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 28 – October 4, 1992 | Games 156–162 of the Sacramento Prayers 1992 Season
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106-56. FORT WORTH AWAITS. ANDRETTI IS BACK. AND FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ FALLS SIX SHORT OF HISTORY.
The 1992 Sacramento Prayers regular season is over.
One hundred and six wins. Fifty-six losses. The best record in the American League by seventeen games. A pitching staff that led the league with a 2.83 ERA and twenty shutouts. A stolen base total of 278 that nobody in baseball came close to matching. A lineup that played most of the final two months without its best player and kept winning anyway.
One hundred and six wins.
This column has spent seven months documenting the construction of something special in Sacramento, and now the building is complete. The blueprint called for a rotation that would be historically dominant, an offense that would run the bases with a recklessness bordering on artistic, and a manager whose capacity for understatement is inversely proportional to the talent he has assembled. The 1992 Prayers delivered on every point of the plan and one or two others that nobody anticipated in April.
What follows is the final regular season edition of this column. There will be a playoff version — there will be many playoff versions, if the Prayers do what their record says they should do — but this is the last time we sit with the regular season box scores and extract their meaning before October resets the entire conversation.
So let us get into it one last time. Let us do it properly.
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LAST WEEK IN RETROSPECT: A GAME-BY-GAME TOUR
At Seattle: September 28 – October 1
Four games at Lucifers Park, Sacramento wins the series 3-1, and the week opens with the kind of surgical, professional road win that this rotation has been producing since April.
Monday, September 28th: Robby Larson throws 5.1 innings of one-run ball — four hits, three walks, three strikeouts, 83 pitches — and Sacramento wins 2-1. The run came on a Larson balk in the first inning before the offense provided the go-ahead margin in the third on an Alejandro Lopez run-scoring single, his 38th stolen base having set up the position that made the run possible. Caliari came on for 2.2 scoreless innings with three strikeouts, and Dodge closed for his eighth save. It was economical and complete — a Prayers win that looked exactly like every other Prayers win, which is precisely the point. Named Player of the Game: Larson. The special notes confirm that Carlos Orozco was injured in a base collision in the second inning and replaced by Marcos for the remainder of the game. We will return to Orozco.
Tuesday, September 29th: Seattle wins 5-4, and the loss contains the kind of ninth-inning rally that Sacramento has been staging all season — Cruz leading off with his twenty-second homer, MacDonald singling, Alonzo walking, J. Hernandez singling, Iniguez delivering an RBI single, Marcos drawing an RBI walk, and Francisco Hernandez tagging up from third on a fly ball — four runs in the ninth, one run short of what the situation required. Salazar threw six innings giving up three runs with only one earned, and the bullpen could not hold the deficit until the comeback arrived. Player of the Game in a Sacramento loss: Cusumano, the Seattle starter, who threw seven shutout innings. The Prayers were held scoreless for eight innings before the ninth-inning fireworks. Some pitchers simply have Sacramento's number on a given night, and Cusumano was that pitcher on Tuesday.
Wednesday, September 30th — the Andretti game: Bernardo Andretti walked into Lucifers Park carrying the weight of consecutive disasters — a 9.90 ERA in his last two starts, questions about his playoff viability growing louder in this column and presumably in the Sacramento front office — and answered every one of them over 7.1 innings of three-hit shutout baseball. Four strikeouts. Zero runs. Zero walks. A game score of 76 and a 5-0 final. The offense provided him a run in the first on a Francisco Hernandez double and a Cruz sac fly, added another in the fourth on a MacDonald double and an Alonzo single, and then put three more on the board in the ninth on singles from Perez, Orozco — back in the lineup, going 2-for-4 — and Lopez, with Orozco thrown out at the plate in a sequence that did not diminish the fact that Sacramento scored three insurance runs. Dodge came in for a hold and Wright finished with two outs, inheriting two runners and stranding both. When Andretti spoke to reporters afterward, he said he was "satisfied" with the win. After 4.2 innings in Columbus and 5.1 innings in Tucson that had this column writing his playoff obituary, Bernardo Andretti is satisfied. That is the correct word. Named Player of the Game: Andretti.
Thursday, October 1st — extra innings in Seattle: Rubalcava threw 6.2 innings of one-run ball — Seattle scoring on a Murillo double in the fourth — before Scott and then Prieto held the line. In the eighth, Iniguez walked, Hernandez singled, and Baldelomar knocked in the tying run with a single to right to make it 1-1. In the tenth inning, with Sacramento facing Blake Reeves, Iniguez walked and Hernandez hit a two-out triple to score him, and then Baldelomar doubled home Hernandez for the 3-1 final. Prieto worked two scoreless innings to earn the win, which is exactly what this column has been asking of him for months.
