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 19 – October 5, 1997 | One Hundred and Fifteen Wins | The Final Account
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STRICKLER WINS THE AL PITCHING TRIPLE CROWN. THE REGULAR SEASON IS OVER.
Brian Strickler won eighteen games and struck out two hundred and twenty-five batters this season with a 2.31 ERA. All three numbers led the American League. Strickler's 1997 season produced the second pitcher's Triple Crown in the modern era, and the I want to say that plainly before we discuss anything else that happened in the final seventeen games of the regular season: this was one of the great individual pitching seasons in the history of this franchise, and the franchise that produced it has fifteen championship trophies.
Now the complications. Alejandro Lopez fractured his hand running the bases on September 29th and is on the IL with a three-to-four-week projection. If the ALCS begins within the next several days — and the wild card games are being played now — Lopez will not be in the starting lineup for Game One. Gil Cruz has a sprained knee from a collision on October 4th, day-to-day and listed at three days. Musco sustained a second injury while running the bases on September 27th and his status remains unclear. Rubalcava was injured while pitching on September 26th but recovered quickly enough to win on October 1st.
The Hot Corner will address each of these below. First: one hundred and fifteen wins. Nine consecutive wins to close the season. The best record in the American League by ten games over Columbus. Sacramento has a first-round bye.
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DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY
@ Charlotte, September 19-21 (1-2)
The Charlotte series opened with the fourteenth entry in the Hot Corner's log of starters who have shut this lineup down: Raya went eight innings and allowed two runs, two hits produced from three at-bats while the offense wasted everything else. Strickler allowed a Thomas two-run homer and a Barbosa homer in the first inning — both with two outs, both after two-strike counts — and never recovered the lead. Three to two, Charlotte. The pattern is in the record for the final time before October arrives.
September 20th was Zeiders going eight innings and striking out eleven. Sacramento generated six hits and zero runs. This is the fifteenth entry in the shutdown log. Rubalcava allowed a Barbosa two-run homer in the fourth and that was the game's entirety. Zero to three, Charlotte.
September 21st: Andretti went five and two-thirds innings and allowed three runs, and the offense finally broke through on a Lopez three-run homer in the fifth off Sato. Sato himself went eight and two-thirds innings, which means the offense waited until the fifth to score and then held on with four bullpen arms across the final three and a third innings. Rodriguez homered in the seventh. McDonald won in relief. Six to four, Sacramento.
@ Nashville, September 22-24 (1-2)
September 22nd: Espenoza allowed four runs in six innings against Nashville — three home runs, which is the bad version of his ERA-leading season making a late appearance — and the offense generated three runs that were not enough. Four to three, Nashville. A Clifton start that the I am now logging explicitly because the I have said for four months that Clifton-type pitchers with efficient sinker location below the zone cause this lineup trouble. He went seven innings. One earned run.
September 23rd: Jimenez went six and two-thirds innings and won his fourteenth game. Lozano hit a two-run homer in the first. Lopez hit his twenty-seventh in the first. The offense scored ten runs against Nashville's pitching staff. Porras was injured running the bases — torn ankle ligaments, three weeks projected. Significant because the catching depth situation entering the ALCS now consists of Zuniga, with Florez recovering from his fractured ulna in a day, and Berrios on the IL with his fractured finger. The catcher situation is the least discussed positional depth problem on this roster and it is now acute. Ten to two, Sacramento.
September 24th: Guzman went eight innings, one hit, eight strikeouts. Nashville scored three runs against Strickler across six and a third innings, including a Mendez two-run homer in the first. Zero runs for Sacramento in eight innings from the lineup against Guzman, a pitcher who is twelve and thirteen. The shutdown count is now sixteen. Zero to three. A quiet end to the regular season road trip.
vs. San Jose, September 26-28 (3-0)
September 26th is the game where Rubalcava was injured. He went two and a third innings before leaving the game, and the injury note appeared in the log alongside a Sacramento nine-to-zero win where Shinohara hit a grand slam in the fifth. The Hot Corner wants to document the Rubalcava injury carefully: he pitched six innings and won his sixteenth game on October 1st, five days after the September 26th injury, which means the severity was manageable. The specific nature of the injury is not noted in the available data. His October 1st outing — six innings, one run, five strikeouts — suggests whatever happened on September 26th has resolved. Esparza won the September 26th game in relief. Nine to zero.
