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 24 – September 2, 2001 | Eighty-Eight and Forty-Nine | Shinohara at Ninety-Seven RBI | Andretti's Complete Turnaround
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AFFORDING INCONSISTENCY THAT WOULD SINK MOST CONTENDERS
There is a pattern emerging in the late-season schedule that deserves naming plainly: Sacramento has now lost series to two of the league's worst teams in the span of a month — Portland in early August, Baltimore in this stretch — while continuing to struggle against the one team chasing them in the standings. San Jose has now taken two of three from Sacramento in back-to-back series, including a one-to-nothing shutout loss on August 31st in which William Rodriguez threw eight scoreless innings against this lineup. None of that has dented the lead, which sits at six games with twenty-five remaining, because Sacramento's overall record remains the best in the American League regardless of who beats them on a given week.
What carries this team through the inconsistency is increasingly obvious: Soshu Shinohara, who has ninety-seven RBI and thirty-one home runs and is going to flirt seriously with one hundred RBI before the calendar turns to mid-September.
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DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY
@ Baltimore, August 24-26 (1-2)
The opening game on August 24th ended on a walk-off solo homer from Jimmy Voss in the bottom of the ninth, five to six, despite a three-for-three day from Chavarria and a two-out Shinohara homer in the first. Jeon had given up five runs in five and two-thirds innings, and the late-inning home runs — Sacramento hit two of its own in the ninth from Van Ham and Alvarez — were not enough to survive Voss's answer.
August 25th was a clean loss to a good outing: Hiroshi Toyama of Baltimore allowed one run over six and two-thirds innings, Tyler Baskin homered, and Cruz could not match the performance, allowing three earned runs in four and one-third. Five to one, Baltimore.
August 26th was the response — but barely. Sacramento scored nine runs on fifteen hits, with Tony Villalobos doing damage in the other direction for Baltimore, and the Prayers survived a back-and-forth slugfest, nine to six. The series was still lost, two games to one, to a team currently twenty-two games under .500.
@ Portland, August 27-29 (3-0)
Series on the road in Portland showed us the version of Sacramento that makes the inconsistency elsewhere tolerable. Andretti threw six shutout innings on August 27th, Alvarez hit a three-run homer, and Sacramento won six to nothing — Andretti's record improving to ten and three.
Next day, on August 28th, Gunn went seven innings allowing three earned runs, Lozano delivered the go-ahead RBI single in the seventh, and Sacramento won six to four for Gunn's thirteenth victory of the season.
August 29th: Jeon threw five and two-thirds innings and Nakazawa drove in two with a double and a single. Five to three, the clean sweep complete, with Sacramento moving to six and a half games up in the division — the high-water mark of the stretch.
@ San Jose, August 31 - September 2 (1-2)
August 31st was as quiet a loss as Sacramento has suffered all season. William Rodriguez threw eight scoreless innings, struck out seven, and allowed three hits. Choi had two of them. One to nothing, San Jose, in a game where Sacramento simply could not solve a pitcher having the best night of his season.
September 1st, midpoint game of the series, was a real heartbreaker. Alvarez went three for four with a home run and two RBI, Sacramento built leads multiple times, but still lost when Jose Adams delivered a walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth off Benson. Six to five, San Jose, and the blown save dropped Benson's record on the season further into uncomfortable territory.
September 2nd salvaged the series. Andretti continued his remarkable turnaround with six innings of one-run ball, Lozano's two-run double in the first set the tone, and Shinohara's thirty-first home run in the sixth sealed it. Seven to two, Sacramento, and a series loss that could have been a sweep instead ended with a much-needed answer.
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SHINOHARA'S MARCH TOWARD ONE HUNDRED
Ninety-seven RBI with twenty-five games remaining. Thirty-one home runs. A .294 average that has held remarkably steady across a season of increasing power production — the rare hitter whose contact rate has not eroded as his home run total climbed. He will almost certainly cross one hundred RBI within the next week, and the larger question — whether he finishes the season as the best position player in the American League, full stop — gets harder to argue against with every passing series. What stands out watching him now is the complete absence of any visible slump all season. Other hitters in this lineup have had cold stretches, sometimes lasting weeks. Shinohara has not had one.
