THE HOT CORNER
Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL
By Claude Playball | Baseball Insider & Analyst | Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast
______________________________
July 23 – August 1, 2001 | Seventy-Two and Thirty-Seven | Garcia Traded to San Jose on Deadline Day | Division Lead is Seven Games
______________________________
VICTOR CRUZ MELTS DOWN, SACRAMENTO WINS IN TEN INNINGS REGARDLESS
It required three home runs from Nashville in the second inning, a 8-2 deficit through four innings, six pitchers after Cruz exited, Florez hitting a grand slam in the same second inning that partially offset what Cruz allowed, Van Ham clearing the bases with a double in the third to tie it, multiple lead changes across the middle innings, Benson coming on in the ninth and holding things, and finally Choi hitting a sacrifice fly in the tenth off Bass to win it. The entire exercise lasted nearly four hours and ended with Sacramento one game closer to whatever October is going to look like.
The 13-12 victory on July 29th followed a 9-8 walk-off win the previous afternoon when Lopez drew a bases-loaded walk in the tenth inning off Edgar. Back-to-back extra-inning walk-off wins against a Nashville team that fought on every pitch thrown. If Sacramento were a lesser club, either game produces a loss that shifts the narrative completely. Instead they are seventy-two and thirty-seven with the best record in the American League and Lozano is one to two weeks away from returning to the infield.
______________________________
DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY
@ Milwaukee, July 23-24 (1-1)
The game on July 23rd featured Jeon at his least convincing: four and two-thirds innings, four earned runs, three home runs allowed — two to Mesa and one to Ramos in the first inning alone. Labra threw eight innings with eleven strikeouts and made Sacramento loss inevitable from the third inning forward. Sacramento scored all three of its runs in the ninth, on Shinohara's twenty-first homer and Cruz's seventh. The rally was real; the final margin was not. Five to three, Milwaukee.
July 24th: Cruz threw six innings of two-run ball and the offense produced just enough. England hit his first home run as a Prayer in the first inning — a solo shot off Crossley that came in his first week with the organization. Navarro homered in the eighth. Van Ham contributed a sacrifice fly. Three to two, Sacramento, with Musselman and Benson closing it efficiently.
vs. San Antonio, July 25-26 (2-0)
The Hell Fire have lost eighty games and the series against them was handled appropriately. July 25th: Gunn pitched adequately if not dominantly, England drove in three runs, Florez hit a bases-clearing double, and the offense scored eleven times. July 26th: Andretti threw seven innings against a lineup that offered very little resistance, Navarro went four for four with two doubles and two singles, and Benson closed his twenty-sixth save. Five to two. No drama whatsoever.
vs. Nashville, July 27-29 (2-1)
July 27th was Nick Brown's remarkable evening. Eight and one-third innings, four hits, zero runs, three strikeouts, and a command that Sacramento's lineup simply could not locate a solution for. Jang gave up four runs in five and one-third innings including a Ritter three-run homer. Zero to four, a loss that came from a good pitcher pitching a great game.
July 28th was ten innings of something else entirely. Jeon gave up five earned runs in four innings but Florez hit a grand slam in the second inning that briefly gave Sacramento the lead. Nashville took it back, Sacramento tied it, Benson entered in the ninth with a one-run lead and walked two batters before allowing Nashville to tie it in the eighth — wait, the actual sequence went wrong in more directions than the official description captures. What matters is that Lopez drew a walk with the bases loaded in the tenth off Edgar, and Sacramento won nine to eight. Musselman got the win. The crowd at Sutter Health Park had earned its concessions.
July 29th began with Cruz taking the mound. He retired five of the first seven batters he faced in the first, and then the second inning arrived. Six walks. Oliver's three-run homer. Vargas's two-run homer. Seven earned runs in one and two-thirds innings. That was quite an ugly meltdown, the kind of start that produces pregame-show segments about rotation questions for three days. Sacramento trailed eight to two and still won thirteen to twelve in ten innings because Van Ham had four RBI, Florez hit his eleventh homer, Alvarez hit two doubles, and Choi's sac fly ended it.
vs. Charlotte, July 30 - Aug 1 (2-1)
On July 30th Gunn earned his tenth win with six and one-third innings of four-run ball, which Sacramento outscored ten to seven on the strength of a Lopez homer and double, a Cruz two-run shot, and a Nakazawa bases-clearing double in the fourth inning that turned a two-run deficit into a three-run lead.