September 27th: Andretti won his seventeenth game with six innings of one-run ball. Choi hit his first triple of the entire season in the first inning. Perez went three for four. Lopez hit his twenty-eighth homer. Six to two. The note from September 27th: Musco was injured again running the bases. He played through the injury and appeared in subsequent games. This is his third September injury — the concussion on September 10th and now this — and the Hot Corner is watching his October availability without being able to confirm his full health status.
September 28th: The final appearance of St. Clair against Sacramento in the 1997 regular season produced the same result as his previous four: five and two-thirds innings, five runs allowed, a loss. His 1997 record against Sacramento is zero wins and four losses. His regular season ERA against all other opponents is 4.86. Rodriguez hit his twenty-fifth homer off him. Choi hit his forty-second. Lozano hit his twenty-second in the eighth for insurance. Seven to six, Sacramento.
@ Seattle, September 29 – October 1 (3-0)
September 29th: Rodriguez hit his twenty-fifth homer and Shinohara hit his eleventh as the sixth entry in the nine-game winning streak took shape against a sixty-one-win Seattle team. Lopez went two for two with a double and two stolen bases before being removed with the injury that would become a fractured hand. Lopez's offensive contribution to the 1997 season — twenty-eight home runs, seventy RBI, fifty-five stolen bases, a .244 average from the leadoff position — has been the organizational depth story of the year. His absence from the lineup for the early rounds of the ALCS is a serious structural problem. Six to three.
September 30th: Choi hit his forty-third homer in the fifth inning — a three-run shot off White with two on and two outs. Jimenez went six innings and allowed three runs. Four to three, Sacramento. Jimenez is now fifteen and seven.
October 1st: Rubalcava went six innings in the return from his injury and allowed one run. Rodriguez hit his twenty-sixth homer for the decisive runs. Prieto and Benson finished the game. Three to one, Sacramento. The regular season win total reached one hundred and twelve.
@ Portland, October 3-5 (3-0)
Three games against a sixty-one-loss Portland team, played as tuneups before the ALCS, and the Hot Corner will document them accurately without over-reading them as diagnostic information for October. The lineup went eleven to two, three to one, and eleven to one across the three games. Andretti went seven innings and won his eighteenth game in the opener. Strickler went eight innings in the middle game. Espenoza went eight and a third innings in the finale. Rodriguez hit two home runs on October 5th and drove in four. Choi hit his forty-fifth and forty-sixth. Mollohan hit his second — a two-run shot in the first inning on October 3rd that was one of the more unexpected contributions of the final week. Cruz went five for eighteen across the three games with a homer and six RBI in his pre-ALCS tuneup role.
Nine consecutive wins to end the year. One hundred and fifteen victories.
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THE FINAL ACCOUNTING — WHERE THIS SEASON ENDS
Strickler's Pitching Triple Crown
Eighteen wins. Two hundred and twenty-five strikeouts. A 2.31 ERA. The league leader in each category. The Hot Corner has been documenting Strickler's season since April 25th — the no-hitter, the fourteen consecutive quality starts, the summer period where his ERA at 1.57 bordered on statistical surrealism — and the final numbers confirm that this was a historically significant individual season. The Cy Young will follow. The Triple Crown is the trophy he will be proud someday to show to his grandchildren.
The rotation enters October with all five starters in some form of health
Strickler: eighteen wins, 2.31 ERA, Cy Young frontrunner, healthy.
Espenoza: sixteen wins, 3.05 ERA, two hundred and fourteen strikeouts, healthy.
