Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Heros & Goats, round 2, season 9

Salem over Tampa (3-1)
Hero: Alex Gomez. After sitting out the 1st game loss while coach Taz21 was trying to "play the matchups" and left his leadoff hitter on the bench in favor of a righty to face Tampa's slew of left handed starters, the Salem message boards light up with enough flames to keep downtown Salem a glow till the next morning. Hearing the critics, coach wised up and got Gomez back into left field and back into the lineup where he responded by hitting .455 over the next 3 nights, not to mention his standard gold glove defense in left.
Goat: Achilles Cohen. Tampa's MVP canidate had a series he'd like to forget. Just 2 hits in 16 at bats. Post season struggles are nothing new to this budding star, as heel injuries each of the last 2 postseason have held him well short of regular season accolades. From a .280+ batting average and over 100 regular season home runs, to just 8 hits (in 43 at bats) and single homer the last 2 postseasons.

Wichita over Trenton (3-1)
Hero: Bruce Gibbons. Bruce scored 7 runs, piked up 6 hits (6/15-.400), drove in 5, walked 4 times and stole 3 bases to pace Wichita's offense in an easier than expect 3-1 series win over Trenton
Goat: Kris Jackson. Another middle of the order DH struggling to pace his team's offense when it matters most. This season's 2-15 showing w/ only 1 rbi follows last year's equally brutal 2-11 showing with no rbi. Jackson will enter next year looking for a new contract for season 11 and hopes to move past the last 2 postseason failures and put up something more along the lines of season 7 where he knocked out 6 long balls to go w/ 20 rbi in 14 games.

Fresno over Honolulu (3-1)
Hero: Ricky Brock. Ricky don't lose that number, didn't hit many, but he certainly made his hits count. Trailing 1 game to none, and down 4-5 in the 8th inning of game 2, Ricky hit a 2 run jack to flip the game and tie the series. 2 nights later in game #3, again trailing by a run (1-0) in the 9th, Ricky found himself at the plate w/ the bases juiced and slashed a line drive to left field to knock in 2 runs, take the lead and send Fresno to a 2 games to 1 lead.
Goat: Honolulu pitching after the 5th inning. They had a lead in all 3 games at some point after the 5th, only to see each lead flipped in a single inning (including allowing 5 runs in a 4-0 game in the 6th inning of game 4) to seal their fate. Dick Hoover is left to continue dreaming of a World Series ring.

Austin over Dover (3-1)
Hero: Stewart Wells. Austin's silver slugging CF paced their offense by hitting .414 over their arch nemisis, including 4 rbi and 5 runs.
Goat: Tony Brown. After Dover fell behind 1 game to none, they took a 6-4 lead to the 9th of game 2. 2 walks and an error later and the bases are full of Stunners. 1 pitch later, Pineda deposits a ball over the LF fence. Game over, series over. Dover would come back to win in game 3, but by that point their pitching was so worn out that they allowed 13 runs in the deciding game 4 in an otherwise heartless performance.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Season 9, Heros & Goats

Better late than never, short but sweet...

round 1
Tampa over Syracuse (3-1)
Hero: Hard to pick any 1 hero for Tampa, very much a team effort game to game, but we'll go w/ Walter Russel for his 7.2 innings of 2 run baseball in game 2. After getting shellacked (sp?) in game 1 11-2, Russell put the hammer down for 7 innings, allowing only 1 hit before giving up a wall grazing 2 run homer with his team ahead 3 runs. The bullpen cleared up the rest and Tampa never looked back taking the remaining 2 games in the series.

Goat: Harpo Norton. Harpo wasn't the biggest problem w/ the defending W-S champs, just the biggest definition in their miserable blowouts in the last 2 games. In 2 appearances, spanning 1.2 innings, Harpo gave up 6 hits, 2 homers and 7 runs to end any conversation of Syracuse making a run towards a repeat. However, and even bigger crime is Norton's mama insistance on naming her son after her favorite talk show host on opposite day.

Wichita over New York (3-1)
Hero: Another team series win for Wichita, so we'll give the award to Jolbert Mesies. He may not have collected many hits, or manned the plate behind dominate pitching, but he made his hits counts, highlighted by the 2 run homer to cap off an epic 11 inning game 1 victory in his only at bat as well as the 2 run homer to turn a 1-0 New York lead, into a 2-1 Wichita lead they would never relinquish in the deciding game 5.
Goat: Ted Lush produced nearly every time he was called upon during the regular season, however when the playoff bell went off, lush apparently slept in. 3 hits and 0 rbi from the heart of New York'order has New Yorkers screaming louder than A'Rod's early postseason struggles.

