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liberty-ca · 03-19-2026, 07:45 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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April 1 – April 13, 1994 | Games 1–12 of the Sacramento Prayers 1994 Season

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NINE AND THREE, AND THE QUESTIONS THAT SURVIVED THE WINNING STREAK

The Sacramento Prayers are nine and three. The rotation has been as good as advertised, better in some cases. The lineup has produced runs in eleven of twelve games. Cathedral Stadium has been full and loud and the kind of place you want to be on a Friday night in April when your team is undefeated at home and playing the best baseball in the American League West.

None of that is the story the Hot Corner needs to tell right now.

The story the Hot Corner needs to tell is about a ninth inning on a Monday night against the Long Beach Diablos, when Sacramento held a 5-2 lead with three outs to record, and Steve Dodge entered the game, and Genichi Takahashi hit a grand slam off a two-strike fastball that gave Long Beach a 6-5 lead they did not surrender. The story is about a Tuesday night when Fernando Salazar entered in the ninth inning protecting a one-run lead and allowed four earned runs in two and two-thirds innings while the franchise that signed him through 1996 watched its bullpen convert a potential win into a loss requiring extra innings. The story is about Luis Prieto appearing in five of twelve games and posting a 5.79 ERA and two blown saves and a statistical profile that looks identical to the one he posted in April of 1993, which was itself identical to the one that produced nine losses and a 5.02 ERA across the full regular season.

The rotation has been spectacular. The bullpen is already on fire, and not in the way anybody wanted.

Nine and three is the record. The questions that were waiting in February are still waiting. They have simply moved from spring training to the standings, and in a few weeks they will move from the standings to the box scores of games Sacramento should have won and did not. I have seen this before. I am going to be direct about it.

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THE FIRST DOZEN

vs Seattle, April 1-3 (3-0)

The season opened the way every Sacramento season should open: Rubalcava took the ball on April 1st and threw a complete game. Nine innings, five hits, one earned run, eight strikeouts, 104 pitches. The Cathedral crowd of 22,436 gave him exactly what he deserved, which was a standing ovation when he took the mound and another one when he walked off it. The final was 5-1. The rotation had set the tone for everything that followed.

April 2nd was Andretti working six and two-thirds innings and allowing one earned run against a Seattle lineup that did not trouble him seriously until Ryan and Caliari and Prieto arrived from the bullpen and the ninth inning became a committee meeting. Prieto inherited runners, threw one and a third innings, allowed a solo home run to Mejia, and received the win despite the blown save because Sacramento had enough cushion to absorb the damage. The 6-2 final looked comfortable. The blown save was the first entry in a ledger that has grown steadily since.

April 3rd was Espenoza at his absolute ceiling: nine innings, two hits, zero runs, eight strikeouts, 97 pitches. The two-hit shutout was the cleanest individual performance of the opening week and the clearest statement about what a healthy Espenoza rotation slot looks like. Seattle manager Kyle Butler said to tip your hat. The Hot Corner agrees.

vs Tucson, April 5-7 (3-0)

Lopez homered in the first inning on April 5th off Tony Crossley and the game was effectively settled within nine pitches. Larson threw seven and a third innings, allowed one earned run, struck out seven on 104 pitches and looked every bit like the 17-8 projection the models assigned him. Cruz homered in the eighth. The 6-1 final put the record at 4-0 and the rotation at four starts, four quality outings.

April 6th was Rubalcava again — seven innings, zero runs, seven strikeouts, 120 pitches. The pitch count is the only number in that line worth flagging, because 120 pitches through seven innings in the first week of April is not a number that suggests efficiency, and Rubalcava's September injury is still recent enough that the Hot Corner notices every time his pitch count climbs above 110. Caliari threw a hold inning. Dodge closed it with eleven pitches and no drama. The 3-1 final went into the books cleanly.

April 7th was Andretti: seven innings, zero earned runs, five strikeouts on 106 pitches against a Tucson lineup that had nine hits and nothing to show for them. Salazar threw two clean innings of mop-up. Lopez hit his second home run. The 7-1 win put the record at 6-0 and the rotation ERA at something approaching what you see in February when the projections are still optimistic. What you do not see in the projections is six wins and zero losses through six games, which is what the Sacramento rotation produced by doing exactly what it was capable of doing.

vs Boston, April 8-10 (2-1)

The first loss of the season came on April 8th against a Boston club that arrived at Cathedral Stadium at 6-2 and left at 6-3 having done something that most teams could not do in twelve games: they solved the Sacramento starting pitcher. Espenoza went seven and two-thirds innings and allowed four earned runs — only the second time in three starts he had allowed more than two — and Prieto entered in the eighth and threw a third of an inning of four-earned-run baseball that included a wild pitch and an inherited runner scoring and the kind of performance that makes a column that has been arguing for clarity in the closer role want to say it more loudly rather than more quietly. The final was 6-1 Boston.

April 9th was the bounce-back the organization needed, delivered by the man the rotation least expects to provide it: Danny St. Clair, starting his first game of the season after the biceps tendinitis that limited him in 1993, threw five and a third innings of one-run baseball, and Caliari held for an inning and two-thirds, and Scott threw two clean innings, and the Sacramento offense gave Baldelomar a moment that the seventeenth-ranked left fielder used to remind everyone why the Hot Corner has been cautious about writing him off entirely — three for four with a two-run home run in the sixth. The 6-1 win was a statement about depth and a question mark about how long St. Clair can maintain it.