The larger story of the afternoon, however, is Josh Schilder. The Seattle left-hander threw eight innings of six-hit, one-run, nine-strikeout baseball and was named Player of the Game in a loss. That designation — the best player in a losing effort, awarded to the opponent — is among the most bittersweet recognitions in the sport, and Schilder earned it completely. He threw the best eight innings of his season against the best team in the American League and lost. Baseball does not always pay its debts equitably. Aces offered the line of the road trip afterward: "At the end of the day, it's always about your starting pitcher." He was being gracious about Schilder. He was also, without intending to, summarizing the entire 1992 Sacramento season in nine words.
El Paso at Home: October 2-4
Three games at Cathedral Stadium, Sacramento wins the series 2-1, and the regular season ends on a loss that the standings will never reflect.
Friday, October 2nd: Espenoza throws six innings of two-run ball — he gives up a Gordon two-run homer in the second — and the game stays close until Eli Murguia leads off the bottom of the sixth with a two-run homer off Bradford to put Sacramento up 3-2, with Vieyra's single having set the table. Wright threw two clean innings for his first hold of the season. Prieto converted his 38th save with a clean ninth. Espenoza finishes 17-3 on the year. "I'm glad we could reward them with a good win," he told the Sacramento Citizen afterward, referring to the 22,416 fans in Cathedral Stadium. Named Player of the Game: Espenoza. The transaction wire confirmed the Chris Ryan one-year extension for $102,000 on this date — organizational housekeeping during the final days of the regular season.
Saturday, October 3rd: Larson throws 7.2 innings of four-hit shutout ball — five strikeouts, zero runs, zero walks, 85 pitches — and Sacramento scores six times in a 6-0 final. The scoring came in bursts: three runs in the fifth on an Orozco single, a Hernandez three-run double, and a Lopez RBI double; three more in the eighth on a Marcos RBI single and a Rodriguez two-run single off Fabroni, after Murguia had walked and Torres had singled to set the table. Larson finishes 17-8 with a 2.82 ERA, tied for fifth in the American League. Named Player of the Game: Larson. The special notes confirm that Steve Dodge was injured while pitching — forearm soreness, day-to-day — and exits the regular season with a health question mark hanging over his October availability.
Sunday, October 4th — the finale: Sacramento loses 6-5 to El Paso, and the 65-97 Abbots close their season with a win while the 106-56 Prayers close theirs with a loss. Murguia hit a solo homer in the first — his seventh of the season — and Sacramento led 1-0 before El Paso took a 3-1 lead in the third on Sacramento errors and a Papi RBI single. Vieyra's sac fly and Iniguez's RBI single tied it at 4 in the sixth; Vieyra's RBI double in the seventh put Sacramento up 5-4; de Rooij's RBI single in the top of the seventh gave El Paso a 6-5 lead they would not surrender. Caliari gave up a two-run Yanez homer in the sixth that shifted the momentum decisively. A ninth-inning rally with Torres doubling and Lopez walking and Murguia walking to load the bases ended on a Cruz groundout. Named Player of the Game: Murguia, despite the loss — the third time this season a Sacramento player has received that designation in a losing effort. A bittersweet way to end a season, and entirely fitting for a team that has never once done anything the straightforward way.
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THE SEASON IN FINAL PERSPECTIVE
The Rotation: A Historic Collective
This column has spent the entire year making the argument that the Sacramento starting rotation is historically dominant. The final numbers confirm it beyond any reasonable dispute.
Rubalcava: 25-6, 2.50 ERA, 281.1 innings, 203 strikeouts, 1.00 WHIP, 8.2 WAR. Espenoza: 17-3, 2.19 ERA, 218.0 innings, 144 strikeouts, 0.89 WHIP, 4.4 WAR. Larson: 17-8, 2.82 ERA, 207.2 innings, 156 strikeouts, 1.13 WHIP, 4.3 WAR. Andretti: 10-8, 2.87 ERA, 207.0 innings, 151 strikeouts, 1.14 WHIP, 5.6 WAR. Salazar: 10-4, 3.15 ERA, 177.1 innings, 83 strikeouts, 1.12 WHIP, 2.8 WAR.
Five starters. Not one ERA above 3.15. Not one WHIP above 1.14. A collective that led the AL in ERA, in shutouts, and in opponents' batting average. Espenoza earns $41,200. I have mentioned this before and I will keep mentioning it until someone in the front office is embarrassed.
