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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October 18 – October 23, 1997 | League Championship Series | Four to One | Sacramento Is Going to the World Series
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BENSON BLEW GAME ONE, MUSCO WON GAME TWO, STRICKLER ANSWERED THE BELL.
The ninth inning of Game One is where this LCS will be remembered as beginning rather than ending. Sacramento led four to two. Benson entered with one out and a runner on second. He walked Thibeault. He walked Garcia's count to three-and-two. Garcia hit a two-run double into the gap. Philadelphia won five to four. It was Benson's seventh blown save of the season and the most consequential one, in the most consequential game of the year, in front of the home crowd at Cathedral Stadium.
What followed across the next four games is the story of a team that absorbed the worst possible outcome and did not collapse. Musco's walk-off double in the eleventh inning of Game Two is the moment that lives. Strickler's seven shutout innings and nine strikeouts in Game Three answered the question that his Game Three collapse against San Jose had opened. Espenoza went eight and a third innings in Game Four and struck out ten. Perez hit five home runs and drove in fourteen runs in five games and was named series MVP. Sacramento wins the LCS four games to one.
Benson's ERA across the postseason is now 8.04. He enters the World Series as the nominal closer of a team that has not reliably had a closer since August 12th. I think it is worrisome, because Vancouver is watching and the World Series begins Saturday.
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DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY
Game One (October 18, Cathedral Stadium): Philadelphia 5, Sacramento 4
Rubalcava started and gave up two runs in five and a third innings against a lineup that hit eleven balls in play off him — Campen's triple with two on in the sixth was the decisive swing of his outing. The Sacramento offense answered with Choi's two-run homer in the seventh, tying it four to two. The outcome has already been described. A footnote note to the game that didn't go as planned: Clawson was injured while pitching in his one-third of an inning of relief. His strained shoulder puts him on the IL for four to five weeks, which means he is unavailable for the World Series. The depth that replaced Medina has now itself been depleted.
Game Two (October 19, Cathedral Stadium): Sacramento 7, Philadelphia 6, 11 innings
Sams was injured after recording one out in the first inning. Philadelphia burned through six pitchers across eleven innings. Andretti allowed four runs in five and two-thirds innings, including a Thibeault two-run homer and a Maldonado solo shot. The offense kept pace — Choi homered in the second, Shinohara homered in the third, Blake tripled with Perez on base for two more runs — but the game went to extras tied at six. In the eleventh, Mollohan reached on a pinch hit single, Musco stepped in and doubled him home, and Cathedral Stadium produced the loudest moment of the postseason. Lawson got the win. Seven to six, Sacramento. The series was tied.
Game Three (October 21, PETCO Park): Sacramento 6, Philadelphia 0
The Strickler redemption. Seven innings, three hits, zero runs, nine strikeouts. The Philadelphia lineup that had scored five off him in the regular season and forced this question all October received the definitive answer. The Hot Corner will not belabor it — the performance was exactly what the rotation required. Florez hit a two-run homer in the seventh. Fourteen hits across the lineup. Prieto closed out the final two innings. Six to nothing.
Game Four (October 22, PETCO Park): Sacramento 8, Philadelphia 2
Espenoza through eight and a third innings, ten strikeouts, two earned runs — a Campen homer and a Garcia homer that arrived as meaningless ornamentation against an eight-run offense. Cruz walked three times, homered once, doubled once, stole two bases, and scored three times. Florez went two for five with two doubles and two RBI, the best offensive performance of his playoff run. Sacramento led eight to nothing entering the ninth. A rain delay of forty-nine minutes in the fourth inning changed nothing except the length of the evening. Eight to two. Sacramento leads three games to one.