April 10th was Larson again. Seven innings, zero runs, seven strikeouts, 103 pitches. Back-to-back quality starts from Sacramento's third starter, back-to-back shutout stints from a pitcher the projections called at seventeen wins. Perez hit a two-run home run in the first inning and that was enough. Prieto threw a clean inning. Dodge closed with two strikeouts. The 3-0 final put the record at 8-1 and the rotation ERA at a number this column refuses to type because the bullpen conversation is more important.

vs Long Beach, April 11-13 (1-2)

The three games against Long Beach are the three games the Hot Corner will be returning to in July and August if this season takes a direction this program does not want it to take. Not because Sacramento lost two of them — losing to a six-and-five Long Beach club happens, the league is full of teams that can beat you on a given night — but because of how Sacramento lost them and what those losses documented about the decisions that have not yet been made.

April 11th: Rubalcava threw seven and two-thirds innings and allowed two runs and was the best pitcher on the field. Sacramento led 5-2 going into the ninth. Prieto entered and was replaced after a third of an inning with the lead intact. Dodge entered. Hicks singled. Guerrero singled. Bocanegra struck out. Chavez struck out. Benoldi hit a grand slam to right-center off a two-strike fastball. Sacramento lost 6-5. The game that defined the 1993 Division Series — a Sacramento closer allowing a late-inning home run that turned a lead into a loss — reprised itself on a Monday night in April against the Long Beach Diablos. The actors changed. The script did not.

April 12th: Andretti went six innings, four walks, three earned runs — not his best outing but serviceable. Caliari was clean for an inning. Then Salazar entered in the ninth with Sacramento leading 4-3 and pitched two and two-thirds innings of four-earned-run baseball, including three doubles from Ken Arnold — the same Ken Arnold who set a Long Beach extra-inning record for hits and doubles in a single game — and Sacramento lost 7-4 in ten innings. The forty-three-year-old pitcher who sent a letter asking for a contract extension last September has now allowed four earned runs in four and two-thirds innings. The Hot Corner was the loudest voice in favor of giving him that extension. The Hot Corner will address what it is seeing in the concern section below.

April 13th: Espenoza returned to form with eight and two-thirds innings of shutout baseball — zero runs, five hits, five strikeouts, 103 pitches — and Rodriguez, MacDonald, and Musco all hit home runs and the 6-0 final restored some dignity to a series that had tested it. Scott closed the final out cleanly.

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THE ONES TO KEEP YOUR EYES ON

Jordan Rubalcava: 2-0, 0.76 ERA, 22 strikeouts in 23.2 innings — Three starts, twenty-two strikeouts, four walks, two earned runs, and a WHIP of 0.76. The Cy Young Award winner has been exactly what his 1993 season said he would be, which is the best pitcher in the American League operating at a level that requires the superlatives this program normally avoids. He is also unsigned beyond this season, and every start he makes without a contract extension on the table is a start made by a pitcher whose October destination remains negotiable. I will say this once per article, every article, until the situation is resolved.

Robby Larson: 2-0, 0.63 ERA, 14 strikeouts in 14.1 innings — The version of Larson that closed the 1993 regular season on a four-game winning streak has carried directly into April. Two starts, fourteen strikeouts, six walks, one earned run. The $912,000 contract with the $1.5 million player option begins to look like a decision Larson made with information about himself that the organization did not fully have. If this is what he is, the rotation is deeper than anyone projected. If it reverts to the inconsistent version of 1993, those same projections will look prescient. Twelve games is too small a sample to know which version has shown up to stay. I am watching carefully.

David Perez: .381 average, 12 RBI, the hottest bat in the lineup — Through twelve games Perez has driven in twelve runs from the first base position that ranks thirteenth in the league. He is hitting .381 with four doubles and a home run and the kind of two-out production — several of his RBI have come with two outs — that separates the contributors from the accumulators. He holds an opt-out after this season and we noted in February that a productive 1994 from Perez would produce a contract conversation the organization needs to begin anticipating. Through twelve games, the conversation is already warranted.

Eli Murguia: .450 in seven games — the veteran contribution worth noting — Nine hits in twenty at-bats, a home run, a 1.100 OPS at thirty-seven years old in his final contracted season. Murguia is not playing every day and is not expected to, but the numbers he is producing in limited action deserve acknowledgment as the contribution of a player whose career WAR of 40.9 with this franchise is exceeded only by Ben Swift, Hector Iniguez, and Edwin Musco in the franchise's twenty-five-year history. Whatever the final chapter of his Sacramento career looks like, it has opened with him doing what he has always done: hitting the baseball.

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THE EARLY WARNING SIGNS

The closer question was not answered in the winter and is not answered now — I spent the spring training article arguing that the correct arrangement was Dodge closing, Gutierrez setting up, Prieto in defined lower-leverage situations. The organization traded Gutierrez before the season began, which eliminated the middle of that arrangement. What remains is Dodge as closer and Prieto in high-leverage middle relief and a gap between the two that was previously occupied by a pitcher with a 2.78 career ERA and the situational awareness to navigate the seventh and eighth innings of close games. That gap is now occupied by Caliari at thirty-seven and Ryan in limited deployment and Salazar in situations I am about to address separately.

