[Westheim]

Raccoons (43-51) @ Titans (58-33) – July 22-24, 2003

Wow, we’re really constantly playing the Titans… Here they come again. Raccoons look like trash compared to them, as always, what not all with their third-best offense (430 runs scored) and best pitching that had conceded a juicy 130 runs less than that. Runs allowed and the rotation ERA were tops in the CL, the latter a swift 2.98, which was outright ridiculous. The bullpen was fourth with a 3.30 ERA. They are up 6-3 in the season series.

Projected matchups:
Francisco Piquero (1-0, 1.29 ERA) vs. Jorge Chapa (11-5, 3.45 ERA)
Nick Brown (5-9, 3.98 ERA) vs. Bryce Hildred (9-6, 2.33 ERA)
Randy Farley (6-3, 3.83 ERA) vs. Steven Snyder (8-3, 2.80 ERA)

Chapa is a lefty, so Mark Thomas gets his first start of the year behind the dish and a chance to get that career .234/.318/.364 slash line exhibited. We are thrilled at the opportunity.

Game 1
POR: 1B Sharp – SS Guerin – LF Reece – RF Brady – 2B Ingall – 3B M. Ramirez – CF Moore – C Thomas – P Piquero
BOS: LF Elizondo – 1B Matsumoto – CF Garrison – RF G. Munoz – 3B Austin – C L. Lopez – 2B H. Ramirez – SS D. Silva – P Chapa

Ingall and Ramirez drew singles to start the top of the second inning, and when Moore grounded to the right side, Chapa dropped Matsumoto’s throw. That loaded them up with no outs, and for once they came through. Thomas drew a walk to force home a run, Piquero and Sharp would drive in runs with singles, and Reece hit a sac fly to make it 4-0 in support of Piquero. Piquero responded to this wonderful event by walking the first two Titans in the bottom 2nd. He was completely out of whack and the game didn’t blow up in his face for the sole reason that Thomas threw out base stealers in both of the first two innings. Piquero didn’t pitch out of whack for very long, though. He left in the third with an injury after allowing a double to Elizondo, having allowed one run in 2.1 innings on two hits and three walks. With Bob Joly pitching in long relief, we needed more offense quickly. Clyde Brady’s leadoff jack in the fifth made it a 5-1 game, which seemed like a casual cruise until the seventh. Joly got that far, but retired only one before walking Ramirez. Benton Wilson came on, popped up Silva, but then walked PH Christian Greenman and Vicente Elizondo. Bruno was broken out to get the third out from Matsumoto, who grounded out to Ingall to leave the bases loaded. We faced Nathan Harrison in the top of the eighth, and Thomas hit a leadoff single. Bruno bunted him over, but Sharp, who was unretired on the day, was walked intentionally. After Guerin whiffed, it was on Reece to do some good. He crushed Harrison’s first pitch to left, curving towards the foul pole, and it was …… fair!! A 3-run homer for Neil Reece! Bruno pitched the bottom 8th of the 8-1 affair, faced four batters, all of which put the first pitch into play, and three were retired. Since he had only thrown eight pitches for four outs, he remained in the game, but got tagged with a Daniel Silva homer in the ninth. This one was not going to get away though. 8-2 Raccoons! Sharp 3-3, 2 BB, RBI; Thomas 2-3, BB, RBI; Joly 4.0 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 3 BB, 2 K, W (1-5); Bruno 2.1 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 2 K, SV (3), IR 3-0;

Say what, Bob Joly is winless no more!

And what’s going to be wrong with Piquero? Can he keep the arm or do we have to fashion him a shiny hook?

Game 2
POR: SS Guerin – 3B Sharp – RF Brady – 1B Martin – LF Reece – C Ledesma – CF Beairsto – 2B Palacios – P Brown
BOS: SS D. Silva – 1B Matsumoto – RF Greenman – 2B Austin – 3B V. Flores – LF G. Munoz – CF Bryant – C F. Diéguez – P Hildred

There was one pitcher in the park who would walk six batters in his outing, only to find the opposition not too keen on taking advantage. He lasted into the seventh. The other pitcher didn’t walk anybody, was sharp as a knife, perfect the first time through the lineup, and was only scored upon due to an untimely double to the speedy opposing shortstop. That guy was just ON.

