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liberty-ca · 03-02-2026, 09:25 PM

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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September 1 – September 14, 1992 | Games 131–145 of the Sacramento Prayers 1992 Season

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94-49. MAGIC NUMBER EIGHT. SIXTY STOLEN BASES. AND A BRAWL IN SAN JOSE THAT NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT.

Eight.

That is the magic number entering September 15th. Ninety-four wins. Forty-nine losses. Twelve games clear of Fort Worth with sixteen games remaining on the schedule. The Sacramento Prayers have not officially clinched the American League West Division title yet, but the mathematics are so thoroughly in their favor that the question is no longer whether — it is when, and whether the celebration happens at home or on the road, and whether Aces lets his players have more than one cold beverage before getting back to work.

It is coming. Every Sacramento fan who has been watching this team since April already knows it is coming. The rotation that Jimmy Aces built and developed and pushed through injuries and rough patches is going to pitch playoff baseball. The lineup that lost its best player in Baltimore in August has continued to find ways to win. The stolen base machine in right field has quietly reached sixty steals while the rest of baseball looked elsewhere. The most promising shortstop prospect in the organization has been thrown into the fire and has survived, if not yet thrived.

This column has never been satisfied with stopping at the good news, and these two weeks gave us more than a magic number to discuss. There was a brawl in San Jose that should have had league offices burning the phone lines. There was a prospect whose average dropped below .100 before showing the first real signs of life. There was Francisco Hernandez stealing his sixtieth base in a losing effort in San Jose while nobody in the press box made a particularly large note of it. And there was the small matter of Sacramento going 1-3 against San Jose to close the season series with a record no championship contender should accept without honest reflection.

We have a lot of ground to cover. Let's get into it.

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TWO WEEKS IN RETROSPECT: A GAME-BY-GAME TOUR

At El Paso: September 1-3

Three games at Abbots Park, Sacramento sweeps all three, and the series plays out exactly the way a championship contender should handle a last-place team — efficiently, professionally, and without drama.

Tuesday, September 1st: Rubalcava throws 6.2 innings of functional if unspectacular baseball — nine hits, two runs, seven strikeouts. He does not have his best stuff but he limits the damage and hands the ball to a bullpen that handles the rest. Wright throws 1.1 clean innings and picks up his first win of the 1992 season following his return from the severe injury that cost him most of last year — a quiet personal milestone for a pitcher who has earned his way back to the big leagues the hard way. Alonzo hits his seventh homer, a two-run shot in the fifth that proves decisive. Perez delivers a pinch-hit triple in the eighth for the insurance run. Aces says the team "banged out a nice win." The man does not waste words. Sacramento wins 4-2.

Wednesday, September 2nd: Lopez has one of his best individual offensive performances of the season — two-run homer in the first, two-run double in the third, four RBI total, named Player of the Game. Espenoza throws seven innings and gives up three runs but the offense has given him enough cushion to absorb it. Dodge closes with two clean innings for his sixth save. Baldelomar goes 3-for-4. Sacramento wins 5-3.

Thursday, September 3rd: Larson throws eight innings of one-hit baseball. One hit. Eight innings. Three walks, two strikeouts, 104 pitches. The El Paso lineup managed a single blemish through eight innings against the hottest pitcher in the American League. Cruz and Perez hit back-to-back solo homers in the seventh — consecutive shots off Ulrich, separated by exactly the amount of time it takes a pitcher to absorb one home run and immediately surrender another. Prieto closes cleanly for his thirty-first save. Sacramento wins 2-0. Larson named Player of the Game.

After the game Aces offered the line of the road trip: "Every pitch is the right pitch if you put it in the right place, you believe in it and have conviction." I have been writing about this man's philosophy for six months and I still find something new in it every time he opens his mouth.

At Milwaukee: September 4-6

Three games at Bishops Stadium, Sacramento wins the series 2-1, and the middle game produces the most devastating walk-off loss Sacramento has absorbed since August.

Friday, September 4th: Andretti throws seven innings with eight strikeouts — one earned run on seven hits, 99 pitches. The return from injury is officially, unambiguously complete. Rodriguez goes 3-for-5 with two home runs and a double, named Player of the Game, looking every inch like the twenty-two-year-old from San Pedro de Macorís who was born to play this game. Hernandez steals two more bases. Cruz steals two more. Sacramento wins 6-2.

Saturday, September 5th: Salazar throws 5.1 innings of one-run ball. St. Clair comes in to protect a 2-2 tie in the ninth and gives up a Stirm two-run walk-off homer. Sacramento loses 4-2. The loss is clean and painful and familiar — a good start wasted by a single pitch in a closing situation. Lopez hits his twenty-fifth homer in the ninth, a solo shot that proves only cosmetic. Brown ties the Milwaukee regular season record with two triples in the same game, a footnote in a loss that Sacramento's clubhouse would rather not revisit.

Sunday, September 6th: Rubalcava throws 7.1 innings — four runs allowed including a Mireles three-run homer in the fifth — but the offense provides eight runs and bails him out completely. Baldelomar hits his seventh homer, a two-run shot in the fourth, and finishes with four RBI, named Player of the Game. Murguia delivers a two-run pinch single in the eighth — the 1986 League MVP and 1987 AL RBI leader stepping into a key situation and delivering exactly what the moment requires. "The fans pay the tickets and help us do what we do," Murguia told the Sacramento Citizen afterward, "so we like to put on a show for them." In a season where Murguia has spent considerable time in the "Who's Not" column, a two-run pinch hit in the eighth inning of a close game is exactly the kind of show the fans paid to see. Sacramento wins 8-4.

