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 13 – 22, 2001 | Eighty-Three and Forty-Five | A Three-Game Sweep of Brooklyn to Close the Stretch | Jang's Brief Scare
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WHAT A CHAMPIONSHIP-CALIBER TEAM LOOKS LIKE WHEN IT REMEMBERS WHO IT IS
After the wobble of early August, Sacramento needed a response, and over these ten days it delivered one in installments. The road trip was uneven — a walk-off loss in Vancouver, a response win, a frustrating loss to Las Vegas sandwiched around a blowout. But the homestand that followed was the version of this team that built a seven-game lead in July: two of three from a genuine AL Central contender in Detroit, then a clean sweep of Brooklyn to finish it off. Seven wins in ten games, the best record in the American League intact, and Daniel Lozano back in the lineup at third base for the first time since late June.
The headline number, though, belongs to Soshu Shinohara. Twenty-eight home runs. Ninety-one RBI. A .290 average that has crept steadily upward all season. He is no longer just Sacramento's best player — he is making a serious claim to be the best player in the American League, full stop.
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DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY
@ Vancouver, August 13-14 (1-1)
Game on August 13th went eleven innings and ended badly. Jeon was excellent — seven innings, one earned run — but Benson allowed Daniel Mele's two-run double in the bottom of the eleventh, and Vancouver won three to two. Mele's blast came off a future Hall of Fame arc that has nothing to do with Sacramento's fortunes, but it stung all the same.
August 14th showdown turned into a track meet in Sacramento's favor. Shinohara hit two home runs and drove in six. Gunn surrendered one run in five and one-third innings for his twelfth win. Eight to one, though the afternoon is better remembered for Mollohan and Vancouver's Jason Garcia getting ejected in the third inning for igniting a bench-clearing brawl. Baseball tempers run hot in August.
vs. Las Vegas, August 15-16 (1-1)
Cruz had a rough one on August 15th — three earned runs in five and two-thirds innings — and Tetsuharu Sakakibara, who has had Sacramento's number more than once this season, went three for four with a homer. Four to one, Las Vegas.
August 16th was a laugher in the other direction. Sacramento scored five in the first inning, Shinohara and Choi both homered, and the Prayers won nine to one. Jang was pulled early after being hurt while pitching — a moment that briefly raised alarm given the season's run of rotation injuries — but Espenoza, Gutierrez, and Musselman combined to cover the rest of the game capably, and the injury proved minor enough that Jang would take the mound again less than a week later.
vs. Detroit, August 17-19 (2-1)
August 17th was the kind of game that announces itself immediately as memorable. Shinohara hit a grand slam in the fifth. Choi homered twice. Nakazawa went four for four with a home run, two doubles, and a walk — four runs scored, three driven in, the best game of his season. Andretti cruised through six and one-third innings. Fifteen to three, against a Detroit team that came in seventy-two and fifty.
August 18th was tighter and cleaner: Jeon allowed one run over five innings, Mollohan drove in two with a first-inning single, and the bullpen — Musselman, Luna, and Medina — combined for four scoreless innings to close it out. Six to one.
August 19th went the other way. Gunn allowed two earned runs in five innings before Gutierrez surrendered a three-run Jimmy Rosen homer that put Detroit ahead for good. Nine to four, Detroit, and the series — taken two games to one — still represented real validation against one of the better teams in the league.
vs. Brooklyn, August 20-22 (3-0)
The sweep began with a tight one. Vic Cruz threw seven strong innings, Mollohan's two-out single in the eighth provided the decisive run, and Medina and Benson combined to close out a three-to-two win over a Brooklyn team getting a strong outing from Steve Robitaille.
August 21st belonged to Hector Florez — four for five with a double and three RBI — while Jang, fully recovered from his brief scare, threw five and one-third innings for his thirteenth win. Nine to two.
August 22nd completed the sweep. Andretti threw six shutout innings, Lozano hit a home run in his first week back, and Sacramento won five to two. The Brooklyn series, against a team that had been playing well in the AL East all summer, ended in the most one-sided fashion possible.
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LOZANO'S RETURN
He has been back at third base since the middle of this stretch, and the results have arrived quickly: a home run against Brooklyn on August 22nd, doubles, stolen bases, the full complement of what made him a thirty-home-run threat a season ago. More important than any single box score line is what his presence does structurally — Schmitt moves back to a true utility role, Navarro and Cruz settle into their customary positions, and the defensive infield Sacramento built this roster around is whole again for the stretch run. Two months on the injured list is a significant absence to overcome in six weeks, but the early returns suggest he has lost very little.