Andretti's late-season wobble resolved itself in Seattle with 7.1 shutout innings, and he enters the playoffs with a full-season record that deserves respect even if the two starts before that one tested everyone's nerves. The question of whether those outings represented fatigue, a mechanical issue, or simply two bad games from a good pitcher will be answered when he takes the mound in October.
Francisco Hernandez: Six Short
Francisco Hernandez ends the regular season with 64 stolen bases. His own league record of 70, set in 1991, required six more steals in seven games — achievable, but just beyond reach. He finishes at .214 with 11 home runs, 59 RBIs, and 64 stolen bases from the right field position. His WAR of 2.8 undersells what he provides, because stolen bases of the Francisco Hernandez variety — taken not just in blowouts but in close games, in pressure situations, in moments where a base changes the entire calculus of an inning — cannot be fully expressed in any single number.
He came six steals short of history. He came to the plate 139 times as a right fielder in a season where his team won 106 games and enters October as the favorite to win the American League pennant. The record will stand for now. The conversation about what Hernandez accomplished this year should not end six steals short of an arbitrary benchmark. He was magnificent.
Cruz: The Complete Player
Gil Cruz finishes with a .269 average, 22 home runs, 85 RBIs, 41 stolen bases, and 5.4 WAR. He is twenty-four years old and plays second base with a range and instinct that make the defensive numbers flattering rather than misleading. Twenty home runs and forty stolen bases from a second baseman, in the same season, on the best team in the American League. The awards conversations will rightly center on Rubalcava. They should. But the MVP ballot that does not include Cruz in the conversation is a ballot written by someone who has not been paying attention.
The Orozco Question — Final Regular Season Edition
Carlos Orozco finishes at .138, zero home runs, five RBIs, negative 0.5 WAR, with back stiffness listed as day-to-day. He is twenty years old and was thrown into a playoff race six weeks ago as a consequence of Edwin Musco's torn abdominal muscle — a situation no prospect should be asked to navigate, and one Orozco has navigated with results that trend heavily toward the discouraging.
Musco himself has 18 days remaining on the 60-day IL as of the final day of the regular season. He will not be available for the Division Series. Whether he is available for a potential League Championship Series is the organizational arithmetic the Sacramento front office is currently performing.
The question of who plays shortstop in October is the most consequential unresolved personnel matter this franchise enters the postseason carrying. There is no comfortable answer, and Jimmy Aces knows it.
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SHADOWS IN THE SUNSHINE
Dodge's Forearm
Steve Dodge was injured while pitching on Saturday, October 3rd. Forearm soreness. Day-to-day, not on the IL. The Division Series begins in days. If Dodge is unavailable, Sacramento loses the most experienced middle reliever in the bullpen — the pitcher Aces has trusted in leverage situations all year, the man who converted nine saves with a 2.80 ERA and a 1.06 WHIP. The bullpen alternatives — Scott at 2.26, St. Clair at 2.69, Wright at 0.00 — are all quality arms. But Dodge's availability is a genuine variable entering the most important week of the season.
The Columbus Specter
Sacramento is 2-4 against Columbus Heaven this season. Columbus, which finished 95-67 and clinched the AL wildcard, will almost certainly meet Sacramento in the American League Championship Series if both teams advance. The 0-3 sweep in Columbus in September — five total runs across three games against three different pitchers — is the data point that keeps this column's most concerned readers awake at night. It should. A sample size of six games is not destiny. It is, however, evidence. When October asks the question about those six games, the Prayers are going to need a different answer.
Prieto's October Assignment
Luis Prieto: 6-9, 4.30 ERA, 38 saves. In a five-game series, one ninth-inning failure is potentially decisive. He has had nine of those failures this year — nine games where a lead was handed to him and came back with a loss attached. Scott, St. Clair, Wright, and Dodge have all been more reliable on a per-inning basis than the closer. Whether Aces uses them in close late situations rather than defaulting to Prieto is the decision that could define this October.
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AROUND THE LEAGUE
The Division Series matchups are set: Fort Worth Spirits versus Sacramento Prayers in the AL, Columbus Heaven versus Boston Messiahs in the AL, Philadelphia Padres versus Charlotte Monks in the NL, and Las Vegas Blessed versus Albuquerque Damned in the NL.
