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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May 16 – May 29, 1994 | Games 41–52 of the Sacramento Prayers 1994 Season
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THIRTY-SEVEN AND FIFTEEN, AN EIGHT-GAME STREAK, AND A FRONT OFFICE PLAYING FOR KEEPS
There is a version of this article that leads with the eight-game winning streak, which is the longest Sacramento has put together since before the Fort Worth series in October and which has produced the kind of baseball this program spent February predicting. There is another version that leads with the Baldelomar injury, which arrived like an unwelcome interruption in the middle of a season where the left field situation had finally, quietly stabilized into something functional.
I am going to lead with the trades.
Three transactions in the final days of May, all involving draft picks, all moving in the same direction: Sacramento sent Carlos Gutierrez and several picks to Fort Worth for a first and a fourth. Sacramento sent second and fourth round picks to San Jose for a first and a third. And then Sacramento sent Adam Schmidt, Tony Rivera, three first-round picks, and a third-round pick to Los Angeles for a first, a third, and a sixth. Three trades. Three separate organizations. A pattern that, taken together, tells a story about what the front office is doing and why.
The story is this: Sacramento is trying to draft first overall.
When you send three first-round picks to Los Angeles — not three second-round picks, not organizational depth arms of genuine consequence, three first-round picks — you are not building organizational depth. You are concentrating draft capital in a single position at the top of the board. The Fort Worth and San Jose trades follow the same logic, each one exchanging multiple lower selections for a single higher one. The accumulated result of these three transactions is a draft board that looks considerably more concentrated at the top than it did before May, and the implication of that concentration is that the organization intends to use it.
I want to be precise about what this means. The draft pool has Dylan Brazil, Jeff Olson, Jeff Barber, Jerry Powell, and Brad Nelson at or near the top. A front office that trades three first-round picks to Los Angeles is not doing so to get the fifth pick. It is doing so to get the first. The Sacramento Prayers are playing for a specific name on a specific card, and the cost they have paid to get into position for it tells you how much they want it. The Hot Corner will be watching the draft board with the attention that three first-round picks have purchased.
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THE RECORD: GAMES 41 THROUGH 52
vs Seattle, May 16-18 (3-0)
Espenoza opened the homestand on May 16th and went seven and a third innings against a Seattle lineup that manages to be both persistent and beatable in ways that make it a useful opponent for a rotation finding its rhythm. Lopez hit his ninth home run. The four RBI came with two outs. Ryan entered in the eighth with runners on second and third and retired Valadez to end the threat — a clean appearance that his ERA does not currently reflect and which the program notes without overstating. Dodge closed with five pitches. The 4-2 win was workmanlike and sufficient.
May 17th was St. Clair at seven innings and zero earned runs on six hits and three walks, which is the kind of performance that makes you forget the fifth starter designation and just call him what he is by this point in the season: a reliable arm who gives this team competitive starts. Bautista entered in the eighth and allowed a Morales grand slam — his worst outing since the Seattle series earlier this month — but the lead was sufficient to survive it. Mollohan contributed two doubles and two RBI, MacDonald went three for four, and the 8-5 final was comfortable before it needed to be.
May 18th was the game of the first half and possibly the game of the season, and I want to give it the space it deserves. Larson threw nine innings of two-hit baseball against a Seattle lineup that had been competitive all series — eleven strikeouts, two earned runs on home runs to Morales and Mejia, 101 pitches, a game score of 82. Nine innings, eleven strikeouts, and we went to extra innings anyway because the offense could not scratch out a third run against Schilder. Dodge entered in the tenth and walked two batters without allowing a run before Prieto inherited runners and threw two and a third clean innings, stranding three inherited runners across multiple appearances. Ryan entered in the thirteenth and threw a clean inning for the win. Alonzo delivered the walk-off single in the bottom of the thirteenth and the Cathedral crowd, which had been watching for nearly four hours, gave him exactly what that hit deserved. Musco went four for five across thirteen innings. The 3-2 final was the kind of game that reveals character and I believe this team has it.
@ Washington, May 20-22 (2-1)
The Washington series required a loss in the opener before Sacramento took the final two by a combined twenty runs, which is a sentence that describes a team that can absorb a bad night and immediately reassert itself. The bad night on May 20th belonged to Rubalcava, who did not pitch badly — eight innings, five hits, two earned runs, seven strikeouts — and belongs in the sentence only because the offense managed one run against a Washington pitcher named Jerry Adams whose ERA entering the start was 4.85. Adams threw seven and a third innings of two-hit ball at Devils Pit in front of fewer than eight thousand people and Sacramento went home with a loss. Rubalcava's record: four and three. His ERA: 2.19. I have written this paragraph four times in four separate articles this season and I will write it again here and then I will let it rest: the record does not describe the pitching.