Honolulu over Pittsburgh (3-1)
Hero: Anthony Post. Post rebounded from a dissapointing 2 inning start in a game 1 loss to Pittsburgh, however he rebounded strong w/ 9 innings of 2 hit ball in the deciding game 4 (a 3-0 Honolulu victory).
Goat: Omar Franco. sometimes you only get 1 shot at glory, and sometimes its thrown in your face. In his only appearance, with Pittsburgh holding a 1-0 lead in the series following a long extra innings affair in game 1, Franco was given the pill with a 1 run lead and a chance to go up 2-0. Franco's first pitch cleared the wall off of pinch hitter Fernando Manzinillo allowing honolulu to steal the game in extras, and never look back.

Dover over Charlotte (3-2)
Hero: Scott Tankersly. In a series where 5 seemed to be the magic number, might as well pick a guy w/ 5 rbi in the series, not to mention 3 homers, including a key 2 run homer in game 2 and a solo shot in game 5 to give Dover the lead.
Goat: Fausto James. At least he was consistant. 6.1 innings of 5 run (4 earned) followed up by 6.0 innings of 5 runs (4 earned) allowing 7 & 8 hits repectively.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

The Chase for 20 wins.

As a still relative young kid living in SW Ohio, with the home team only 1 season away from a world series title, the Reds went out and made 2 big pitching moves in the offseason, acquiring Tim Belcher from the Dodgers and Greg Swindell from the Indians. Swindel had lost 16 games the prior season for the craptastic Mistakes by the Lakes, but sported a tidy 3.40ish era along w/ a fantastic 5.1 k/BB ratio. He was basically all the Indians had at that point, just prior to the emergence of Visquel, Manny, Belle, etc... and had won 18, 13 & 12 wins in the 3 years prior. Meanwhile Tim Belcher had a sub 3.00 era in 4 of his 5 prior major league seasons, winning as many 15 games just a few years prior to joining the Reds. These 2 top shelf pitcher were set to join "Mr Perfect" Tom Browning who had won 18 & 15 games the 2 seasons prior and Jose Rijo who had won 14 & 15 wins the 2 prior seasons, and may be the only player to have recieved a Hall of fame vote prior to officially ending his major league career when he returned to the reds in the early 2000s following 5+ seasons of injury/inactivity.

The thought was real that any of these 4 could post 20 wins for the Reds that season, and perhaps the dream of dreams that all 4 would reach the magical 20 win mark. Sure the Reds had to give up this fan's favorite Red, Eric Davis, to acquire Tim Belcher, but they gave up little to nothing for Swindell, and still returned Barry Larkin, Paul O'neill, Spuds Sabo and a dominant back of the bullpen. Sure this boy's dream of (4) 20-win pitcher fell short, but aside from Tom Browning's horrific broken elbow while throwing a screw ball mid-game, the other 3 went on to post 15, 15 & 12 wins a piece.

Fast forward 18 years, and toss in a handful of fake players in cybe space, and the Salem Witch Doctors have the possiblity of taking (4) 20 game winners to the postseason. The Salem staff is balanced by the big 4 of Jesus_Fernandez, Sandy_Murphy, Bronson_Brown, and Keith_Bagwell. Sandy Murphy has set the pace to date, picking up his 17th win this afternoon, while the remaining 4 all have staked 15 wins so far vs 8, 4 & 2 losses respectively. Salem has 41 games remaining, as well as 2 off days, which will allow for some shuffling of the rotation and provide each of these 4 pitchers with 8 to 9 starts should they remain injury free. Additionally, Jesus, Sandy & Bronson are all high durability/stamina pitchers which will allow them to pitch on short rest if needed and a shot at 10, perhaps even 11 starts. Only Keith Bagwell will have trouble getting by on short rest too often, 10 starts will likely be the absolute top number of starts he could make, more likely he'll get 9 more, and perhaps makes him the longest shot at obtaining the 20 win mark.

Offensively, they're going to need at least 1 run, and likely several more a game if they want to reach the 20 win mark. so far, only DH Stan Arnold has shown any signs of fatigue, but a few others are probably getting close to the 99 mark. A few off days will need to be mixed in amongst the position players, but with a 1st round bye likely for the playoffs, there shouldn't be any "sunday specials" thrown out there. Additionally, the schedule is favorable with 4 series remaining vs likely playoff teams, and 8 series vs teams likely to miss the playoffs.