Brownie was ON. Hildred was the messed up guy, while Brown paid for Silva’s leadoff double in the fourth with a run that cost the Raccoons a world of hurt to put back onto the board in the sixth. The score was 1-1 through eight, although the Titans had had the chance to sink Brown in the bottom of that inning. The key AB was that to Fernando Diéguez who singled with one out in an 0-2 count. The Titans got two men on, but didn’t score when Elizondo struck out hitting for the pitcher in Matsumoto’s spot. Brown led off the top of the ninth, but had gas left and batted for himself, and popped out. Guerin singled past the reach of Silva, moved up on Sharp’s groundout, and then scored when Brady lobbed a ball into shallow left. 2-1 Coons through eight and a half, and here came Brown for the ninth. I wasn’t going to have Nordahl pitch to a string of left-handers (which is what that middle of the lineup was) when Brown was this ON. And the inning started with a walk to Greenman. (gulp) Austin flew out to deep center, and Flores, who had struck out each time at bat today, popped up a 3-1 pitch. Well, he was reeling a bit, but now we have two down and a lefty up. What’s the worst that can happen? Gonzalo Munoz homered. 3-2 Titans. Brady 3-4, BB, RBI; Brown 8.2 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 7 K, L (5-10);

Hnnngg-gaaahh… (clutches chest and falls off the chair)

Game 3
POR: SS Guerin – 3B Sharp – RF Brady – 1B Martin – C Ledesma – CF Torrez – LF Beairsto – 2B Palacios – P Farley
BOS: LF Elizondo – 1B Matsumoto – CF Garrison – RF G. Munoz – 3B Austin – C L. Lopez – 2B V. Flores – SS D. Silva – P Snyder

Guerin led off with a double, but was left on third when Brady’s liner was caught by Flores and Martin whiffed. Farley was all **** from the start and was tagged for three runs in the first, and another run in the second. After that abysmal start he would only go five innings, but at least allowed no more runs, although he walked five batters in total. The Raccoons actually stayed close to the action with a run scoring in the third (that was actually Farley coming in on Brady’s groundout), and then a 2-run homer by Torrez in the fourth. Snyder didn’t make it through five, but when Farley left, he was still on a 4-3 hook. Bottom 7th, Domingo Moreno allowed two 2-out runners, and Luis Lopez fired a humming liner to left on an 0-2 pitch. Yet, Danny Sharp threw himself at that fireball and smothered it, sparing Moreno two runs, but those two runs instead fell out of Martinez in the next inning, which sported a leadoff walk, catcher’s interference, a hit batter, and lots of facepalm. The Coons went down without much fuss. 6-3 Titans. Guerin 3-5; Huerta 1.1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K;

More goody-good news: Fernando Piquero is out for the year with shoulder inflammation.

Does the Home Depot carry wobbly stools AND high quality rope or do I need to go to different places for that?

Ramón Meza was called up as a stop-gap solution. I know, I know, he is no solution. He’d start the Sunday game in Tijuana on short rest. Reasoning? He will lose independently of his days of rest, and apart from that, maybe he hasn’t noticed, but THIS AIN’T ****ING DISNEYLAND.

Raccoons (44-53) @ Condors (48-48) – July 25-27, 2003

Other than their mediocre record suggested, the Condors were just two games out of first place in the throughout mediocre CL South. The Thunder were faltering a bit, and the Condors caught up. With the way the Raccoons were playing (mostly half-dead) this might become another feast for an opposing team that really didn’t know how to keep the opposition from scoring (9th in runs allowed), but matched those 460 runs allowed with 466 they scored themselves, and that mark was second in the CL.

Projected matchups:
Edgar Amador (1-3, 5.91 ERA) vs. Manuel Pineda (5-6, 5.35 ERA)
Felipe Garcia (2-2, 3.58 ERA) vs. TBD
Ramón Meza (1-3, 5.84 ERA) vs. Kelvin Yates (7-8, 3.46 ERA)

The TBD might well become Frank Pierre (6-6, 3.84 ERA), whom the Condors acquired from the Aces just before the start of this series.