May 21st was Andretti's second consecutive rough outing — four and a third innings, five earned runs, and an ERA that has risen from the 2.13 it was on April 28th to 3.33 entering this start, a number I will address in the section below. Then Salazar entered and threw three and two-thirds innings with one earned run and picked up the win in exactly the deployment situation that this program has been advocating for since April — a veteran coming in with the game still competitive, absorbing innings without the leverage of the ninth, contributing meaningfully. His ERA is 3.04. His record is two and one. Dodge closed for his tenth save. Baldelomar went four for five. The 9-7 win was messy and required constant management but the result is what it is.
May 22nd was Espenoza at six and two-thirds innings and one earned run against a Washington lineup that has compiled a team ERA above five and is carrying injuries at virtually every position. Scott threw two and a third clean innings. Lopez hit his tenth home run. Hernandez hit a two-run double. The 11-1 final — achieved in a ballpark that drew fewer than seven thousand people — and Baldelomar's stolen base injury became the number that mattered most. A fractured finger. Five weeks. The left fielder who had quietly built a .289 average and seventeen RBI and was finally rewarding the organizational patience that kept him in the lineup through a slow April will not play again until late June at the earliest.
vs Phoenix, May 23-25 (3-0)
The Phoenix series arrived at the right moment, providing three home games against a team with a 3.81 ERA and a rotation featuring Costodio Carro, who despite his 21-3 season in 1993 has opened 1994 at three and five with a 3.28 ERA — which suggests either that the league has adjusted or that Carro has had a difficult first quarter. The answers to that question will matter in October if Sacramento reaches the World Series and I intend to keep watching his numbers.
St. Clair handled May 23rd with eight innings of two-run baseball, allowing only two hits and striking out nine on ninety-five pitches. Taylor hit two solo home runs and that was the sum total of Phoenix's offense. Perez hit a two-run shot off Carro. MacDonald tripled with a runner on. Dodge closed with ten pitches. The 5-2 win was efficient and complete.
May 24th was Larson at eight and two-thirds innings, two hits, one earned run, nine strikeouts, a game score of 85. This is the Larson I have been waiting to watch for sustained periods since spring training — a pitcher capable of this quality for this long, whose variance problem has been the primary rotation concern since April. Murguia came off his cold stretch with three hits and a three-run home run that announced his return from whatever was ailing him at the plate. MacDonald added a three-run home run in the eighth. Cruz homered. The 13-1 final was the kind of game that leaves an opposing manager searching for diplomatic phrasing.
May 25th was Rubalcava at seven and a third innings — a win, genuinely, with the offense providing support. Zero walks on 106 pitches. Eight strikeouts. Marcos delivered a two-run double in the third that put the game beyond reach. Lopez went three for five with two steals. Cruz went four for five. Five-game winning streak. The 9-3 final and the accumulated evidence of three Phoenix games produced a pitching staff ERA conversation that the program section below will address properly.
vs San Jose, May 27-29 (3-0)
Andretti started May 27th and it was his third consecutive start that the word "rough" describes accurately — four and two-thirds innings, four earned runs. His ERA reached 3.33 and the contract year narrative that was so clean and compelling in April has become more complicated by the evidence of three consecutive starts where he did not give the team what his first eight starts suggested he could. Salazar entered again in relief and won again — three and a third innings, one earned run — and this is now a pattern rather than a coincidence, a forty-three-year-old legend whose correct deployment context is producing the same results reliably and who has built a two and one record and a 3.04 ERA by being used correctly. The 8-5 win extended the streak to six.
May 28th was Espenoza at eight innings, one earned run, zero walks, three hits. The cleanest start since his two-hit shutout against Seattle three weeks ago. Lopez hit his twelfth home run. Perez hit his sixth. Hernandez hit his first of the season, which is a sentence I have been waiting to write since April 1st — the right fielder who was stuck deep in cold company for the better part of two months finally cleared a fence at Cathedral Stadium and the crowd gave him what that required. Eight-game winning streak. Ryan was injured while pitching — back stiffness, day-to-day, an injury that is less alarming than the ERA that preceded it.