Dodge's grand slam is not a reason to remove him from the closing role. I said this about Prieto's blown saves for eight months in 1993 and it applies equally here: one home run is not a pattern. The pattern for Dodge is a 1.83 ERA across the full 1993 season and three saves in four appearances this April before the grand slam. The pattern for Prieto is a 5.02 ERA in 1993, two blown saves in twelve games in 1994, and an ERA of 5.79 that reflects not a slump but a continuation. The Hot Corner's position is unchanged: Dodge closes, Prieto contributes where his career ERA of 3.29 is most useful and where the consequences of an individual mistake are most manageable. The ninth inning of a tie game is not that place.

Fernando Salazar at forty-three is not the Salazar of 1992 — I argued for his contract extension in November and stands by the argument. His career ERA of 2.74 is the best in franchise history. His 113.8 WAR is the most ever produced by a pitcher wearing a Sacramento uniform. He is the greatest pitcher this organization has ever had and the Hot Corner has covered enough of his starts to know what the best version of him looks like. The version that appeared on April 12th in the ninth inning of a one-run game against Long Beach — four earned runs, two and two-thirds innings, three doubles allowed to the same hitter — is not that version. He is forty-three years old. The decay that arrives for every pitcher eventually has arrived for him, and we need to be honest about that even while maintaining its respect for what he has been. His role for the remainder of the season needs to be precisely defined: mop-up innings, blowout situations, the kind of low-leverage deployment that lets him contribute without exposure. He is not a high-leverage reliever at forty-three. He is a legend who deserves to finish his career without being asked to be something that age will not allow.

Alonzo, MacDonald, and Baldelomar — the slow starters worth monitoring — Alonzo at .212 and MacDonald at .189 and Baldelomar at .195 are three of the four most prominent early-season underperformers on the roster, and I am not going to catastrophize twelve-game samples that are almost certainly noise rather than signal for two of the three. Alonzo has a .298 career average with this franchise. MacDonald has a .273 career average. Both are capable of hot stretches that will resolve these numbers within a month. What is worth noting is that MacDonald's .189 through twelve games reflects exactly the profile that the positional rankings identified — a thirteenth-ranked first baseman with no organizational depth — and that every game he spends below the Mendoza line is a game in which the Perez opt-out conversation becomes more relevant. If MacDonald's bat does not find its footing by May, the question of whether Perez can be extended at first base and what the organization does with the designated hitter spot becomes pressing rather than theoretical.

Jesus Hernandez on the IL again — the right field depth problem — The twenty-five-year-old right fielder is on the injured list with a torn posterior cruciate ligament, three months, the same knee, the same diagnosis that ended his 1993 season on October 3rd. I do not have a medical opinion on what recurring PCL tears mean for a career. What I have is the awareness that Francisco Hernandez is thirty-five years old and Francisco Hernandez is who covers right field in the absence of his younger namesake. At .250 through twelve games, F. Hernandez is producing adequately. The question the organization needs to be asking is whether the right field position is one injury away from a genuine crisis, and the answer based on the depth chart is yes.

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WHAT THE REST OF THE LEAGUE IS DOING

Baltimore is 6-7 and losing games without Jaime, which is the most predictable sentence available about what happens when the AL MVP misses six weeks with an oblique strain. Fort Worth is 6-7, which is three and a half games behind Sacramento with the season twelve games old, which is exactly where the projections said they would be and exactly where this program will continue watching them. The nine-nine head-to-head record from 1993 does not expire. Fort Worth without Bocanegra — torn abdominal muscle, two to three months — is a different team than the one that beat Sacramento in October. Bocanegra hit .500 in the Division Series. His absence changes the center field calculus for a club that was already not deep at that position.

Brooklyn and Boston are tied at 9-4 atop the AL East, which is a development the Hot Corner did not anticipate in February and will not ignore now. Brooklyn lost Pedro Ortiz for the season to a broken elbow before it even began, which should have devastated a team ranked ninth overall at shortstop. Instead they are nine and four, which suggests either that the shortstop situation is being managed better than the rankings implied or that their lineup is carrying a lineup situation that would sink a lesser club. Boston at 9-4 with Manny Rodriguez at third base — ranked twenty-third in the positional overview — is the kind of overperformance that disappears by July or defines a pennant race, and the Hot Corner does not yet know which of those outcomes is coming.

Phoenix is 9-4 in the NL West and Costodio Carro is presumably doing to opposing lineups what he did across a 21-3 season in 1993. The NL West is the most competitive division in either league by early-season records and the Hot Corner expects it to remain so through September. Charlotte at 7-5 as defending champions is neither comfortable nor alarming at this point in the season, which is exactly what the defending champions of a franchise that wins championships habitually would expect of themselves.

The injury report across the league is alarming in its breadth: Jaime (oblique, six weeks), Bocanegra (torn abdominal, two to three months), Joel Hudson (torn flexor tendon, season), Vince Brooks (torn UCL, season), Pedro Ortiz (broken elbow, season), Eduardo Quinones (strained calf with setback), Elijah Davis (knee hyperextension, three weeks). The teams that survive April with their rosters relatively intact will be in a better position than their records may suggest, and the teams that have already lost significant contributors are playing a different game than the one they prepared for in February.

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FROM THE INBOX — Because twelve games generates opinions.