Las Vegas at Home: September 7-9

Three games at Cathedral Stadium, Sacramento wins the series 2-1, and the losing game features another entry in what has become a recurring and unwelcome narrative about this bullpen in extra innings.

Monday, September 7th: Espenoza throws 8.2 innings of two-hit shutout ball. Five strikeouts, one walk, 95 pitches. A game score of 84. His ERA drops to 2.19 — the best in the rotation. Prieto closes with one batter for his thirty-second save. Sacramento wins 3-0. Aces, asked to explain Espenoza's dominance: "If you chase it, you need to get it." The translation, for those who don't speak Aces: if you swing at his pitch out of the zone you have already lost the at-bat. Espenoza is 14-2 earning $41,200 a year. I have said this before and I will keep saying it until someone in the front office has the decency to be embarrassed.

Tuesday, September 8th: Larson throws 6.2 innings, Scott holds the fort for 1.1 clean innings, Prieto closes cleanly for his thirty-third save. MacDonald drives in a go-ahead run with a double in the fourth. "We'll pop the top on a cold beverage and get back to work tomorrow," MacDonald said afterward. That sentence is going in my hall of fame alongside every other thing this man has ever said to a reporter. Sacramento wins 5-2.

Wednesday, September 9th: Andretti throws eight innings of two-run ball and loses the game in the tenth inning when Las Vegas pinch hitter Brian Kaeding — batting .190, one career home run entering the at-bat — deposits a walk-off solo shot off Dodge in the tenth. Kaeding's first career homer. Off Dodge. In the tenth inning. To end a game Andretti had dominated for eight full innings. The universe truly does not care about narrative justice. Sacramento loses 3-2. Dodge takes his fourth loss. Andretti is named Player of the Game despite pitching for the losing team — the second time this season a Sacramento starter has received that recognition in a losing effort. He threw eight innings on 87 pitches with one walk. He gave this team everything he had.

At San Jose: September 10-13

Four games at San Jose Grounds, Sacramento goes 1-3, and the series features a brawl, a stolen base milestone, and the particular brand of frustration that comes from watching the same team beat you the same way for the fourth consecutive series this season.

Thursday, September 10th: Salazar throws 7.1 innings of one-run ball. Prieto comes in with a runner on base and gives up a Vazquez double and a Magana walk-off sacrifice fly in the ninth. Sacramento loses 3-2. Prieto's ninth loss. His eighth blown save. The formula is grimly familiar. Sacramento had zero walks in this game — an unusual offensive passivity that left the lineup without baserunners precisely when it needed them most.

Friday, September 11th: MacDonald hits a three-run homer in the first inning. Rubalcava throws 7.2 innings of controlled baseball. Orozco goes 2-for-3 — his best performance in weeks — and lays down a sacrifice bunt that shows the kind of baseball awareness that does not always appear in a batting average. Sacramento wins 4-2. Rubalcava named Player of the Game. MacDonald told the Sacramento Citizen he was "satisfied" with the win. Satisfied. Seventeen home runs on the season, a three-run blast in the first inning on the road against the team that has owned Sacramento all year, and the man is satisfied. George MacDonald is my kind of baseball player.

Saturday, September 12th — the brawl game: Mario Espenoza gave up a two-run homer to San Jose's Jordan Larrea in the third inning. This much is established fact. What happened next is the story.

Espenoza — the twenty-nine-year-old left-hander from Valera, Venezuela, who is 14-3 with a 2.19 ERA and has been one of the best pitchers in the American League all season — hit the next San Jose batter. San Jose's Ryan Thompson took exception in a manner that both dugouts found sufficiently provocative to empty onto the field. Benches cleared. Words were said, that can not be printed in this publication. Profanities were exchanged at volumes associated with hard-rock festivals. Punches, thankfully, were not thrown, but attempts to land a heymaker or two have been made. When the dust settled, only Espenoza and Thompson had been ejected. Espenoza had thrown exactly 24 pitches.

"I pitch inside," Espenoza said afterward, with the particular calmness of a man who has decided exactly what version of events he is committing to. "That is part of the game."

Thompson's response, delivered through the San Jose clubhouse door at a pitch level suggesting the brawl had not entirely concluded in his mind: "He knew what he was doing. Everybody on that field knew what he was doing."

Aces offered the response that only Jimmy Aces could deliver: "Mario competes hard. That is what I ask of my pitchers." A pause. "We'll move on."

What nobody has officially moved on from — because nobody in a position of authority has said anything about it — is the remarkable absence of any disciplinary action following a bench-clearing brawl that resulted in two ejections and sent players from both dugouts onto the field in broad daylight in front of sixteen thousand people. No suspensions. No fines made public. No statement from the league office. In the FBL in 1992, apparently, benches can clear and bodies can congregate on the infield dirt and the administrative response is a collective shrug. I am not suggesting anyone needed to go to prison. I am suggesting that the league office might have found something to say about a situation in which a starting pitcher was removed from a game after 24 pitches standing his ground while confronted by an irrate muscular dude, who was still casualy carring his bat. I am at loss for words. The silence from above is its own kind of commentary.