Game 1
POR: SS Guerin – 3B Sharp – CF Moore – 1B Martin – LF Reece – C Ledesma – RF Beairsto – 2B Palacios – P Amador
TIJ: 3B B. Boyle – SS J. Barrón – C Cicalina – 1B B. Román – RF Reya – CF Morton – LF MacGruder – 2B Stein – P Pineda

The wind was blowing in from right, and it knocked out all the high deep flies the Raccoons hit there in the opening innings. They also left runners on third base in each of the first three, and scored only one run on a pair of doubles by Ledesma and Beairsto in the second. That left 21-year old Edgar Amador with a 1-0 lead that he managed quite nicely. He sat down the first *16* Condors that stepped up, whiffing seven of them. Sooner or later, his luck ran out, when Jim Stein singled up the middle with one out in the sixth. Pineda bunted him to second, and Amador was ahead on Bruce Boyle when the 1-2 pitch hit the batter, but Juan Barrón grounded out to Palacios to end the frame. Top 7th, Beairsto and Palacios hit two of the cheapest singles we’d see all year to get the frame going. Amador bunted them into scoring position, and now we wanted to see something else than a walk: Guerin turned on an 0-1 pitch and fired it to left. The wind seemed to pick it up and it was GONE!!! CONCIE WITH A THREE-SHOT!!!

Euphoria soon settled down. Amador couldn’t get through the bottom of the 7th, walking Cicalina, and Román doubled, and Reya hit a sac fly. Eddie wound up loading the bases full, and when the Condors sent left-handed Raymond Sutton to hit for Pineda, we turned to Moreno, who balked before he ever threw a ball, and then had Palacios make a long stretch to intercept that first-pitch racing grounder off Sutton’s bat. Coons up by two with six outs to get. Martin made it three and six to start the eighth with a rocket that even the wind couldn’t stop, 5-2, and after Moreno got one and Bruno two outs in the eighth, Nordahl was brought in for the ninth. The first man he faced was Bartolo Román – homer. The defense then grabbed the balls it could. 5-3 Raccoons. Guerin 2-5, HR, 2B, 3 RBI; Beairsto 2-3, BB, 2B, RBI; Amador 6.2 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 3 BB, 8 K, W (2-3);

Nordahl now has 20 saves against seven homers, which is a crappy ratio for a closer. He allowed seven home runs in 2001 and 2002 as well, but in quite a few more innings, and then he didn’t all that other traffic going on.

Game 2
POR: SS Guerin – 1B Sharp – LF Moore – RF Brady – 3B Ingall – CF Beairsto – 2B Palacios – C Thomas – P F. Garcia
TIJ: 3B B. Boyle – SS J. Barrón – C Cicalina – 1B B. Román – RF Reya – CF Morton – LF MacGruder – 2B Stein – P Yates

Yates was moved up to this game, and he was second in the CL in strikeouts, so the Coons had to be on their claws. He had more K than Brown, f.e., but Brown’s K/9 was better.

In the first he walked, he balked, he allowed an RBI single to Clyde Brady, but after that he began to torment the Critters, striking out seven between the second and fourth innings. In the bottom of the latter, a wobbling Garcia finally fell over, conceding a run after a leadoff double by Bartolo Román, but fed Yates some of his own medicine with an inning-ending strikeout with two men on before it could get really ugly. Top 5th, Beairsto walked, and Palacios singled, and with zero out, that was something like a chance. Beairsto was on third base with two out for Guerin, but a wild pitch scored him before Guerin grounded out. That renewed lead didn’t make it far at all, as Urbano Cicalina mashed a score-levelling homer in the bottom of the same frame. Garcia left in the next inning, retiring only one, but loading the bases. Benton Wilson allowed a sac fly to Raymond Sutton, but struck out Boyle to keep the score at 3-2 for the home team. Yates had been hit for with Sutton, so we started seeing their pen as well in the seventh and Ingall started the meeting with a double off Tom Watkins in the top 7th. Thomas singled Ingall in with two down to tie it yet again, but when Martinez appeared in the bottom of the inning, faced three, put three on, and Huerta put two uncontested walks on top of that, the doors were blown off this game. Moreno got an out from Mitsuhide Suzuki, before Jim Stein singled to drive in the third run of the inning and keeping the bases loaded. Rafael Garcia hit for the pitcher, it would be his first plate appearance of the season. It was also a memorable one as his grand slam gave the Condors double digits, and Bruce Boyle followed it up with the back end of back-to-back homers. The unearned 3-run homer that Chris Beairsto hit of Jared Chaney in the eighth somehow went under in the wild celebrations of the Condors and their quite audible appendages in the stands. Beairsto also pitched the bottom 8th. He had pitched in high school and as a freshman in college, and he’d keep further damage from the pen. He struck out Luis Reya and had a perfect inning. 11-6 Condors. Beairsto 1-3, BB, HR, 3 RBI and 1.0 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K; Palacios 2-4; Thomas 2-4, RBI;

That experience was somewhere between somber and sobering, can’t decide. Does it matter? Found a store that has really ****ty stools.