From Angela Torres of Curtis Park, a registered nurse who has been a Sacramento season ticket holder since 1988 and who describes herself as someone who does not panic in emergencies — a quality she says the Hot Corner could occasionally use: "After twelve games the bullpen ERA is a disaster. Should we panic?"

Angela, the clinical framing is exactly right and the Hot Corner will match it. No, you should not panic. Panic is what you do when the situation is both bad and unresolvable. The bullpen ERA is bad — Dodge at 13.50, Prieto at 5.79, Salazar at 7.71 — and it is also almost certainly going to stabilize as small samples regress toward the larger truths the career numbers describe. What you should do, which is different from panic, is pay close attention to whether the organizational decisions that produced these numbers are reconsidered before the sample gets larger. Trading Gutierrez created a gap. Salazar in high-leverage situations created exposure. Prieto in the ninth inning is a known problem with a known solution. The rotation ERA of 1.38 is so far ahead of what anyone could have projected that this team can absorb a rough bullpen April and still be in first place by ten games at the All-Star break. What it cannot absorb is these same decisions in October, when rough innings do not get averaged out over a full season. The answer to your question is: watch the decisions, not the ERA.

From Marcus Williams of Oak Park, a high school principal who uses baseball to teach his students about probability, small samples, and the difference between variance and trend: "Is MacDonald's slow start variance or a trend?"

Marcus, this is the correct question framed the correct way and the I will answer it directly. Through twelve games it is almost certainly variance. MacDonald's career average with Sacramento is .273 and his contact profile has not changed dramatically — he is hitting balls hard, the hits are not falling. By June, if he is still hitting .189, the conversation becomes a different one. What the I would note for your students is that the positional rankings entering this season — thirteenth overall at first base with the twenty-fourth-ranked organizational depth — represent a structural concern that exists regardless of any individual batting average. If MacDonald's variance resolves itself and he hits .273 for the rest of the season, the structural concern remains: Sacramento is one injury away from a first base situation with no viable internal replacement. That is not variance. That is organizational construction, and it persists independently of whether this particular twelve-game sample is noise or signal.

From Robert Kim of Midtown Sacramento, an accountant who has been listening to the Hot Corner since 1991 and who submitted his question in a format that included a footnote, which the Hot Corner appreciated: "The footnote asks: given that Rubalcava is unsigned beyond this season, what is the realistic cost of keeping him, and can Sacramento afford it?"

Robert, the footnoted question is the right one and the salary sheet provides the context to answer it. Sacramento's 1994 payroll is $8.7 million. By 1997 it drops to $4.3 million as the veteran contracts expire and the pre-arbitration players advance. The organization has, in other words, constructed a payroll that will have significant flexibility in the precise years when Rubalcava's contract extension would come into effect. The realistic cost of keeping him is whatever the market for a thirty-one-year-old Cy Young winner with a career ERA of 2.67 and a winning percentage of .735 commands in a free agency market — which is to say, considerably more than $800,000. The Hot Corner's estimate, offered without the benefit of an agent's expertise, is somewhere between three and five million dollars per year on a four-or-five-year extension. Sacramento can afford that. The payroll trajectory makes it clear that they can afford it. The question is whether they will do it before he pitches his way to an even larger number in November. Every Rubalcava start that goes in the books without a signed extension is a start that increases the eventual cost. The footnote is correct to flag this. The accountant in you should be pushing the front office to close this deal before the ledger gets more expensive.

From Patricia Sullivan of East Sacramento, who attended the April 11th Long Beach game and who wrote that she watched the Takahashi grand slam from the left field bleachers and described the silence that fell over Cathedral Stadium as "the loudest quiet I have ever heard at a baseball game": "Was the Benoldi home run in October just the first one? Is this going to keep happening?"

Patricia, the loudest quiet is exactly the right description and the Hot Corner was listening to the same silence from a different vantage point. To your question: the honest answer is that it will keep happening unless the organization makes a decision that it has so far declined to make. The Benoldi home run in October was not unique. The Takahashi grand slam on April 11th was the same home run in a different month against a different team by a different batter. Both happened in the ninth inning of a game Sacramento was leading. Both happened because the pitcher in the ninth inning threw a pitch that a hitter hit very hard and very far. The difference between October and April is that April's home run costs two games in the standings in a 162-game season, and October's home run ended a playoff series. The closer question has one correct answer and the Hot Corner has been arguing for it since June of 1993. Dodge closes. That is the answer. The organization's job is to hold the line on that answer the next time a blown save creates pressure to reconsider it, because the pressure will come and the correct response is not to reconsider, it is to maintain the deployment that the full body of evidence supports. Whether that happens is the most important managerial decision of the 1994 season, and it will not be made in a front office meeting. It will be made in the ninth inning of a game this program will be covering in real time.

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Twelve games. Nine wins. A rotation that is arguably the best in baseball through two weeks. A bullpen that is already on fire in the wrong direction. A lineup with two or three bats that need to find themselves and two or three more that are already operating at their ceiling. The schedule turns east this week — El Paso on Friday, San Jose on Monday — and the first road trip of the 1994 season will tell us something about whether this team can produce away from Cathedral Stadium the way it produced at home in April. Last year Sacramento went 45-36 on the road. The Hot Corner expects improvement on that number in 1994 and will be watching the first road series closely for evidence of it. The rotation will be fine. The rotation is always fine. It is everything after the seventh inning that this program will be watching with the particular attention that twelve games of evidence has made necessary.

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.