St. Clair absorbed four innings of emergency relief and threw them well. Wright threw a clean inning. Caliari stranded three inherited runners. The bullpen held the damage to one additional run. Sacramento lost 3-2. Espenoza takes his third loss of the season in a game he barely participated in.

Sunday, September 13th: Larson throws five innings, four runs, four walks — a rough afternoon by his standards. Scott gives up a Ramos two-run homer in the sixth that proves decisive. Sacramento loses 7-4. The San Jose series ends 1-3. The season series against San Jose ends 8-10 in the Demons' favor. We will discuss this at length in the appropriate section.

Hernandez steals his sixtieth base in this game. He does it quietly, between innings of a game Sacramento is losing, with nobody in the press box making a particularly large note of it. That changes now.

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THE EMERGING STORYLINES

Francisco Hernandez: Sixty

On Sunday, September 13th, in the fifth inning of a game Sacramento was losing in San Jose, Francisco Hernandez took off from first base and slid into second ahead of the throw and stood up and brushed the dirt off his uniform and got ready for the next pitch.

It was his sixtieth stolen base of the season.

Sixty. From right field. By the reigning American League stolen base champion, who led the league last year with seventy steals and has spent the entirety of 1992 doing it again while the rest of baseball focused on home run totals and ERA races. He is batting .223. He plays right field. He bats in the bottom third of the lineup. And he has sixty stolen bases with more than two weeks remaining.

No right fielder in the history of this league produces what Francisco Hernandez produces. The position is not supposed to generate this. Right fielders hit. They throw runners out at third. They do not steal sixty bases in a season while also hitting eleven home runs and driving in fifty-three runs from the seven or eight spot in the order. Hernandez does all of it, quietly, relentlessly, without complaint or fanfare, on a contract worth $300,000 in a city that is currently more interested in discussing Carlos Orozco's batting average.

He led the AL in stolen bases last year with seventy. He has sixteen games left to challenge that number. He is heading to the playoffs as the reigning stolen base champion having another historically dominant baserunning season. If you are not paying attention to Francisco Hernandez, I genuinely do not know what you are watching.

Carlos Orozco: The Darkest Part of the Night

There is a saying that the darkest part of the night comes just before the dawn. I do not know if it applies to twenty-year-old shortstops from Valencia, Venezuela, making their major league debut in a pressure situation created by an MVP's torn abdominal muscle. But I am choosing to believe it applies to Carlos Orozco, because the alternative — that the fifth-ranked prospect in all of baseball is simply not ready — is a story I am not prepared to write yet.

Orozco's batting average touched .086 during the Las Vegas series. Eighty-six thousandths. In forty-three major league at-bats he had produced fewer hits than most pitchers manage in a good week. The errors accumulated. The pinch hitters arrived with increasing frequency. The "Who's Not" column in the weekly report became his permanent address.

And then on Friday in San Jose, Orozco went 2-for-3. He laid down a sacrifice bunt in a situation that required it. He turned a double play that changed an inning. His average climbed back to .132. Not good. Not even close to good by conventional standards. But a direction. A sign that the darkness may not be permanent.

He is twenty years old. He was playing minor league baseball six weeks ago. He was handed the shortstop position of the best team in the American League because Edwin Musco tore his abdominal muscle running the bases in Baltimore. The pressure applied to this kid since August 23rd would have broken older and more experienced players. He has not been broken. He has been bad — genuinely and undeniably bad — but he has shown up every day and taken his at-bats and played his defense and not once has a teammate or a manager publicly expressed anything but confidence in him.

Sacramento is heading to the playoffs. Orozco is going with them. What happens next in his story is the most compelling individual narrative of the postseason run.

Rubalcava: Twenty-Two Wins and Counting

Jordan Rubalcava is 22-6 with a 2.66 ERA and has thrown north of 250 innings. He has been the best pitcher in baseball for the better part of six months and the Cy Young Award is his unless something dramatic happens in the final two weeks.

His September has been steadier than his August — 7.1 innings against Milwaukee, 7.2 innings against San Jose, both with two earned runs and six strikeouts. The game score numbers are not spectacular but they are quality starts from a pitcher carrying a workload that would have broken lesser arms. Twenty-two wins with two weeks remaining. The question of whether he reaches twenty-five is interesting. The question of whether he can throw October baseball on the innings total he has accumulated is more important.

I am watching the pitch counts. I am watching for any sign that the engine is running hot. So far there is nothing to alarm. But the conversation about managing this workload entering the postseason is one that needs to happen in Aces' office soon.

The Rotation in Full

Consider what Sacramento's starting rotation has produced in 1992. Rubalcava at 22-6 and 2.66. Espenoza at 14-3 and 2.26. Larson at 14-7 and 2.87. Andretti at 9-6 and 2.50. Salazar at 10-1 and 2.92. Five starters. Five ERAs under three. A collective performance without precedent in recent FBL history.

Salazar is forty-one years old, born in Managua, Nicaragua, pitching the finest baseball of the final chapter of a career spanning two decades and including an AL wins title in 1983. Espenoza is earning $41,200 and posting a WHIP of 0.90. Larson has won seven consecutive decisions. Andretti returned from injury and immediately threw seven and two thirds shutout innings in his first start back. When October comes and the opposing manager looks at a scouting report on Sacramento, the rotation is what keeps him awake. It should.