Wait! Can Beairsto start? Vince? – No? – Then it’s the stool.

Game 3
POR: 3B Sharp – SS Guerin – LF Reece – 1B Martin – 2B Ingall – RF Brady – CF Beairsto – C Thomas – P Meza
TIJ: SS J. Barrón – 1B R. Garcia – C Cicalina – LF Reya – CF Morton – 2B B. Boyle – 3B Suzuki – RF MacGruder – P R. Ortíz

Ramón Ortíz came in 7-7 with a 3.73 ERA and a very Raccoonish 73 K in 149.2 innings pitched. He faced Meza, who wasn’t supposed to be here, but then *I* would know other places to be, too.

In the top fourth we got an example of why we are putting up with Beairsto’s off-the-charts strikeouts: his score-flipping 2-out, 2-run home run flew well clear of the 20-row bleacher section behind right field, and smashed a Pontiac’s windshield in the parking lot behind it. The Condors didn’t get much good contact off Meza, and when they got some, they made dumb errors on the basepaths, getting a runner thrown out at home early in the game, and another one when Cicalina went first-to-third on a Reya single that didn’t permit a snail as him to do that. Meza still botched the lead, although it took him longer than expected, all the way to the seventh. Joe Morton led off with a double, and then Meza walked Boyle without much fuss. With righty Mitsuhide Suzuki up, Meza time was over, Bruno came in for Suzuki, but drilled him. Wilson was next for MacGruder, who harvested a groundout after falling behind 0-2, scoring Morton from third to tie the game, 2-2. The Condors didn’t get any more, however, having Ortíz bunt the trailing run to second base only for Barrón to roll out to his counterpart Concie. The main benefit of Ortíz taking that bunt turned out to be him surrendering three singles in the top 8th for the Coons to swim up to the top, 3-2, again, and in the ninth Enrico Gonzalez started the frame with walks to Sharp and Concie. Reece singled, loading them up, but now the inning rapidly deflated, a run only scoring on a wild pitch by Gonzalez. Nordahl was tasked with the 4-2 lead to hold on to at least a .500 week, and this time did his job without any reality TV drama. 4-2 Raccoons. Martin 2-4, BB, 2B; Ingall 2-5, 2B; Thomas 2-4, RBI;

In other news

July 21 – VAN SP Joe Hollow (3-11, 5.10 ERA) is out for the year with shoulder inflammation.
July 25 – The Aces’ Anibal Sandoval (9-6, 2.62 ERA) 2-hits the Loggers in a 5-0 shutout.
July 25 – The Condors acquire SP Frank Pierre (6-6, 3.84 ERA) from the Aces for RF/LF Baden Speed, who had spent all of the 2003 season in the minor leagues for the Aces, batting .330 in 373 AB for the Los Reyes Crows.
July 25 – IND OF Matt MacKey (.259, 12 HR, 41 RBI) is out for a month with a hip muscle strain.
July 26 – Season over for SAL INF Kurt Metting (.285, 2 HR, 34 RBI), who has ruptured a finger tendon.
July 27 – And then it’s DAL RF/LF Artie Barnes (.294, 7 HR, 40 RBI) missing three weeks with a torn ankle ligament.

Complaints and stuff

Neil Reece’s ninth inning single on Sunday marks his 1,836th hit as a Raccoon. How is that important? He is now exactly 50 behind Daniel Hall for the franchise mark.

I waited all weekend to pun one out with “… and there was Pierre”, and then they don’t pitch him. Arf. Woulda been the highlight of my week, but then it’s going to be Edgar Amador’s 5.1 perfect frames that blew up in his face pretty much square.

Meza back in the rotation. How do I deserve this?

We could also flip Joly back into the rotation, and debut Lawrence Rockburn, a 23-year old righty reliever. He looks good in AAA. He’s got the name, but has he got the stuff?

And regarding starters, we are in fact out of pitchers. If another guy goes down, we might need to start Sergio Vega. It is THAT bad.

But did you notice that I haven't bitched about or current left-handed relief all year? Great, huh? They're both free agents, by the way.