May 29th was St. Clair at five and two-thirds innings with four earned runs — his least effective start of the season, allowing a Boldrini two-run home run and showing for the first time the kind of variance that has been conspicuously absent from his 1994 line. Caliari threw two innings with two earned runs. Prieto threw a clean third of an inning for the win. Dodge closed with ten pitches for his thirteenth save. Musco went four for four with a home run and three singles and scored three times, because Musco in late May is doing what Musco does: producing at a rate that this franchise has come to expect and which the league continues to undervalue relative to what the box scores confirm. Eight-game winning streak completed. The 8-6 final required a two-run Alonzo single in the eighth to secure and the Sacramento crowd went home pleased.
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THREADS WORTH PULLING
The rotation as a collective unit is the best in baseball — Five starters. Five ERAs below four. Rubalcava at 2.32, Espenoza at 2.78, St. Clair at 2.77, Andretti at 3.33, Larson at 3.82. The team ERA of 3.11 leads all of baseball. Six complete games and five shutouts from a staff that averages barely over seven innings per start means the bullpen is being protected rather than overexposed, which is a management achievement as much as a pitching achievement. I have covered enough baseball to know that a five-man rotation with no ERA above 3.82 through fifty-four games is rare, and the word rare is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Andretti's three rough starts require honest assessment — He was five and zero with a 2.13 ERA on April 28th. He is now six and one with a 3.33 ERA on May 29th, and the three consecutive starts where he allowed four or more earned runs represent the first sustained evidence against the contract year narrative that opened the season so compellingly. I want to be careful about how I characterize this because three starts is a small sample and Andretti's career suggests he has the capacity to correct whatever has gone wrong — the walks have increased slightly, the contact rate has risen, and the overall efficiency that produced a complete game shutout in April has been replaced by starts that rarely extend past five innings. Whether this is the natural variance of a pitcher who was always going to regress from a 2.13 ERA, or whether it is something about his mechanics or approach that needs adjustment, is a question the pitching staff and the front office need to answer before the Baltimore series begins. His contract value in November is not diminished by three bad starts. His October availability depends on which version shows up in the second half.
Salazar as the sixth starter is a more accurate description than Salazar as a reliever — He has now been the winning pitcher twice when entering as a reliever in games where Andretti was roughed up, throwing a combined seven innings and allowing two earned runs across those two appearances. He is forty-three years old and his ERA is 3.04 and his deployment context — entering in the fifth or sixth inning of a game where the starter has left early, absorbing innings cleanly, allowing the actual bullpen arms to rest — is producing consistent results. I said after the spring training article that his role needed to be defined as mop-up and low-leverage. The evidence through fifty-four games is that he is capable of something more specific and more useful: a long-inning bridge arm for the games where Andretti is having a bad day. The Hot Corner acknowledges when the evidence updates the argument, and this is one of those times.
Cruz and Lopez are the two best players on this team right now — Through fifty-four games: Cruz at .367 with ten home runs, forty RBI, and a 1.093 OPS that ranks among the best marks in the American League at any position. Lopez at .273 with twelve home runs, eighteen stolen bases in twenty-three attempts, and a .897 OPS. The pairing of those two in the middle of this lineup — Cruz covering second and now occasionally third when the lineup requires it, Lopez anchoring center field with the kind of athletic range that the Gold Glove voters will notice — is the offensive engine that the rotation ERA makes look inevitable. It is not inevitable. It is the product of two players operating at or near their respective ceilings simultaneously, and the franchise that extended both of them at prices that look more favorable with every game should allow itself a moment of organizational satisfaction before returning its attention to the schedule.
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THE WATCH LIST
Baldelomar's fractured finger and the left field situation it has created — He was hitting .289 with four home runs and seventeen RBI and had earned the trust that the seventeenth-ranked positional ranking refused to extend to him in February. The fracture will keep him out five weeks — meaning he returns around late June or early July at the earliest — and in the meantime the left field situation belongs to Murguia in his limited-capacity role and Mollohan at replacement level. Murguia at .290 in sixty-nine at-bats is a different player than the one hitting .048 in his cold stretch, and his three-run home run against Phoenix on May 24th was the kind of contribution that a part-time player at thirty-seven can deliver in the right circumstances. What he cannot deliver is the everyday production that Baldelomar was building. The organizational need for a healthy left field option is now visible and pressing.