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CONCERN CORNER

The San Jose Problem

Sacramento is 8-10 against the San Jose Demons. The only team in the American League — the only team in all of baseball — with a winning record against the best team in the league. This is not a small sample size anomaly. This is eighteen games of documented evidence that San Jose simply matches up poorly for Sacramento in ways that the talent differential does not automatically resolve.

The losses follow a pattern. Sacramento's starters pitch adequately or well. San Jose finds ways to produce runs in the late innings. Sacramento's bullpen fails to hold leads. The season series ends 8-10 and Sacramento goes home having lost three of four in the final regular season visit.

San Jose sits at 73-71 and their playoff prospects are dim. But the pattern is documented and the knowledge lives in both clubhouses. If the baseball gods have a sense of humor — and they frequently demonstrate that they do — this storyline is not finished.

Prieto: The Ninth Loss

Five wins. Nine losses. Thirty-three saves. Eight blown saves. A 4.50 ERA. These are the numbers of a closer who is reliable when the margin is comfortable and unreliable when the margin is thin. The Thursday loss in San Jose — Salazar throws 7.1 innings of one-run ball, hands a one-run lead to Prieto in the ninth, Prieto gives up a double and a walk-off sacrifice fly — is the crystallization of everything this column has been saying about him since June.

He has improved from the 6.75 ERA he carried in the early weeks. The strikeout rate is acceptable. But in the moments that matter most — ninth inning, one-run game, road ballpark, quality opponent — Prieto has failed eight times. In a playoff series, one failure of that kind can end a season. Aces has to know this. The question is what, if anything, he does about it before October.

The Pythagorean Gap

Sacramento's run differential says they should have ninety-nine wins. They have ninety-four. Five games of performance left on the table by a team with extraordinary talent. The blown saves, the extra-inning losses, the late-inning surrenders — they add up to five wins that should be in the Sacramento column and are not. In October, the margin for this kind of error disappears entirely.

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AROUND THE LEAGUE

Boston leads the AL East at 86-58 with Columbus two games back at 84-60. Baltimore has fallen to 79-64 and is fading from the wildcard race. The AL wildcard shapes up as a Columbus versus Fort Worth contest with Fort Worth at 82-61 still very much alive. These are the teams Sacramento may face in October. Fort Worth won the season series against Sacramento. Columbus split theirs. The scouting reports are being written as we speak.

Charlotte leads the NL East at 87-56 with a magic number of 7. In the NL West, Albuquerque leads at 77-67 with Las Vegas two games back. The Albuquerque Damned continue to manage their season under new ownership following the death of Dan Carter. Son Mike has taken over and the transition has been stable. Gabriel Rodriguez, the Damned's thirty-eight-year-old first baseman, reached 2,500 career hits during this period and received a standing ovation from both sets of fans. Some milestones transcend team affiliation.

Washington's Dustin Henrich went on an expletive-laden tirade defending his manager and teammates. "We don't need your "bleeping" remarks," he told the assembled press, with a different word substituted for "bleeping". Teammate Leo Gallaga called him "a really passionate guy who doesn't always choose his words carefully." The Devils have been mathematically eliminated, as have El Paso and Milwaukee. The Bishops have now missed the playoffs ten consecutive years. Some franchises make losing look structural.

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MAILBAG — The Hot Corner audience has questions, Claude Playball has answers.

From Patricia Evangelina Robles of Rancho Cordova, first-time writer, who identifies herself as "checking the magic number every morning over coffee": "Magic number eight. How long do we wait?"

Patricia, not long. Twelve games up with sixteen to play. Every Sacramento win or Fort Worth loss brings it closer. The question is not whether the division banner comes to Cathedral Stadium — it is coming — but whether it arrives on a road trip or in front of the home crowd. Either way, the celebration is close enough that you can smell it. Keep the coffee warm, Patricia. The morning you wake up to the news is not far away.

From "Section 208" Dugout Dave, writing in what he describes as "a state of cautious optimism mixed with residual San Jose fury": "Orozco. Two hits. Talk to me."

Dave, I covered him extensively in the storylines section but I will add this for you specifically: the sacrifice bunt. In a situation where a twenty-year-old batting .132 might reasonably panic, Orozco put down a sacrifice bunt and moved the runner and did his job. That is not the act of a player who has given up. That is the act of a player who understands what the moment requires even when he cannot deliver more. The .132 average is a problem. The willingness to do the small thing correctly is a sign. Stay in Section 208, Dave. The view of the future keeps getting more interesting.

From "Bullpen Benny" Tafoya of West Sacramento, thirty-eighth consecutive mailbag submission, subject line reading simply "NINE LOSSES": "Nine losses. Eight blown saves. Do we have a plan for October?"

Benny, I do not know what the plan is and I am not sure Aces has committed to one publicly. What I know is this: Scott has a 2.29 ERA and has been the most reliable arm in that bullpen not named Prieto. Dodge functions better in middle-leverage situations than as a primary closer. St. Clair has been durable all season at 2.53. There are options. Whether Aces deploys them correctly when it matters is the October question that keeps me awake. Thirty-eight weeks, Benny. Keep them coming.

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Sacramento heads to Fort Worth next, followed by Columbus — two opponents fighting for wildcard position, two series that matter beyond Sacramento's own seeding. The magic number is eight. Francisco Hernandez has sixty stolen bases. Carlos Orozco has his first multi-hit game since late August. Jordan Rubalcava has twenty-two wins. October is close.

Got a question for the mailbag? Find the Hot Corner wherever you get your podcasts.

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Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.