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ANDRETTI'S COMPLETE TURNAROUND
Three weeks ago, Andretti recorded two outs against Seattle and allowed five earned runs, the kind of outing that raises real concerns about a forty-one-year-old starter's remaining gas in the tank. Since then: three starts, three wins, a 0.50 ERA. Six shutout innings against Portland. Six innings of one-run ball against San Jose. The disaster start in Seattle looks, in retrospect, like an aberration rather than a trend — a single bad night rather than the beginning of a decline. His season ERA now sits at 3.64, his record is eleven and three. For a pitcher who has been the subject of durability questions for two consecutive seasons, this is precisely the kind of stretch the organization needed to see as the games that matter most approach.
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THE INJURY LEDGER, BRIEFLY
Lopez has four days remaining on his latissimus dorsi recovery timeline, which puts his return inside this coming week. Gil Cruz, hurt running the bases in the August 31st game at San Jose, is day-to-day with a bruised knee and expected back within three days. Neither is a significant concern. The deeper injuries — DeVore's kneecap, Rubalcava's rotator cuff, Delgado's rotator cuff — remain unchanged and effectively off the table for 2001.
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AROUND THE LEAGUE
Detroit and Charlotte remain locked in the tightest race in the American League, separated by a game and a half in the Central with twenty-five games to play. Long Beach at eighty-seven and forty-nine continues to hold pace with Sacramento for the best record in professional baseball. Cleveland at eighty-four and fifty-two leads the NL Central comfortably. Alex Aguilar of Phoenix has fifty-one home runs and one hundred thirty-nine RBI — numbers that, with a month still remaining, put him in rarefied historical territory regardless of division standings.
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THE INBOX
From Armine Petrosyan of Sacramento's Wilhaggin neighborhood, a massage therapist, who asks: "Sacramento has now lost series to two of the league's worst teams this month. Should that worry fans more than it seems to?"
It is a real pattern worth tracking, but I would not let it overwhelm the larger picture. Both losses came against teams playing meaningfully better baseball in those specific series than their overall record suggested — Baltimore got strong starts from Toyama and a walk-off from Voss, Portland got nothing extra and simply lost three straight, which suggests the Baltimore series was closer to bad luck than systemic weakness. The more worrisome signal, frankly, comes from the San Jose results: losing two of three to your direct division competitor twice in a row is worth more attention than losses to non-contenders. Even there, though, the lead has not moved. Six games with twenty-five to play remains an extremely comfortable position. Worried is too strong a word. Watchful is correct.
From Chinwe Okafor of Sacramento's Sierra Oaks neighborhood, an IT technician, who asks: "Shinohara is closing in on 100 RBI. Has any Sacramento player had a season this complete in recent memory?"
Not that I can point to with confidence. The 2000 championship roster had standout individual seasons — Lozano's home run binge in the World Series, Rubalcava's Cy Young campaign before the injury — but a single-season combination of thirty-plus home runs, a sub-.300 but genuinely productive average, near-forty stolen bases, and approaching one hundred RBI is the kind of complete offensive profile that very few players in this organization's recent history have produced. What makes it more remarkable is the consistency: no extended slumps, no visible fatigue as the calendar moves into September. If he finishes anywhere close to his current pace, this becomes one of the signature individual seasons of the championship era.
From Mai Phuong Nguyen of Sacramento's Foothill Farms neighborhood, a florist, who asks: "With twenty-five games left and a six-game lead, what does the path to clinching actually look like from here?"
The cleanest way to think about it: Sacramento needs to maintain roughly the same winning percentage it has shown all season — somewhere around .640 — for the lead to either hold or grow, and even a more modest .500 stretch over the final twenty-five games would likely be enough given San Jose's need to play at an extremely high level just to close the gap. The schedule ahead includes St. Louis and El Paso on the immediate horizon, both manageable opponents, before Seattle returns to Sutter Health Park. Barring an extended collapse — something this roster has not shown any inclination toward even during its roughest ten-day stretches — the division title is Sacramento's to claim somewhere in the final two weeks of the season. The more interesting question by mid-September will not be whether they clinch, but what kind of form they carry into October when it matters most.
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Eighty-eight and forty-nine. Six games up with twenty-five to play. Shinohara at ninety-seven RBI and climbing. Andretti has rediscovered himself completely. Lopez back within days. St. Louis on the road, then El Paso and Seattle at home are next on the schedule.
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Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.