03-19-2026, 07:45 PM	#261
liberty-ca Major Leagues Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 448	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *April 1 – April 13, 1994 \| Games 1–12 of the Sacramento Prayers 1994 Season* ______________________________ NINE AND THREE, AND THE QUESTIONS THAT SURVIVED THE WINNING STREAK The Sacramento Prayers are nine and three. The rotation has been as good as advertised, better in some cases. The lineup has produced runs in eleven of twelve games. Cathedral Stadium has been full and loud and the kind of place you want to be on a Friday night in April when your team is undefeated at home and playing the best baseball in the American League West. None of that is the story the Hot Corner needs to tell right now. The story the Hot Corner needs to tell is about a ninth inning on a Monday night against the Long Beach Diablos, when Sacramento held a 5-2 lead with three outs to record, and Steve Dodge entered the game, and Genichi Takahashi hit a grand slam off a two-strike fastball that gave Long Beach a 6-5 lead they did not surrender. The story is about a Tuesday night when Fernando Salazar entered in the ninth inning protecting a one-run lead and allowed four earned runs in two and two-thirds innings while the franchise that signed him through 1996 watched its bullpen convert a potential win into a loss requiring extra innings. The story is about Luis Prieto appearing in five of twelve games and posting a 5.79 ERA and two blown saves and a statistical profile that looks identical to the one he posted in April of 1993, which was itself identical to the one that produced nine losses and a 5.02 ERA across the full regular season. The rotation has been spectacular. The bullpen is already on fire, and not in the way anybody wanted. Nine and three is the record. The questions that were waiting in February are still waiting. They have simply moved from spring training to the standings, and in a few weeks they will move from the standings to the box scores of games Sacramento should have won and did not. I have seen this before. I am going to be direct about it. ______________________________ THE FIRST DOZEN vs Seattle, April 1-3 (3-0) The season opened the way every Sacramento season should open: Rubalcava took the ball on April 1st and threw a complete game. Nine innings, five hits, one earned run, eight strikeouts, 104 pitches. The Cathedral crowd of 22,436 gave him exactly what he deserved, which was a standing ovation when he took the mound and another one when he walked off it. The final was 5-1. The rotation had set the tone for everything that followed. April 2nd was Andretti working six and two-thirds innings and allowing one earned run against a Seattle lineup that did not trouble him seriously until Ryan and Caliari and Prieto arrived from the bullpen and the ninth inning became a committee meeting. Prieto inherited runners, threw one and a third innings, allowed a solo home run to Mejia, and received the win despite the blown save because Sacramento had enough cushion to absorb the damage. The 6-2 final looked comfortable. The blown save was the first entry in a ledger that has grown steadily since. April 3rd was Espenoza at his absolute ceiling: nine innings, two hits, zero runs, eight strikeouts, 97 pitches. The two-hit shutout was the cleanest individual performance of the opening week and the clearest statement about what a healthy Espenoza rotation slot looks like. Seattle manager Kyle Butler said to tip your hat. The Hot Corner agrees. vs Tucson, April 5-7 (3-0) Lopez homered in the first inning on April 5th off Tony Crossley and the game was effectively settled within nine pitches. Larson threw seven and a third innings, allowed one earned run, struck out seven on 104 pitches and looked every bit like the 17-8 projection the models assigned him. Cruz homered in the eighth. The 6-1 final put the record at 4-0 and the rotation at four starts, four quality outings. April 6th was Rubalcava again — seven innings, zero runs, seven strikeouts, 120 pitches. The pitch count is the only number in that line worth flagging, because 120 pitches through seven innings in the first week of April is not a number that suggests efficiency, and Rubalcava's September injury is still recent enough that the Hot Corner notices every time his pitch count climbs above 110. Caliari threw a hold inning. Dodge closed it with eleven pitches and no drama. The 3-1 final went into the books cleanly. April 7th was Andretti: seven innings, zero earned runs, five strikeouts on 106 pitches against a Tucson lineup that had nine hits and nothing to show for them. Salazar threw two clean innings of mop-up. Lopez hit his second home run. The 7-1 win put the record at 6-0 and the rotation ERA at something approaching what you see in February when the projections are still optimistic. What you do not see in the projections is six wins and zero losses through six games, which is what the Sacramento rotation produced by doing exactly what it was capable of doing. vs Boston, April 8-10 (2-1) The first loss of the season came on April 8th against a Boston club that arrived at Cathedral Stadium at 6-2 and left at 6-3 having done something that most teams could not do in twelve games: they solved the Sacramento starting pitcher. Espenoza went seven and two-thirds innings and allowed four earned runs — only the second time in three starts he had allowed more than two — and Prieto entered in the eighth and threw a third of an inning of four-earned-run baseball that included a wild pitch and an inherited runner scoring and the kind of performance that makes a column that has been arguing for clarity in the closer role want to say it more loudly rather than more quietly. The final was 6-1 Boston. April 9th was the bounce-back the organization needed, delivered by the man the rotation least expects to provide it: Danny St. Clair, starting his first game of the season after the biceps tendinitis that limited him in 1993, threw five and a third innings of one-run baseball, and Caliari held for an inning and two-thirds, and Scott threw two clean innings, and the Sacramento offense gave Baldelomar a moment that the seventeenth-ranked left fielder used to remind everyone why the Hot Corner has been cautious about writing him off entirely — three for four with a two-run home run in the sixth. The 6-1 win was a statement about depth and a question mark about how long St. Clair can maintain it. April 10th was Larson again. Seven innings, zero runs, seven strikeouts, 103 