03-02-2026, 09:25 PM	#237
liberty-ca Major Leagues Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 417	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *September 1 – September 14, 1992 \| Games 131–145 of the Sacramento Prayers 1992 Season* ______________________________ 94-49. MAGIC NUMBER EIGHT. SIXTY STOLEN BASES. AND A BRAWL IN SAN JOSE THAT NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT. Eight. That is the magic number entering September 15th. Ninety-four wins. Forty-nine losses. Twelve games clear of Fort Worth with sixteen games remaining on the schedule. The Sacramento Prayers have not officially clinched the American League West Division title yet, but the mathematics are so thoroughly in their favor that the question is no longer whether — it is when, and whether the celebration happens at home or on the road, and whether Aces lets his players have more than one cold beverage before getting back to work. It is coming. Every Sacramento fan who has been watching this team since April already knows it is coming. The rotation that Jimmy Aces built and developed and pushed through injuries and rough patches is going to pitch playoff baseball. The lineup that lost its best player in Baltimore in August has continued to find ways to win. The stolen base machine in right field has quietly reached sixty steals while the rest of baseball looked elsewhere. The most promising shortstop prospect in the organization has been thrown into the fire and has survived, if not yet thrived. This column has never been satisfied with stopping at the good news, and these two weeks gave us more than a magic number to discuss. There was a brawl in San Jose that should have had league offices burning the phone lines. There was a prospect whose average dropped below .100 before showing the first real signs of life. There was Francisco Hernandez stealing his sixtieth base in a losing effort in San Jose while nobody in the press box made a particularly large note of it. And there was the small matter of Sacramento going 1-3 against San Jose to close the season series with a record no championship contender should accept without honest reflection. We have a lot of ground to cover. Let's get into it. ______________________________ TWO WEEKS IN RETROSPECT: A GAME-BY-GAME TOUR At El Paso: September 1-3 Three games at Abbots Park, Sacramento sweeps all three, and the series plays out exactly the way a championship contender should handle a last-place team — efficiently, professionally, and without drama. Tuesday, September 1st: Rubalcava throws 6.2 innings of functional if unspectacular baseball — nine hits, two runs, seven strikeouts. He does not have his best stuff but he limits the damage and hands the ball to a bullpen that handles the rest. Wright throws 1.1 clean innings and picks up his first win of the 1992 season following his return from the severe injury that cost him most of last year — a quiet personal milestone for a pitcher who has earned his way back to the big leagues the hard way. Alonzo hits his seventh homer, a two-run shot in the fifth that proves decisive. Perez delivers a pinch-hit triple in the eighth for the insurance run. Aces says the team "banged out a nice win." The man does not waste words. Sacramento wins 4-2. Wednesday, September 2nd: Lopez has one of his best individual offensive performances of the season — two-run homer in the first, two-run double in the third, four RBI total, named Player of the Game. Espenoza throws seven innings and gives up three runs but the offense has given him enough cushion to absorb it. Dodge closes with two clean innings for his sixth save. Baldelomar goes 3-for-4. Sacramento wins 5-3. Thursday, September 3rd: Larson throws eight innings of one-hit baseball. One hit. Eight innings. Three walks, two strikeouts, 104 pitches. The El Paso lineup managed a single blemish through eight innings against the hottest pitcher in the American League. Cruz and Perez hit back-to-back solo homers in the seventh — consecutive shots off Ulrich, separated by exactly the amount of time it takes a pitcher to absorb one home run and immediately surrender another. Prieto closes cleanly for his thirty-first save. Sacramento wins 2-0. Larson named Player of the Game. After the game Aces offered the line of the road trip: "Every pitch is the right pitch if you put it in the right place, you believe in it and have conviction." I have been writing about this man's philosophy for six months and I still find something new in it every time he opens his mouth. At Milwaukee: September 4-6 Three games at Bishops Stadium, Sacramento wins the series 2-1, and the middle game produces the most devastating walk-off loss Sacramento has absorbed since August. Friday, September 4th: Andretti throws seven innings with eight strikeouts — one earned run on seven hits, 99 pitches. The return from injury is officially, unambiguously complete. Rodriguez goes 3-for-5 with two home runs and a double, named Player of the Game, looking every inch like the twenty-two-year-old from San Pedro de Macorís who was born to play this game. Hernandez steals two more bases. Cruz steals two more. Sacramento wins 6-2. Saturday, September 5th: Salazar throws 5.1 innings of one-run ball. St. Clair comes in to protect a 2-2 tie in the ninth and gives up a Stirm two-run walk-off homer. Sacramento loses 4-2. The loss is clean and painful and familiar — a good start wasted by a single pitch in a closing situation. Lopez hits his twenty-fifth homer in the ninth, a solo shot that proves only cosmetic. Brown ties the Milwaukee regular season record with two triples in the same game, a footnote in a loss that Sacramento's clubhouse would rather not revisit. Sunday, September 6th: Rubalcava throws 7.1 innings — four runs allowed including a Mireles three-run homer in the fifth — but the offense provides eight runs and bails him out completely. Baldelomar hits his seventh homer, a two-run shot in the fourth, and finishes with four RBI, named Player of the Game. Murguia delivers a two-run pinch single in the eighth — the 1986 League MVP and 1987 AL RBI leader stepping into a key situation and delivering exactly what the moment requires. "The fans pay the tickets and help us do what we do," Murguia told the Sacramento Citizen afterward, "so we