Boston finished 98-64 and won the AL East for the fifth time in franchise history. Their rotation enters October with questions following an injury reported in this column weeks ago. Their lineup, however, features Rogelio Ruiz — who hit his fiftieth home run of the season during the final week, setting a new single-season record and surpassing Norm Douglass. Ruiz finished .310, 50 home runs, 137 RBIs, 106 runs scored. He is the most dangerous individual hitter in either league and whoever faces Boston in October had better not let him beat them.
Fort Worth's Giacomo Benoldi, asked about his team's wildcard berth, said he "wouldn't want to play us in the playoffs." Fort Worth finished 89-73. Sacramento finished 106-56. The Spirits won the season series against the Prayers, which gives Benoldi's confidence some grounding. Whether that grounding survives contact with Rubalcava, Espenoza, and Larson in a five-game series is the question October will answer.
Charlotte won 102 games and enters as the overwhelming NL East favorite. Albuquerque clinched the NL West at 86-76, their fifth division crown, seeking their third championship. Philadelphia center fielder Luis Arellano offered the appropriate postseason disposition: "We're definitely not satisfied just to make the playoffs." Good. Unsatisfied teams play October baseball with an edge.
Ed Holt of Las Vegas converted his 400th career save during the final week — a milestone accomplished with his family in the stands at Damned Field, in a 4-1 victory over Albuquerque. Four hundred saves, a 94-85 record, a 2.32 ERA. A career that has been better than the market understood when it was unfolding and will be better remembered in retrospect than it was in the moment. Congratulations to Ed Holt, who spent thirty-one years putting on a uniform and earned every save the hard way.
The AL batting title went to Jorge Jaime of Baltimore, who hit .359 with 28 home runs and 95 RBIs. The NL batting title went to Josh Dennison of Charlotte, who hit .312 with 21 home runs and 107 RBIs. Both deserve their recognition, even in a week dominated by larger stories.
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MAILBAG — The Hot Corner audience has questions, Claude Playball has answers.
From Rosario Delgadillo of Elk Grove, writing on behalf of what she describes as "our entire Tuesday night bowling league, all fourteen of us, who have been following this team since April": "One hundred and six wins. We finish with a loss. How do I feel about this?"
Rosario, you feel exactly right. The loss to El Paso on Sunday is not a portent. Last-place teams beat first-place teams on the final Sunday of the season because the calendar is not interested in narrative tidiness. What you should feel — all fourteen of you — is this: your team won 106 regular season games with the best pitching staff in baseball, a stolen base machine in right field who came six steals short of his own historical record, a second baseman who hit 22 home runs and stole 41 bases, and a manager who has never once said a superfluous word to the press. Fort Worth is the opponent. Rubalcava is the starter. The Division Series begins in days and Sacramento is the best team in the American League. Tell the bowling league to keep the cold beverages cold. You have all earned what comes next.
From Terrence Whibley of Citrus Heights, a first-time writer who identifies himself as "a Fort Worth transplant who switched allegiances in June and has not looked back": "Andretti. September 30th. Seven innings, three hits, zero runs. I need you to explain to me how a pitcher does that after what happened in Columbus and Tucson."
Terrence, welcome to the right side of this. What happened on September 30th in Seattle is not something that can be fully explained from the outside — it lives in the competitive interior of a man who has been pitching professional baseball for over a decade and knows the difference between a bad stretch and a finished career. Andretti walked into Lucifers Park carrying two consecutive disasters and answered every question with 7.1 innings of shutout ball. He said afterward he was "satisfied." That single word, from that man, on that night, tells you everything you need to know about Bernardo Andretti. He is heading to the playoffs. Fort Worth — your former team — will be the first opponent to find out what that means.
From Nguyen Phuoc Thanh of Sacramento, who writes that he has listened to every episode of this podcast and that his nine-year-old daughter has named her goldfish "Rubalcava": "Dodge's forearm. Days to the Division Series. Should I be worried?"
Thanh, please tell your daughter that "Rubalcava the goldfish" is an excellent name! And yes, you should carry a measured amount of concern about Dodge — forearm soreness exists on a spectrum and day-to-day status means nobody is certain yet where on that spectrum it falls. What prevents full alarm is this: Scott has a 2.26 ERA, St. Clair has thrown 80 innings at 2.69, and Matt Wright has not surrendered an earned run since his return from injury. The bullpen without Dodge is different, not defenceless. Tell the goldfish October is coming.
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One hundred and six wins. Fort Worth awaits. Jordan Rubalcava makes his first postseason start in days. Francisco Hernandez has 64 stolen bases and unfinished business. The 1992 Sacramento Prayers regular season is complete. The real season begins now.
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.