pitches. Back-to-back quality starts from Sacramento's third starter, back-to-back shutout stints from a pitcher the projections called at seventeen wins. Perez hit a two-run home run in the first inning and that was enough. Prieto threw a clean inning. Dodge closed with two strikeouts. The 3-0 final put the record at 8-1 and the rotation ERA at a number this column refuses to type because the bullpen conversation is more important. vs Long Beach, April 11-13 (1-2) The three games against Long Beach are the three games the Hot Corner will be returning to in July and August if this season takes a direction this program does not want it to take. Not because Sacramento lost two of them — losing to a six-and-five Long Beach club happens, the league is full of teams that can beat you on a given night — but because of how Sacramento lost them and what those losses documented about the decisions that have not yet been made. April 11th: Rubalcava threw seven and two-thirds innings and allowed two runs and was the best pitcher on the field. Sacramento led 5-2 going into the ninth. Prieto entered and was replaced after a third of an inning with the lead intact. Dodge entered. Hicks singled. Guerrero singled. Bocanegra struck out. Chavez struck out. Benoldi hit a grand slam to right-center off a two-strike fastball. Sacramento lost 6-5. The game that defined the 1993 Division Series — a Sacramento closer allowing a late-inning home run that turned a lead into a loss — reprised itself on a Monday night in April against the Long Beach Diablos. The actors changed. The script did not. April 12th: Andretti went six innings, four walks, three earned runs — not his best outing but serviceable. Caliari was clean for an inning. Then Salazar entered in the ninth with Sacramento leading 4-3 and pitched two and two-thirds innings of four-earned-run baseball, including three doubles from Ken Arnold — the same Ken Arnold who set a Long Beach extra-inning record for hits and doubles in a single game — and Sacramento lost 7-4 in ten innings. The forty-three-year-old pitcher who sent a letter asking for a contract extension last September has now allowed four earned runs in four and two-thirds innings. The Hot Corner was the loudest voice in favor of giving him that extension. The Hot Corner will address what it is seeing in the concern section below. April 13th: Espenoza returned to form with eight and two-thirds innings of shutout baseball — zero runs, five hits, five strikeouts, 103 pitches — and Rodriguez, MacDonald, and Musco all hit home runs and the 6-0 final restored some dignity to a series that had tested it. Scott closed the final out cleanly. ______________________________ THE ONES TO KEEP YOUR EYES ON Jordan Rubalcava: 2-0, 0.76 ERA, 22 strikeouts in 23.2 innings — Three starts, twenty-two strikeouts, four walks, two earned runs, and a WHIP of 0.76. The Cy Young Award winner has been exactly what his 1993 season said he would be, which is the best pitcher in the American League operating at a level that requires the superlatives this program normally avoids. He is also unsigned beyond this season, and every start he makes without a contract extension on the table is a start made by a pitcher whose October destination remains negotiable. I will say this once per article, every article, until the situation is resolved. Robby Larson: 2-0, 0.63 ERA, 14 strikeouts in 14.1 innings — The version of Larson that closed the 1993 regular season on a four-game winning streak has carried directly into April. Two starts, fourteen strikeouts, six walks, one earned run. The $912,000 contract with the $1.5 million player option begins to look like a decision Larson made with information about himself that the organization did not fully have. If this is what he is, the rotation is deeper than anyone projected. If it reverts to the inconsistent version of 1993, those same projections will look prescient. Twelve games is too small a sample to know which version has shown up to stay. I am watching carefully. David Perez: .381 average, 12 RBI, the hottest bat in the lineup — Through twelve games Perez has driven in twelve runs from the first base position that ranks thirteenth in the league. He is hitting .381 with four doubles and a home run and the kind of two-out production — several of his RBI have come with two outs — that separates the contributors from the accumulators. He holds an opt-out after this season and we noted in February that a productive 1994 from Perez would produce a contract conversation the organization needs to begin anticipating. Through twelve games, the conversation is already warranted. Eli Murguia: .450 in seven games — the veteran contribution worth noting — Nine hits in twenty at-bats, a home run, a 1.100 OPS at thirty-seven years old in his final contracted season. Murguia is not playing every day and is not expected to, but the numbers he is producing in limited action deserve acknowledgment as the contribution of a player whose career WAR of 40.9 with this franchise is exceeded only by Ben Swift, Hector Iniguez, and Edwin Musco in the franchise's twenty-five-year history. Whatever the final chapter of his Sacramento career looks like, it has opened with him doing what he has always done: hitting the baseball. ______________________________ THE EARLY WARNING SIGNS The closer question was not answered in the winter and is not answered now — I spent the spring training article arguing that the correct arrangement was Dodge closing, Gutierrez setting up, Prieto in defined lower-leverage situations. The organization traded Gutierrez before the season began, which eliminated the middle of that arrangement. What remains is Dodge as closer and Prieto in high-leverage middle relief and a gap between the two that was previously occupied by a pitcher with a 2.78 career ERA and the situational awareness to navigate the seventh and eighth innings of close games. That gap is now occupied by Caliari at thirty-seven and Ryan in limited deployment and Salazar in situations I am about to address separately. Dodge's grand slam is not a reason to remove him from the closing role. I said this about Prieto's blown saves for eight months in 1993 and it applies equally here: one home run is not a pattern. The pattern for Dodge is a 1.83 ERA across the full 1993 season and three saves in four appearances this April before the grand slam. The pattern for Prieto is a 5.02 ERA in 1993, two blown saves in twelve games in 1994, and an ERA of 5.79 that reflects not a slump but a continuation. The Hot Corner's position