like to put on a show for them." In a season where Murguia has spent considerable time in the "Who's Not" column, a two-run pinch hit in the eighth inning of a close game is exactly the kind of show the fans paid to see. Sacramento wins 8-4. Las Vegas at Home: September 7-9 Three games at Cathedral Stadium, Sacramento wins the series 2-1, and the losing game features another entry in what has become a recurring and unwelcome narrative about this bullpen in extra innings. Monday, September 7th: Espenoza throws 8.2 innings of two-hit shutout ball. Five strikeouts, one walk, 95 pitches. A game score of 84. His ERA drops to 2.19 — the best in the rotation. Prieto closes with one batter for his thirty-second save. Sacramento wins 3-0. Aces, asked to explain Espenoza's dominance: "If you chase it, you need to get it." The translation, for those who don't speak Aces: if you swing at his pitch out of the zone you have already lost the at-bat. Espenoza is 14-2 earning $41,200 a year. I have said this before and I will keep saying it until someone in the front office has the decency to be embarrassed. Tuesday, September 8th: Larson throws 6.2 innings, Scott holds the fort for 1.1 clean innings, Prieto closes cleanly for his thirty-third save. MacDonald drives in a go-ahead run with a double in the fourth. "We'll pop the top on a cold beverage and get back to work tomorrow," MacDonald said afterward. That sentence is going in my hall of fame alongside every other thing this man has ever said to a reporter. Sacramento wins 5-2. Wednesday, September 9th: Andretti throws eight innings of two-run ball and loses the game in the tenth inning when Las Vegas pinch hitter Brian Kaeding — batting .190, one career home run entering the at-bat — deposits a walk-off solo shot off Dodge in the tenth. Kaeding's first career homer. Off Dodge. In the tenth inning. To end a game Andretti had dominated for eight full innings. The universe truly does not care about narrative justice. Sacramento loses 3-2. Dodge takes his fourth loss. Andretti is named Player of the Game despite pitching for the losing team — the second time this season a Sacramento starter has received that recognition in a losing effort. He threw eight innings on 87 pitches with one walk. He gave this team everything he had. At San Jose: September 10-13 Four games at San Jose Grounds, Sacramento goes 1-3, and the series features a brawl, a stolen base milestone, and the particular brand of frustration that comes from watching the same team beat you the same way for the fourth consecutive series this season. Thursday, September 10th: Salazar throws 7.1 innings of one-run ball. Prieto comes in with a runner on base and gives up a Vazquez double and a Magana walk-off sacrifice fly in the ninth. Sacramento loses 3-2. Prieto's ninth loss. His eighth blown save. The formula is grimly familiar. Sacramento had zero walks in this game — an unusual offensive passivity that left the lineup without baserunners precisely when it needed them most. Friday, September 11th: MacDonald hits a three-run homer in the first inning. Rubalcava throws 7.2 innings of controlled baseball. Orozco goes 2-for-3 — his best performance in weeks — and lays down a sacrifice bunt that shows the kind of baseball awareness that does not always appear in a batting average. Sacramento wins 4-2. Rubalcava named Player of the Game. MacDonald told the Sacramento Citizen he was "satisfied" with the win. Satisfied. Seventeen home runs on the season, a three-run blast in the first inning on the road against the team that has owned Sacramento all year, and the man is satisfied. George MacDonald is my kind of baseball player. Saturday, September 12th — the brawl game: Mario Espenoza gave up a two-run homer to San Jose's Jordan Larrea in the third inning. This much is established fact. What happened next is the story. Espenoza — the twenty-nine-year-old left-hander from Valera, Venezuela, who is 14-3 with a 2.19 ERA and has been one of the best pitchers in the American League all season — hit the next San Jose batter. San Jose's Ryan Thompson took exception in a manner that both dugouts found sufficiently provocative to empty onto the field. Benches cleared. Words were said, that can not be printed in this publication. Profanities were exchanged at volumes associated with hard-rock festivals. Punches, thankfully, were not thrown, but attempts to land a heymaker or two have been made. When the dust settled, only Espenoza and Thompson had been ejected. Espenoza had thrown exactly 24 pitches. "I pitch inside," Espenoza said afterward, with the particular calmness of a man who has decided exactly what version of events he is committing to. "That is part of the game." Thompson's response, delivered through the San Jose clubhouse door at a pitch level suggesting the brawl had not entirely concluded in his mind: "He knew what he was doing. Everybody on that field knew what he was doing." Aces offered the response that only Jimmy Aces could deliver: "Mario competes hard. That is what I ask of my pitchers." A pause. "We'll move on." What nobody has officially moved on from — because nobody in a position of authority has said anything about it — is the remarkable absence of any disciplinary action following a bench-clearing brawl that resulted in two ejections and sent players from both dugouts onto the field in broad daylight in front of sixteen thousand people. No suspensions. No fines made public. No statement from the league office. In the FBL in 1992, apparently, benches can clear and bodies can congregate on the infield dirt and the administrative response is a collective shrug. I am not suggesting anyone needed to go to prison. I am suggesting that the league office might have found something to say about a situation in which a starting pitcher was removed from a game after 24 pitches standing his ground while confronted by an irrate muscular dude, who was still casualy carring his bat. I am at loss for words. The silence from above is its own kind of commentary. St. Clair absorbed four innings of emergency relief and threw them well. Wright threw a clean inning. Caliari stranded three inherited runners. The bullpen held the damage to one additional run. Sacramento lost 3-2. Espenoza takes his third loss of the season in a game he barely