The Baldelomar contract situation adds a layer of complexity to his absence — I understand he is actively seeking a contract extension. The fractured finger creates an awkward negotiating dynamic: a player coming off an injury who was performing well enough to justify a serious offer is now unavailable to continue building his case. The organization's leverage increases when a player is injured. Whether that leverage is used fairly or opportunistically will tell us something about how Sacramento treats the players it wants to keep.
Dodge's ERA is continuing its correction — and the Fort Worth series will test it — Thirteen saves. An ERA of 4.70, down from the 11.12 peak in April. Three consecutive clean appearances entering the road trip. The trend is unmistakably correct and the underlying pitch quality has returned to something resembling the 1993 version that posted a 1.83 ERA. What the Fort Worth series provides is the first legitimate October preview test for the closer — a four-game road series against a team that scored off him in the ninth inning of Game 1 of the Division Series last October. The Benoldi home run happened seven months ago and the pitcher who allowed it has a different ERA now. I want to see how he handles the first appearance at Spirits Grounds in 1994.
Ryan's back stiffness and what it means for the middle relief — Day-to-day, which is the most optimistic classification available for a pitcher with a 6.43 ERA and a history of high-leverage failure this season. Ryan's back stiffness is the kind of injury that resolves itself in three days or becomes a ten-day IL stint with no obvious warning about which outcome is coming. The middle relief without Ryan is Bautista, Caliari, Scott, Prieto, and Salazar in appropriate deployment contexts, which is adequate but not deep. If Ryan misses meaningful time, the organization will be managing the Baltimore series with a thinner bullpen than the standings suggest it should have.
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THE LEAGUE AT LARGE
Brooklyn is thirty-six and seventeen and still the best team in the American League East, but the injury situation in that clubhouse has reached a point where I am beginning to wonder how long the record can sustain the attrition. Ivan Perez is out for the season with a ruptured UCL — three and one, 3.64 ERA, gone before June. Rafael Rastelli is out four months with a torn calf muscle. They had already lost Pedro Ortiz and John Miller before the season began. Brooklyn's shortstop situation has now lost three significant contributors, and their starting rotation has lost its most effective young arm. Their twenty-first-ranked team payroll suggests they are building with young talent rather than veteran depth, and young talent is exactly what they have lost this month. The record says thirty-six and seventeen. The injury report says something more complicated about the second half.
Baltimore at twenty-five and twenty-nine is closer to the bottom of the East than the top, but Jaime has been back in the lineup and the Satans have gone seven and three in their last ten games, which is the indicator I have been waiting for since April when the oblique strain sent him to the injured list. A healthy Baltimore with a healthy Jaime is the team that won one hundred and one games in 1993, and Sacramento plays them at Cathedral Stadium beginning June 3rd, which is three games that will tell this program more about the AL pennant race than any of the fifty-four games played to this point.
Fort Worth is sixteen and thirty-seven and twenty-one and a half games behind Sacramento in the standings. That number — twenty-one and a half games — is not the Fort Worth of October 1993 wearing a May 1994 record. It is the genuine product of a roster that has been decimated by injuries to Alzate, Ramos, Yost, Bocanegra, Music, and Valencia simultaneously. The four games starting Monday at Spirits Grounds will reveal whether what Sacramento does to a weakened Fort Worth club is convincing or merely comfortable.
Philadelphia at thirty-three and twenty is maintaining its NL East lead but losing ground on the pace they set in April — four and six in their last ten games after starting the season eight and two in that window. The rotation is still excellent and the offense is still excellent and they remain the most likely World Series opponent if Sacramento wins the pennant. I intend to keep saying this until the bracket makes it either true or false.
Salt Lake City Prophets leading the NL West at thirty and twenty-three is the most unexpected development in either league at this point in the season. They were projected at seventy wins. They have thirty already. The Hot Corner reserves judgment on whether this reflects genuine organizational quality or a favorable early schedule and intends to revisit the question in July when the quality of their competition has had more time to assert itself.
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THE MAILBAG — Because some questions deserve answers.
From Daniel Park of East Sacramento, a financial advisor who has been following Sacramento baseball since 1989 and who submitted a detailed analysis of the three draft pick trades along with a two-page cover letter explaining why he considers them either brilliant or reckless depending on which player Sacramento selects first overall: "Is trading three first-round picks to get the first overall selection worth it?"