is unchanged: Dodge closes, Prieto contributes where his career ERA of 3.29 is most useful and where the consequences of an individual mistake are most manageable. The ninth inning of a tie game is not that place. Fernando Salazar at forty-three is not the Salazar of 1992 — I argued for his contract extension in November and stands by the argument. His career ERA of 2.74 is the best in franchise history. His 113.8 WAR is the most ever produced by a pitcher wearing a Sacramento uniform. He is the greatest pitcher this organization has ever had and the Hot Corner has covered enough of his starts to know what the best version of him looks like. The version that appeared on April 12th in the ninth inning of a one-run game against Long Beach — four earned runs, two and two-thirds innings, three doubles allowed to the same hitter — is not that version. He is forty-three years old. The decay that arrives for every pitcher eventually has arrived for him, and we need to be honest about that even while maintaining its respect for what he has been. His role for the remainder of the season needs to be precisely defined: mop-up innings, blowout situations, the kind of low-leverage deployment that lets him contribute without exposure. He is not a high-leverage reliever at forty-three. He is a legend who deserves to finish his career without being asked to be something that age will not allow. Alonzo, MacDonald, and Baldelomar — the slow starters worth monitoring — Alonzo at .212 and MacDonald at .189 and Baldelomar at .195 are three of the four most prominent early-season underperformers on the roster, and I am not going to catastrophize twelve-game samples that are almost certainly noise rather than signal for two of the three. Alonzo has a .298 career average with this franchise. MacDonald has a .273 career average. Both are capable of hot stretches that will resolve these numbers within a month. What is worth noting is that MacDonald's .189 through twelve games reflects exactly the profile that the positional rankings identified — a thirteenth-ranked first baseman with no organizational depth — and that every game he spends below the Mendoza line is a game in which the Perez opt-out conversation becomes more relevant. If MacDonald's bat does not find its footing by May, the question of whether Perez can be extended at first base and what the organization does with the designated hitter spot becomes pressing rather than theoretical. Jesus Hernandez on the IL again — the right field depth problem — The twenty-five-year-old right fielder is on the injured list with a torn posterior cruciate ligament, three months, the same knee, the same diagnosis that ended his 1993 season on October 3rd. I do not have a medical opinion on what recurring PCL tears mean for a career. What I have is the awareness that Francisco Hernandez is thirty-five years old and Francisco Hernandez is who covers right field in the absence of his younger namesake. At .250 through twelve games, F. Hernandez is producing adequately. The question the organization needs to be asking is whether the right field position is one injury away from a genuine crisis, and the answer based on the depth chart is yes. ______________________________ WHAT THE REST OF THE LEAGUE IS DOING Baltimore is 6-7 and losing games without Jaime, which is the most predictable sentence available about what happens when the AL MVP misses six weeks with an oblique strain. Fort Worth is 6-7, which is three and a half games behind Sacramento with the season twelve games old, which is exactly where the projections said they would be and exactly where this program will continue watching them. The nine-nine head-to-head record from 1993 does not expire. Fort Worth without Bocanegra — torn abdominal muscle, two to three months — is a different team than the one that beat Sacramento in October. Bocanegra hit .500 in the Division Series. His absence changes the center field calculus for a club that was already not deep at that position. Brooklyn and Boston are tied at 9-4 atop the AL East, which is a development the Hot Corner did not anticipate in February and will not ignore now. Brooklyn lost Pedro Ortiz for the season to a broken elbow before it even began, which should have devastated a team ranked ninth overall at shortstop. Instead they are nine and four, which suggests either that the shortstop situation is being managed better than the rankings implied or that their lineup is carrying a lineup situation that would sink a lesser club. Boston at 9-4 with Manny Rodriguez at third base — ranked twenty-third in the positional overview — is the kind of overperformance that disappears by July or defines a pennant race, and the Hot Corner does not yet know which of those outcomes is coming. Phoenix is 9-4 in the NL West and Costodio Carro is presumably doing to opposing lineups what he did across a 21-3 season in 1993. The NL West is the most competitive division in either league by early-season records and the Hot Corner expects it to remain so through September. Charlotte at 7-5 as defending champions is neither comfortable nor alarming at this point in the season, which is exactly what the defending champions of a franchise that wins championships habitually would expect of themselves. The injury report across the league is alarming in its breadth: Jaime (oblique, six weeks), Bocanegra (torn abdominal, two to three months), Joel Hudson (torn flexor tendon, season), Vince Brooks (torn UCL, season), Pedro Ortiz (broken elbow, season), Eduardo Quinones (strained calf with setback), Elijah Davis (knee hyperextension, three weeks). The teams that survive April with their rosters relatively intact will be in a better position than their records may suggest, and the teams that have already lost significant contributors are playing a different game than the one they prepared for in February. ______________________________ FROM THE INBOX — Because twelve games generates opinions. From Angela Torres of Curtis Park, a registered nurse who has been a Sacramento season ticket holder since 1988 and who describes herself as someone who does not panic in emergencies — a quality she says the Hot Corner could occasionally use: "After twelve games the bullpen ERA is a disaster. Should we panic?" Angela, the clinical framing is exactly right and the Hot Corner will match it. No, you should not panic. Panic is what you do when the situation is both bad and unresolvable. The bullpen ERA is bad — Dodge at 13.50, Prieto at 5.79, Salazar at 7.71 — and it is also almost certainly