participated in. Sunday, September 13th: Larson throws five innings, four runs, four walks — a rough afternoon by his standards. Scott gives up a Ramos two-run homer in the sixth that proves decisive. Sacramento loses 7-4. The San Jose series ends 1-3. The season series against San Jose ends 8-10 in the Demons' favor. We will discuss this at length in the appropriate section. Hernandez steals his sixtieth base in this game. He does it quietly, between innings of a game Sacramento is losing, with nobody in the press box making a particularly large note of it. That changes now. ______________________________ THE EMERGING STORYLINES Francisco Hernandez: Sixty On Sunday, September 13th, in the fifth inning of a game Sacramento was losing in San Jose, Francisco Hernandez took off from first base and slid into second ahead of the throw and stood up and brushed the dirt off his uniform and got ready for the next pitch. It was his sixtieth stolen base of the season. Sixty. From right field. By the reigning American League stolen base champion, who led the league last year with seventy steals and has spent the entirety of 1992 doing it again while the rest of baseball focused on home run totals and ERA races. He is batting .223. He plays right field. He bats in the bottom third of the lineup. And he has sixty stolen bases with more than two weeks remaining. No right fielder in the history of this league produces what Francisco Hernandez produces. The position is not supposed to generate this. Right fielders hit. They throw runners out at third. They do not steal sixty bases in a season while also hitting eleven home runs and driving in fifty-three runs from the seven or eight spot in the order. Hernandez does all of it, quietly, relentlessly, without complaint or fanfare, on a contract worth $300,000 in a city that is currently more interested in discussing Carlos Orozco's batting average. He led the AL in stolen bases last year with seventy. He has sixteen games left to challenge that number. He is heading to the playoffs as the reigning stolen base champion having another historically dominant baserunning season. If you are not paying attention to Francisco Hernandez, I genuinely do not know what you are watching. Carlos Orozco: The Darkest Part of the Night There is a saying that the darkest part of the night comes just before the dawn. I do not know if it applies to twenty-year-old shortstops from Valencia, Venezuela, making their major league debut in a pressure situation created by an MVP's torn abdominal muscle. But I am choosing to believe it applies to Carlos Orozco, because the alternative — that the fifth-ranked prospect in all of baseball is simply not ready — is a story I am not prepared to write yet. Orozco's batting average touched .086 during the Las Vegas series. Eighty-six thousandths. In forty-three major league at-bats he had produced fewer hits than most pitchers manage in a good week. The errors accumulated. The pinch hitters arrived with increasing frequency. The "Who's Not" column in the weekly report became his permanent address. And then on Friday in San Jose, Orozco went 2-for-3. He laid down a sacrifice bunt in a situation that required it. He turned a double play that changed an inning. His average climbed back to .132. Not good. Not even close to good by conventional standards. But a direction. A sign that the darkness may not be permanent. He is twenty years old. He was playing minor league baseball six weeks ago. He was handed the shortstop position of the best team in the American League because Edwin Musco tore his abdominal muscle running the bases in Baltimore. The pressure applied to this kid since August 23rd would have broken older and more experienced players. He has not been broken. He has been bad — genuinely and undeniably bad — but he has shown up every day and taken his at-bats and played his defense and not once has a teammate or a manager publicly expressed anything but confidence in him. Sacramento is heading to the playoffs. Orozco is going with them. What happens next in his story is the most compelling individual narrative of the postseason run. Rubalcava: Twenty-Two Wins and Counting Jordan Rubalcava is 22-6 with a 2.66 ERA and has thrown north of 250 innings. He has been the best pitcher in baseball for the better part of six months and the Cy Young Award is his unless something dramatic happens in the final two weeks. His September has been steadier than his August — 7.1 innings against Milwaukee, 7.2 innings against San Jose, both with two earned runs and six strikeouts. The game score numbers are not spectacular but they are quality starts from a pitcher carrying a workload that would have broken lesser arms. Twenty-two wins with two weeks remaining. The question of whether he reaches twenty-five is interesting. The question of whether he can throw October baseball on the innings total he has accumulated is more important. I am watching the pitch counts. I am watching for any sign that the engine is running hot. So far there is nothing to alarm. But the conversation about managing this workload entering the postseason is one that needs to happen in Aces' office soon. The Rotation in Full Consider what Sacramento's starting rotation has produced in 1992. Rubalcava at 22-6 and 2.66. Espenoza at 14-3 and 2.26. Larson at 14-7 and 2.87. Andretti at 9-6 and 2.50. Salazar at 10-1 and 2.92. Five starters. Five ERAs under three. A collective performance without precedent in recent FBL history. Salazar is forty-one years old, born in Managua, Nicaragua, pitching the finest baseball of the final chapter of a career spanning two decades and including an AL wins title in 1983. Espenoza is earning $41,200 and posting a WHIP of 0.90. Larson has won seven consecutive decisions. Andretti returned from injury and immediately threw seven and two thirds shutout innings in his first start back. When October comes and the opposing manager looks at a scouting report on Sacramento, the rotation is what keeps him awake. It should. ______________________________ CONCERN CORNER The San Jose Problem Sacramento is 8-10 against the San Jose Demons. The only team in the American League — the only team in all of baseball — with a winning record against the best team in the league. This is not a small sample