down. That is the most accurate measure of how the team has managed a situation that would have been plainly unworkable for most rosters. ______________________________ THE ALL-STAR BREAK IN CONTEXT Shinohara was named to the American League All-Star roster: .297 batting average, nineteen home runs, twenty-six stolen bases, a 141 wRC+ and 4.0 WAR. The selection was not debated. Gutierrez also made it — five wins, no losses, a 2.32 ERA, fifty-one innings of relief work that represents some of the most consistent middle-inning production in the league from any arm. Two Sacramento players on the AL roster is appropriate recognition for a franchise currently tied for the best record in baseball. The American League won the All-Star Game ten to four. Nashville's Jose Morales was the day's featured performer. The result has no bearing on October but serves as a useful reminder of where the league's best currently sit, and Sacramento's two representatives were not embarrassed in the company they kept. The midseason prospect update delivered two pieces of news worth tracking. Zamora holds the ninth overall ranking with twenty-four saves for Oxnard at Triple-A level and a 3.63 ERA — a legitimate prospect timeline that suggests a potential call-up option if the bullpen situation deteriorates. Kashiwabara, who opened the season ranked sixth overall, dropped off the top ten after hitting .177 at Triple-A. The ceiling that generated the preseason ranking has not lowered. The gap between that ceiling and his current performance has simply become visible. He is still a prospect. He is simply not a near-term solution. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE Detroit has won nine straight and sits at fifty-five and thirty-four, the best record in the AL Central by four and a half games over Charlotte. The Preachers are the most dangerous team in the league not named Sacramento or San Jose. Long Beach at fifty-eight and thirty-one shares the best record in professional baseball with Sacramento — two franchises from the western half of the continent, neither of whom has shown meaningful vulnerability for the better part of two months. Cleveland at fifty-eight and thirty leads the NL Central and is the third team in the conversation for best record in the sport. October is taking shape in the standings. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Nnamdi Eze of Sacramento's College Greens neighborhood, a paramedic, who asks: "Cruz wins Pitcher of the Month, then goes out and gets roughed up in Philadelphia. How do you read the rotation going into the second half?" The July 7th Philadelphia game is noise, not signal. Cruz pitched badly for four and two-thirds innings against a below-.500 lineup on a warm night in a ballpark that plays small. Every pitcher in the American League has a game like that somewhere in his season. What matters is the surrounding context: dominant starts on either side of that performance, an ERA that has come down thirty points since the end of May, and a command profile that is demonstrably better than anything he showed in April. The rotation entering the second half is Jeon, Jang, Cruz, Gunn and Andretti — five starters who each have quality-start stretches on their resume and each have rough games as well. It is not the 1927 Yankees, and it is not what Jang and Cruz would have been at full health in a perfect world. But it is a rotation that can win a division and survive a playoff round. I would not trade it for what San Jose is currently assembling. From Astrid Magnusdóttir of Sacramento's Arden Park neighborhood, a piano teacher, who asks: "The Van Ham extension locks him up through 2006. Is the franchise making a long-term bet on him, or is this primarily about the current window?" Both, and the two are not in conflict. The current window — the one built around Shinohara, Navarro, Alvarez, Cruz, Lozano — runs through at least 2004 based on existing contracts. Van Ham's five-year extension ensures he is present for the entirety of that window and beyond. What makes this more than a short-term convenience move is that Van Ham is twenty-four years old and has not yet been asked to carry lineup responsibility in a full healthy season. His power has developed ahead of schedule. His on-base skills — a .357 OBP entering the break — suggest a hitter who does more than swing hard at elevated fastballs. The franchise is betting that what they are seeing now is not the ceiling of what he becomes. Based on the trajectory, that is a defensible bet at $337,200 per year. From Andriy Kotick of Sacramento's Boulevard Park neighborhood, a structural engineer, who asks: "Sacramento was swept at home by Columbus, a team that was below .500. The lead dropped from seven to four. Should Prayers fans be worried?" No. And here is the simplest way I can explain why: Columbus won three games from Sacramento in three days at Sutter Health Park, and despite that, the division lead is still four games. That is the nature of a seven-game cushion — it absorbs a bad series, it even absorbs a bad week, and it still leaves the team in first place with the second half ahead. The sweep by Columbus was a genuine rough stretch: Jang uncharacteristically poor in his start, Gunn allowing ten hits in five innings in the finale, the offense going quiet against three pitchers who had no particular reason to dominate Sacramento. None of that is structural. None of it changes the fact that this team has played .652 baseball for nearly ninety games. San Jose would need Sacramento to go something like twenty and thirty in the second half for the lead to evaporate entirely, and the team that spent the first half building a seven-game lead is not going to play .400 ball for the next sixty days. Be watchful. Be informed. Don't be worried. ______________________________ Fifty-eight and thirty-one. Tied with Long Beach for the best record in baseball. Four games up on San Jose. Jang healthy. Lozano five weeks away. Seattle comes for four games starting Thursday, then San Jose visits for a three-games series that will tell us everything about the second half of the season. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.