Andretti: eighteen wins, 3.17 ERA, healthy.
Rubalcava: sixteen wins, 2.83 ERA, mild September injury that resolved before October. The October 1st start suggests full functionality.
Jimenez: fifteen wins, 3.31 ERA, six losses since July 3rd with only one loss since then, healthy.
Five starters above fifteen wins. Two at eighteen wins. The rotation is the most formidable single component of this franchise since the 1994 championship team's mound staff, and it is healthier entering October than anyone could have projected after the April flu and the subsequent roster turbulence.
The injury report entering the ALCS
Lopez: fractured hand, IL. Three to four weeks. He will miss the opening rounds and his return timeline for the ALCS itself is genuinely uncertain. The offense without Lopez loses its primary stolen base threat — fifty-five on the season — and its most dangerous leadoff configuration. Chavarria, Mollohan, or Musco will fill the center field slot while this situation resolves. None of them are replacements for what Lopez provides.
Cruz: sprained knee, day-to-day, three days. The Hot Corner expects him back for the ALCS based on the timeline.
Musco: additional running injury September 27th, status unclear. He appeared in the October games in a limited role. Whether he is at full capacity for the ALCS — his defensive contribution at shortstop is the specific organizational reason he was missed for five months — is the open question that the next several days will answer.
Florez: flu, day-to-day. One day projected. The Hot Corner is not concerned about this.
Medina: torn rotator cuff, on IL, eligible for return, two months projected recovery. He is not coming back. I have stated this before and state it for the final time: the closer role belongs to Benson for October, with Esparza, Lawson, and Clawson filling the bridge innings.
The individual offensive production one final time before October arrives
Choi: forty-six home runs, a hundred and twenty-seven RBI, a .278 average. The knee held. The numbers speak to a player who produced at an MVP level across one hundred and sixty-two games despite managing knee tendinitis through the final six weeks. Mele of Baltimore won the AL Triple Crown at .356, fifty homers, and a hundred and forty-eight RBI — numbers that the Hot Corner acknowledges as genuinely historic and slightly better than what Choi produced. Whether the Prayers would have preferred to face Mele in October rather than Columbus depends entirely on which Wild Card matchup survives.
Rodriguez: twenty-eight home runs, seventy-two RBI, fifteen errors. The Hot Corner has been logging Rodriguez's defensive error count since April alongside his offensive breakthrough, and the final number — fifteen errors in one hundred and fifty-two games — is the specific postseason concern that will not disappear regardless of how many home runs he hits in October.
Cruz: sixteen errors and forty-seven stolen bases and a .297 average and sidelined for three, perhaps four more days, but it appears something minor and not postseason-threatening.
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THE PLAYOFF BRACKET AND WHAT IT MEANS
Sacramento has the best record in the American League and the first-round bye. The wild card games that matter most to the Hot Corner:
Brooklyn versus Columbus. This is the specific game the Hot Corner has been anticipating since October 1996. Columbus at one hundred and five wins and fifty-seven losses is the best team in the American League not called Sacramento. Flores is fourteen and six. If Columbus wins this game — and the Hot Corner's projection is that they will — the ALCS matchup that has been building since last October arrives.
Detroit versus San Jose. Detroit at ninety-three wins is the league's third-best team. San Jose has been playing better baseball in September than the eighty-four-win final record suggests. The winner faces Sacramento's rotation in the ALCS if Columbus is eliminated.
Baltimore versus Philadelphia. The AL East winner Baltimore at ninety-two wins features Daniel Mele, who won the AL Triple Crown. The Hot Corner watches this matchup carefully given that a Sacramento-Baltimore ALCS would be this franchise's most challenging bracket scenario — Mele in the lineup, a ninety-two-win team with quality pitching.
The Hot Corner's early prediction: Columbus advances past Brooklyn, Sacramento defeats whoever wins in their half of the bracket, and the ALCS produces the rematch that June 18th previewed.