going to stabilize as small samples regress toward the larger truths the career numbers describe. What you should do, which is different from panic, is pay close attention to whether the organizational decisions that produced these numbers are reconsidered before the sample gets larger. Trading Gutierrez created a gap. Salazar in high-leverage situations created exposure. Prieto in the ninth inning is a known problem with a known solution. The rotation ERA of 1.38 is so far ahead of what anyone could have projected that this team can absorb a rough bullpen April and still be in first place by ten games at the All-Star break. What it cannot absorb is these same decisions in October, when rough innings do not get averaged out over a full season. The answer to your question is: watch the decisions, not the ERA. From Marcus Williams of Oak Park, a high school principal who uses baseball to teach his students about probability, small samples, and the difference between variance and trend: "Is MacDonald's slow start variance or a trend?" Marcus, this is the correct question framed the correct way and the I will answer it directly. Through twelve games it is almost certainly variance. MacDonald's career average with Sacramento is .273 and his contact profile has not changed dramatically — he is hitting balls hard, the hits are not falling. By June, if he is still hitting .189, the conversation becomes a different one. What the I would note for your students is that the positional rankings entering this season — thirteenth overall at first base with the twenty-fourth-ranked organizational depth — represent a structural concern that exists regardless of any individual batting average. If MacDonald's variance resolves itself and he hits .273 for the rest of the season, the structural concern remains: Sacramento is one injury away from a first base situation with no viable internal replacement. That is not variance. That is organizational construction, and it persists independently of whether this particular twelve-game sample is noise or signal. From Robert Kim of Midtown Sacramento, an accountant who has been listening to the Hot Corner since 1991 and who submitted his question in a format that included a footnote, which the Hot Corner appreciated: "The footnote asks: given that Rubalcava is unsigned beyond this season, what is the realistic cost of keeping him, and can Sacramento afford it?" Robert, the footnoted question is the right one and the salary sheet provides the context to answer it. Sacramento's 1994 payroll is $8.7 million. By 1997 it drops to $4.3 million as the veteran contracts expire and the pre-arbitration players advance. The organization has, in other words, constructed a payroll that will have significant flexibility in the precise years when Rubalcava's contract extension would come into effect. The realistic cost of keeping him is whatever the market for a thirty-one-year-old Cy Young winner with a career ERA of 2.67 and a winning percentage of .735 commands in a free agency market — which is to say, considerably more than $800,000. The Hot Corner's estimate, offered without the benefit of an agent's expertise, is somewhere between three and five million dollars per year on a four-or-five-year extension. Sacramento can afford that. The payroll trajectory makes it clear that they can afford it. The question is whether they will do it before he pitches his way to an even larger number in November. Every Rubalcava start that goes in the books without a signed extension is a start that increases the eventual cost. The footnote is correct to flag this. The accountant in you should be pushing the front office to close this deal before the ledger gets more expensive. From Patricia Sullivan of East Sacramento, who attended the April 11th Long Beach game and who wrote that she watched the Takahashi grand slam from the left field bleachers and described the silence that fell over Cathedral Stadium as "the loudest quiet I have ever heard at a baseball game": "Was the Benoldi home run in October just the first one? Is this going to keep happening?" Patricia, the loudest quiet is exactly the right description and the Hot Corner was listening to the same silence from a different vantage point. To your question: the honest answer is that it will keep happening unless the organization makes a decision that it has so far declined to make. The Benoldi home run in October was not unique. The Takahashi grand slam on April 11th was the same home run in a different month against a different team by a different batter. Both happened in the ninth inning of a game Sacramento was leading. Both happened because the pitcher in the ninth inning threw a pitch that a hitter hit very hard and very far. The difference between October and April is that April's home run costs two games in the standings in a 162-game season, and October's home run ended a playoff series. The closer question has one correct answer and the Hot Corner has been arguing for it since June of 1993. Dodge closes. That is the answer. The organization's job is to hold the line on that answer the next time a blown save creates pressure to reconsider it, because the pressure will come and the correct response is not to reconsider, it is to maintain the deployment that the full body of evidence supports. Whether that happens is the most important managerial decision of the 1994 season, and it will not be made in a front office meeting. It will be made in the ninth inning of a game this program will be covering in real time. ______________________________ Twelve games. Nine wins. A rotation that is arguably the best in baseball through two weeks. A bullpen that is already on fire in the wrong direction. A lineup with two or three bats that need to find themselves and two or three more that are already operating at their ceiling. The schedule turns east this week — El Paso on Friday, San Jose on Monday — and the first road trip of the 1994 season will tell us something about whether this team can produce away from Cathedral Stadium the way it produced at home in April. Last year Sacramento went 45-36 on the road. The Hot Corner expects improvement on that number in 1994 and will be watching the first road series closely for evidence of it. The rotation will be fine. The rotation is always fine. It is everything after the seventh inning that this program will be watching with the particular attention that twelve games of evidence has made necessary. 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; 03-19-2026 at 09:21 PM.