July 31st: Andretti threw six excellent innings allowing one run, and Sacramento led six to one going into the ninth inning. Then Xin Ke entered and allowed Landau's three-run homer and Thomas's solo shot to tie it at seven, and Charlotte scored once more to win eight to seven. One of the more dispiriting losses of the second half — a quality start wasted, a lead vanished in minutes. Ke's ERA climbs toward five.
August 1st: Sacramento rebounded without delay. Four consecutive doubles in the fourth inning off James — Schmitt, Nakazawa, England, and Choi all hitting doubles in sequence — produced six runs in the frame. Jang won his eleventh game with five and one-third innings. Six to four, the series taken.
______________________________
THE GARCIA TRADE
At the July 31st trade deadline, Sacramento traded Fernando Garcia to San Jose for outfield prospect Manny Mendez and a first, a second and a third-round picks. Garcia was hitting .256 with six home runs and twenty RBI for Sacramento, filling in capably at second base during the Lozano injury stretch and before that serving as the utility infielder of first resort throughout the season's first half.
The draft capital haul is significant — three picks in the top three rounds, along with a twenty-four-year-old outfield prospect, represents genuine organizational depth. The complication is that Garcia went to San Jose, the team Sacramento is trying to put away in the division race. Garcia is a solid contributor at the level he has been deployed; adding him to a San Jose roster that is seven games behind does not change the division outcome, but it provides them a capable utility option for whatever October role they earn.
Sacramento's infield calculation going forward: Lozano returns within two weeks, England holds the second base role, Gil Cruz remains at shortstop, and the third base combination of Schmitt and Navarro continues to cover admirably. The roster is thinner in the middle infield than it was before the trade. The draft picks and Mendez represent the bet that the team is healthy enough to win the division without Garcia and will be better positioned over the next three seasons because of what they received.
______________________________
THE PITCHING PICTURE — HEAT AND COLD
Andretti is three and zero with a 1.87 ERA over his last seven starts. That is not a statistical artifact — his ground-ball rate over this stretch, his command of the sinker at the bottom of the strike zone, and the consistency with which he has worked deep into games all reflect a forty-one-year-old veteran who has found the version of himself that wins at this level. His ERA for the season sits at 3.53. He has been this organization's steadiest starter since the All-Star break.
Medina has a 0.56 ERA over his last fifteen appearances, his ERA now 1.91 on the season. Whatever disrupted his twenty-seven-game scoreless streak in Seattle has been fully corrected. He is again the most reliable arm between the starters and Benson, doing it in high-leverage situations and coming out clean.
Espenoza is the concern the hot streak indicators have been confirming: 10.59 ERA over his last thirteen appearances. He was one of Sacramento's best pitchers from April through the first week of July. He has been a liability since. The causes are not fully transparent from the box score alone — the command metrics suggest he has lost some precision with his breaking ball, and opposing hitters who saw him twenty-five times in April and May have made adjustments. Whether this corrects itself or represents a more durable problem is the most important pitching question Sacramento carries into August.
Cruz's July 29th start belongs to a different category — a complete mechanical breakdown in a single start rather than a trend. His last four appearances other than that game have been serviceable. One disaster does not define a pitcher's trajectory.
______________________________
LOZANO COMING BACK SOON?
One to two weeks. After spending nearly six weeks on the injured list with shoulder tendinitis, Lozano is within a fortnight of returning to the Sacramento lineup. His presence reinstates the infield's best player at third base, takes the defensive pressure off Schmitt's overtime deployment, and — perhaps most importantly — returns the bat that anchors the five and six spots in the order. Lozano was hitting .259 with ten home runs and thirty-eight RBI when he went down. Those are not All-Star numbers but they represent legitimate offensive output, and the lineup with Lozano in it is significantly better than the lineup without him.