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THE INBOX — REGULAR SEASON FAREWELL EDITION
From Rodrigo Villafuerte of Sacramento's Curtis Park neighborhood, an urban planner who says the most important lesson his field has taught him is that the most resilient cities are not the ones without vulnerabilities but the ones that have identified them and designed around them, who asks: "Does this team enter October having designed around its vulnerabilities?"
Rodrigo, the question gets at something the Hot Corner has been filing since June. The specific vulnerability — quality starters who locate sinkers and curveballs consistently below the zone, producing ground balls and shallow contact — has not been designed around so much as partially countered. Choi proved on June 18th that his bat can solve Flores. The rotation proved across one hundred and fifteen wins that the vulnerability can be absorbed if the score entering the late innings is favorable. What has not been designed around is the late-inning architecture without Medina: if Sacramento carries a one-run lead into the eighth inning in October, Benson becomes the primary structural support for a load that Medina carried reliably. Benson is capable. He is also five for twenty-three in save opportunities. The design acknowledges the vulnerability. Whether it holds under maximum load is what October tests.
From Celestine Nwosu of Sacramento's North Highlands neighborhood, a pediatric nurse who has worked for twenty years managing complex care situations and who says the hardest skill in her profession is learning to read multiple indicators simultaneously rather than fixating on any single one, who asks: "Reading all the indicators at once — is this team better or worse positioned for October than you projected in April?"
Celestine, better in ways I did not anticipate and worse in ways the projections could not predict. Better: Jimenez at fifteen wins, Rubalcava's return to Cy Young form, Rodriguez's twenty-eight home runs, Esparza and Lawson and Clawson as functional bullpen components after Medina's loss. Worse: Medina gone, Florez's fractured ulna, Adams's repeated groin injuries, Musco's concussion and subsequent setback, Lopez's fractured hand entering the playoff bracket. The specific indicator the Hot Corner is reading most carefully across all of these simultaneously is the catcher position: Florez is still battling the flu today, but should be back tomorrow, Zuniga is twenty-five years old with three postseason-caliber plate appearances to his name, Berrios has a fractured finger. The catching situation has been patched rather than solved since August 12th, and the indicator panel for October has that warning light still lit.
From Jakub Svoboda of Davis, a wine chemist who has spent thirty years studying fermentation and who says that what separates a great vintage from a good one is usually a single variable that only reveals itself over time, who asks: "What is the 1997 Sacramento Prayers single variable that will reveal itself over time?"
Jakub, the rotation. Not as a concern — as the defining characteristic. When the Hot Corner writes about the 1997 Sacramento Prayers in future years, the specific thing that will have crystallized is what this rotation did from April through October: Strickler's Cy Young Triple Crown, Espenoza's two hundred and fourteen strikeouts, Andretti and Rubalcava combining for thirty-four wins and a combined 3.00 ERA, Jimenez's fifteen-win emergence as a genuine postseason fifth starter. The single variable that reveals this vintage as something more than a good season is whether the rotation translates its regular season dominance into playoff outcomes. The best regular season rotation in franchise history has now arrived at the moment that defines what it was. October is the fermentation chamber. The yield will be known by the end of the month.
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Wild card games are being played now. Brooklyn faces Columbus. Detroit faces San Jose. Philadelphia faces Baltimore. The Sacramento Prayers have a bye, their rotation healthy, their bullpen rebuilt from the August wreckage of Medina's torn rotator cuff, their lineup missing Lopez but otherwise intact.
One hundred and fifteen wins. Forty-seven losses. The best record in baseball. Strickler's Pitching Triple Crown. Choi's forty-six home runs. Rubalcava's recovery arc from seven-fifty to two-eighty-three. Jimenez's fifteen wins and the long-awaited emergence of the ceiling version. Andretti's eighteen wins.
This is the team. The calendar reads October. The season arrives at its purpose.
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Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California. The Hot Corner returns for ALCS coverage.