size anomaly. This is eighteen games of documented evidence that San Jose simply matches up poorly for Sacramento in ways that the talent differential does not automatically resolve. The losses follow a pattern. Sacramento's starters pitch adequately or well. San Jose finds ways to produce runs in the late innings. Sacramento's bullpen fails to hold leads. The season series ends 8-10 and Sacramento goes home having lost three of four in the final regular season visit. San Jose sits at 73-71 and their playoff prospects are dim. But the pattern is documented and the knowledge lives in both clubhouses. If the baseball gods have a sense of humor — and they frequently demonstrate that they do — this storyline is not finished. Prieto: The Ninth Loss Five wins. Nine losses. Thirty-three saves. Eight blown saves. A 4.50 ERA. These are the numbers of a closer who is reliable when the margin is comfortable and unreliable when the margin is thin. The Thursday loss in San Jose — Salazar throws 7.1 innings of one-run ball, hands a one-run lead to Prieto in the ninth, Prieto gives up a double and a walk-off sacrifice fly — is the crystallization of everything this column has been saying about him since June. He has improved from the 6.75 ERA he carried in the early weeks. The strikeout rate is acceptable. But in the moments that matter most — ninth inning, one-run game, road ballpark, quality opponent — Prieto has failed eight times. In a playoff series, one failure of that kind can end a season. Aces has to know this. The question is what, if anything, he does about it before October. The Pythagorean Gap Sacramento's run differential says they should have ninety-nine wins. They have ninety-four. Five games of performance left on the table by a team with extraordinary talent. The blown saves, the extra-inning losses, the late-inning surrenders — they add up to five wins that should be in the Sacramento column and are not. In October, the margin for this kind of error disappears entirely. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE Boston leads the AL East at 86-58 with Columbus two games back at 84-60. Baltimore has fallen to 79-64 and is fading from the wildcard race. The AL wildcard shapes up as a Columbus versus Fort Worth contest with Fort Worth at 82-61 still very much alive. These are the teams Sacramento may face in October. Fort Worth won the season series against Sacramento. Columbus split theirs. The scouting reports are being written as we speak. Charlotte leads the NL East at 87-56 with a magic number of 7. In the NL West, Albuquerque leads at 77-67 with Las Vegas two games back. The Albuquerque Damned continue to manage their season under new ownership following the death of Dan Carter. Son Mike has taken over and the transition has been stable. Gabriel Rodriguez, the Damned's thirty-eight-year-old first baseman, reached 2,500 career hits during this period and received a standing ovation from both sets of fans. Some milestones transcend team affiliation. Washington's Dustin Henrich went on an expletive-laden tirade defending his manager and teammates. "We don't need your "bleeping" remarks," he told the assembled press, with a different word substituted for "bleeping". Teammate Leo Gallaga called him "a really passionate guy who doesn't always choose his words carefully." The Devils have been mathematically eliminated, as have El Paso and Milwaukee. The Bishops have now missed the playoffs ten consecutive years. Some franchises make losing look structural. ______________________________ MAILBAG — The Hot Corner audience has questions, Claude Playball has answers. From Patricia Evangelina Robles of Rancho Cordova, first-time writer, who identifies herself as "checking the magic number every morning over coffee": "Magic number eight. How long do we wait?" Patricia, not long. Twelve games up with sixteen to play. Every Sacramento win or Fort Worth loss brings it closer. The question is not whether the division banner comes to Cathedral Stadium — it is coming — but whether it arrives on a road trip or in front of the home crowd. Either way, the celebration is close enough that you can smell it. Keep the coffee warm, Patricia. The morning you wake up to the news is not far away. From "Section 208" Dugout Dave, writing in what he describes as "a state of cautious optimism mixed with residual San Jose fury": "Orozco. Two hits. Talk to me." Dave, I covered him extensively in the storylines section but I will add this for you specifically: the sacrifice bunt. In a situation where a twenty-year-old batting .132 might reasonably panic, Orozco put down a sacrifice bunt and moved the runner and did his job. That is not the act of a player who has given up. That is the act of a player who understands what the moment requires even when he cannot deliver more. The .132 average is a problem. The willingness to do the small thing correctly is a sign. Stay in Section 208, Dave. The view of the future keeps getting more interesting. From "Bullpen Benny" Tafoya of West Sacramento, thirty-eighth consecutive mailbag submission, subject line reading simply "NINE LOSSES": "Nine losses. Eight blown saves. Do we have a plan for October?" Benny, I do not know what the plan is and I am not sure Aces has committed to one publicly. What I know is this: Scott has a 2.29 ERA and has been the most reliable arm in that bullpen not named Prieto. Dodge functions better in middle-leverage situations than as a primary closer. St. Clair has been durable all season at 2.53. There are options. Whether Aces deploys them correctly when it matters is the October question that keeps me awake. Thirty-eight weeks, Benny. Keep them coming. ______________________________ Sacramento heads to Fort Worth next, followed by Columbus — two opponents fighting for wildcard position, two series that matter beyond Sacramento's own seeding. The magic number is eight. Francisco Hernandez has sixty stolen bases. Carlos Orozco has his first multi-hit game since late August. Jordan Rubalcava has twenty-two wins. October is close. Got a question for the mailbag? Find the Hot Corner wherever you get your podcasts. ______________________________ *Claude Playball* is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California. Last edited by liberty-ca; 03-02-2026 at 10:02 PM.