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SHINOHARA'S MVP CASE
Twenty-eight home runs. Ninety-one RBI. Thirty-five stolen bases. A .290 average that keeps climbing despite the power numbers that would normally come with some trade-off in contact rate. He leads the team in nearly every meaningful offensive category and has done it while playing plus defense in right field. The American League MVP conversation has been centered on Alex Aguilar of Phoenix and a handful of others in the National League, with Ebizo Suzuki rightfully drawing Cy Young attention in San Jose's own division. But within the American League specifically, it is difficult to point to a position player having a better all-around season than Shinohara. The grand slam against Detroit on August 17th was simply the most visible recent example of a player performing at the peak of his abilities in the most important stretch of the season.
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WHO'S HOT, WHO'S COLD
Who's Hot: Shinohara, obviously, but also Jang and Gunn, who combined to allow four earned runs over their last two starts apiece, and Jeon, who has quietly strung together a 1.50 ERA across his last two outings after a summer of inconsistency. The rotation, as a unit, has looked like its July self again over this final stretch.
Who's Cold: Tim Van Ham is hitting .107 with no home runs over his last eight games — a significant comedown from the player who signed a five-year extension in early July. Some of this is mechanical, some is simply the variance that comes with a smaller role since Lopez's injury and Choi's emergence have squeezed his playing time. He remains a useful piece. He has not looked like one in two weeks.
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AROUND THE LEAGUE
Detroit is seventy-seven and fifty-one, two and a half games up on Charlotte in the AL Central — the tightest divisional race remaining in the American League, and a team Sacramento now knows can compete with anyone after splitting that three-game set at Sutter Health Park. Brooklyn's Steve Robitaille threw eight strong innings in a losing effort against Cruz on August 20th, a reminder that pitching performances and pitching results do not always align. Cleveland at seventy-nine and forty-eight continues to lead the NL, with Long Beach at eighty-one and forty-six running them close. Marco Corral of Vancouver has two hundred and twelve strikeouts with over a month still to play — a number that will likely stand as one of the league's defining individual achievements this season regardless of how his team's record looks.
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THE INBOX
From Knarik Hovhannisyan of Sacramento's Gardenland neighborhood, an urban planner, who asks: "Lozano came back and already has a home run. How much does his return change the lineup's ceiling for the stretch run?"
Meaningfully. The lineup performed well in his absence — that much is obvious from the record — but performing well without your third-best power threat and performing at full strength with him are different propositions. Lozano gives Sacramento a fifth legitimate home run threat alongside Shinohara, Choi, Alvarez, and Van Ham, which makes it considerably harder for opposing pitchers to navigate the lineup without exposure somewhere. His defense at third base, even two months removed from regular play, has looked sound rather than rusty. If he sustains anything close to his pre-injury production through September, this lineup is deeper than it has been at any point since Opening Day.
From Folasade Bankole of Sacramento's Robla neighborhood, a mechanic, who asks: "Shinohara has 28 home runs and 91 RBI. Is he the best position player in the American League right now?"
He belongs firmly in that conversation, and a strong case exists that he is exactly that. The combination of power, average, speed, and defensive value is rare — most thirty-home-run hitters are not also stealing thirty-five bases, and most players with his stolen-base totals are not driving in ninety-one runs. Where the case gets complicated is the comparison pool: this is genuinely a strong year for hitters across both leagues, and reasonable people will weigh different statistical categories differently. What I can say without hesitation is that no Sacramento player has had a season this complete in recent memory, and few players anywhere in the American League have matched his combination of skills in 2001.
From Itzel Reyes of Sacramento's Avondale neighborhood, a graphic designer, who asks: "Six games up with about a month left. When does it start to feel safe to think about October planning?"
The math says Sacramento needs to play roughly .500 baseball over the remaining thirty-two games for the lead to hold, assuming San Jose plays at a strong-but-not-historic pace the rest of the way. That is an extremely comfortable position, and I would not blame anyone in the organization for beginning to think seriously about postseason roster construction, pitching matchups, and health management at this point. That said, "safe to think about" and "safe to assume" are different things. The lead can still shrink if Sacramento goes through a genuine slump, and Lopez's continued absence plus the questions around Espenoza's role mean there are real variables left to resolve before October arrives. My honest answer: it is reasonable to start planning now. It is not yet reasonable to stop paying attention to the day-to-day.
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Eighty-three and forty-five. Six games up on San Jose with thirty-two to play. Lozano back. Lopez two weeks away. Shinohara making an MVP case in real time. Baltimore on the road, then to Portland to close the month.
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Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.