______________________________
AROUND THE LEAGUE
Charlotte and Detroit are tied atop the AL Central at sixty-three and forty-five — the tightest race remaining in the American League, with both teams playing well enough to argue for the division crown deep into September. Long Beach at seventy and thirty-eight is running the best record in the NL Pacific. Cleveland at sixty-nine and thirty-nine continues to make the Central their property. Alex Aguilar of Phoenix has forty-two home runs and one hundred and seventeen RBI at the start of August, which is the kind of pace that makes award conversations irrelevant — when someone is that dominant, the award is already decided.
______________________________
THE INBOX
From Solange Tchibinda of Sacramento's Lemon Hill neighborhood, a community college professor, who asks: "Sacramento traded Garcia to San Jose — a division rival — on deadline day. Should fans be uncomfortable with that?"
Some discomfort is reasonable and I would not dismiss it with a purely financial argument. The draft picks and Mendez represent genuine organizational value, and the front office clearly decided that Garcia's contribution to Sacramento's 2001 chances was smaller than the long-term return from three top-three-round picks. That is probably correct. What makes the trade feel complicated is that Sacramento's window for winning is open right now, and adding a capable utility infielder to San Jose — even a seven-games-back San Jose — creates a scenario where Sacramento could face Garcia in October if both teams advance. The calculus here depends on your read of how close San Jose can actually get. At seven games back with fifty-three to play, the Demons would need to play forty-three and ten to force a coin flip, which is not going to happen. The division pick haul is the right call. The optics will smooth over as soon as Sacramento clinches.
From Ragnar Sigurdsson of Sacramento's River Park neighborhood, a civil contractor, who asks: "Cruz allowed seven runs in less than two innings on July 29th and then Sacramento won the game. What does that start tell us about him?"
Mostly it tells us about the offense, not about Cruz. One start does not determine a rotation slot, and Cruz's body of work — nine wins, one hundred strikeouts, a 4.23 ERA that has been hovering between 3.57 and 4.23 for three months — is the relevant data set. What the July 29th start did reveal is that Cruz's command of the strike zone remains fragile in ways that can cascade: when he cannot locate the fastball early in counts, he falls behind, he nibbles, he walks batters, and the walks lead to runs faster than average because the hitters behind the walks are good enough to drive them in. Six walks in one and two-thirds innings is not a pitcher having bad luck. That is a pitcher who lost his release point and could not recover it. Whether that was a one-time mechanical break or an early signal of something worth monitoring is the question his next three starts will answer.
From Hyun-soo Lim of Sacramento's Campus Commons neighborhood, a dentist, who asks: "Espenoza is ice cold and Andretti is as hot as he's been all year. With Lozano returning, what does the roster look like entering the final two months?"
It looks like a team with a reasonable amount of depth in most places and one growing concern. The infield returns to full strength when Lozano comes back in the next week or two — third base covered, Garcia's departure absorbed, England and Cruz splitting the middle infield work competently. The rotation is Jang, Gunn, Andretti, Cruz, and Jeon — five starters with varying degrees of reliability, none of them dominant enough to be automatic, all of them capable of quality starts on a given day. The bullpen is Benson closing, Gutierrez and Medina bridging, and then a collection of arms — Musselman, Luna, Espenoza, Ke — that range from serviceable to concerning depending on the week. The Espenoza cold streak is the one thread that worries me most right now. He was used heavily in a starting and high-leverage relief role through the first half, and it is possible he has run into the fatigue wall that can claim innings-heavy relievers in late July. If he does not correct before September, Sacramento will need Ke or Luna to step into his role with more consistency than either has shown. That is a solvable problem. It is not yet a solved one.
______________________________
Seventy-two and thirty-seven. Seven games up on San Jose. Lozano in one to two weeks from returning to the lineup. Portland home for three, then trip San Jose for the series of the year. The rotation question is Cruz. The bullpen question is Espenoza. Everything else can wait.
______________________________
Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.