Daniel, the two-page cover letter was thorough and the conditional framing — brilliant or reckless depending on the outcome — is exactly right. Here is my honest assessment. The cost of three first-round picks is significant but not unprecedented for an organization that believes it has identified the right player at the top of the draft board. The draft pool has several intriguing players — Brazil, Olson, Barber, Powell, Nelson — and the organization clearly believes that one of them is worth the price of three first-round picks plus the minor league arms that went to Los Angeles. Whether that belief is correct depends entirely on who the player is and what he becomes. What I can say about the organizational logic is this: Sacramento has a window. The Rubalcava extension is signed, Lopez is locked up through 1998, Cruz is under contract through 1996, and the payroll drops significantly after the current veteran contracts expire. The front office is acting like an organization that knows its window and is willing to spend draft capital to maximize what goes into it. That is not reckless. It is the decision of a franchise that understands urgency. Whether it is brilliant is a question that will be answered in three or four years when the player selected first overall either justifies the price or does not. The Hot Corner will be here for both outcomes.
From Maria Santos of Natomas, a pediatric nurse who has attended Sacramento home games since 1991 and who asked her question on behalf of her twelve-year-old son, Alejandro, who she says has named his classroom hamster after Alejandro Lopez and wants to know whether the real version is "as fast as he looks on TV": "What makes Lopez so good?"
Maria and Alejandro, the hamster naming is the most appropriate tribute available for a player who has stolen eighteen bases and hit twelve home runs through fifty-four games. What makes Lopez genuinely exceptional is not any single quality but the combination of all of them operating without apparent contradiction. He runs like someone who stole sixty bases last season and he hits for power like someone who has forty-five home runs in his recent history and he takes walks like someone who understands that getting on base is more important than swinging at borderline pitches, and he does all three of these things from the same position in the same lineup on the same afternoon. The hamster is correctly named. The real version is faster.
From James Whitmore of Curtis Park, who has attended Sacramento home openers for seventeen consecutive seasons and who described watching the eight-game winning streak from the left field bleachers as "the kind of baseball that makes you remember why you started coming in the first place": "How good is this team?"
James, seventeen consecutive home openers is seventeen years of evidence about what this franchise is and what it means to the city, and the question you are asking deserves the most honest answer I can give. This team is very good. Through fifty-four games it has the best ERA in baseball, the most wins in the American League, a rotation without a weakness, and two of the best position players in the league in Cruz and Lopez in the prime years of their careers. What it does not yet have is a postseason result that matches the regular season performance, and the memory of October 1993 sits alongside the current winning streak as a reminder that quality and results are not the same thing until October makes them so. The Baltimore series that starts June 3rd is the first opportunity to build the kind of evidence that October converts from narrative into result. I will be watching it with the same attention your seventeen seasons of attendance deserves.
From Roberto Kim of Midtown Sacramento, the accountant who asked about Rubalcava's contract in the last article and who has returned with a follow-up question now that the extension is signed: "With Rubalcava locked up, what does the front office do about Andretti?"
Roberto, the follow-up is appreciated and the timing is correct. Andretti is in a contract year with three consecutive rough starts and an ERA of 3.33 that represents both a regression from his April form and a number that still belongs in the conversation about quality starting pitching. The front office is in a specific and delicate position: they have just signed Rubalcava at eight hundred thousand per year, which will look like a bargain for a Cy Young winner, and they now face a negotiation with a thirty-three-year-old pitcher who will command a higher price after a strong second half than after a rough May. The correct organizational move is to approach Andretti now — before July, before the All-Star break, before the second half performance either elevates his price further or introduces the doubt that a bad September would create. The payroll flexibility exists. The roster construction supports it. The window that the Rubalcava extension protects requires Andretti to be in Sacramento in 1995, and the conversation that produces that outcome needs to happen this month rather than in November when the leverage has shifted entirely to Andretti's side.
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Four games in Fort Worth starting Monday. Gillon on the mound in Game 3, which is the matchup I want to see most — the pitcher who was dominant in Game 1 of last October's Division Series facing a Sacramento lineup that has spent the winter thinking about what it failed to do against him. Then Baltimore at Cathedral on Friday, which is the first genuine measuring-stick series of the season and the kind of games that tell you what a team actually is rather than what its record suggests it might be. Thirty-seven and fifteen is an excellent record. October is the only ledger that matters, and these next seven games are the closest thing available to an early preview of what that ledger might say.
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.