Game Five (October 23, PETCO Park): Sacramento 9, Philadelphia 4
Perez hit two home runs off Gamez — a solo shot in the second and a two-run shot in the fourth — to account for three of Sacramento's nine runs. Choi hit his fifth postseason home run in the fourth. Rodriguez hit his second of the series in the same inning. Rubalcava went six and two-thirds innings and allowed four runs — Arellano's two-run homer in the fourth was the only real damage — but the nine-run support made the result never in doubt. Jimenez came on in the seventh and closed out the final two and a third innings without allowing a run, earning the save. Nine to four. The Sacramento Prayers are going to the World Series!
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THE WORLD SERIES OPPONENT — VANCOUVER SINS
Vancouver is seventy-nine and eighty-three. They scored six hundred and seventy-five runs in the regular season, fourteenth of fourteen National League teams. Their team batting average was .253, also fourteenth. They won ninety games fewer than Sacramento during the regular season and yet they are here because they beat Milwaukee in the wild card, beat Phoenix in the Division Series three games to one, and beat Salt Lake City in the LCS four games to one. This is the least expected finalist among the teams that entered this year playoffs.
The main reason Vancouver is dangerous is not their offense. It is their ability to win close games — twenty-six and fifteen in one-run games during the regular season, a .634 winning percentage in tight situations that ranks third in the NL. They steal bases at the third-highest rate in the National League with a hundred and sixty-seven on the season. Farmer, their LCS MVP, hit .471 and scored four runs in five games against Salt Lake City. They do not overwhelm opponents. They manufacture runs from the margin of whatever is available and their pitching staff has held more than five runs in a game exactly once in the postseason.
Their rotation: Quirarte at thirteen and thirteen with a 3.72 ERA starts Game Two. Varela at twelve and six with a 3.79 ERA starts Game Three. Nieves at eleven and twelve with a 4.20 ERA starts Game Four. Game One starter Hernandez is seven and eighteen with a 5.86 ERA. T
The greatest concern for Sacramento entering the World Series is Benson and the late innings of any game decided by fewer than three runs. Vancouver's twenty-six one-run wins all year suggest they know how to be present in exactly those situations.
The roster transaction note: Lopez is still out with the fractured hand. Reports from the training staff indicate that he is not expected to be healthy enough to get on the active World Series roster and restore the leadoff configuration that Sacramento has been missing since September 29th. Prayers will have to do it without him in the lineup. Vut Berrios and Porras have been activated. The roster is as healthy as it has been since July.
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THE INBOX
From Seun Adeyemi of Elk Grove, a high school football coach, who asks: "Benson has blown seven saves. Do you trust him in the World Series?"
The honest answer is no, not unconditionally. But who replaces him? Esparza and Lawson have been functional in the bridge role but neither is a closer by design. Prieto has five saves and a 3.31 ERA. What Aces probably does — and should do — is deploy Benson only with multi-run leads and hand the leverage situations to Esparza and Lawson. Whether that configuration holds in a seventh game of the World Series against a team that wins one-run games for a living is where the uncertainty lives.
From Miriam Salomons of Sacramento's East Sacramento neighborhood, a florist, who asks: "Is Musco's walk-off in Game Two the moment this series is remembered for?"
For the people in Cathedral Stadium that night, yes. For the record books, probably Perez's five home runs and fourteen RBI in a series where the offense scored thirty-four runs in five games. But Musco's walk-off has the particular quality of moments that acquire emotional weight over time — the shortstop who missed five months, returned to the lineup in September, got a concussion and a running injury, and then won a playoff game in the eleventh inning. That story writes itself.
From Daisuke Yamamoto of Sacramento's Curtis Park neighborhood, a restaurateur who has been in business for twenty years, who asks: "What's the most likely way this World Series ends badly for Sacramento?"
Benson, a rain delay in Vancouver that keeps the starters' arms cold, and a lineup that bats .253 but wins twenty-six one-run games suddenly getting hot for seventy-two hours. Vancouver doesn't need to out-hit this rotation. They need three games where someone blows a ninth-inning lead and their bullpen holds the bottom of the frame. That sequence has already happened once this postseason. It's the scenario worth watching.
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Game One is Saturday at Cathedral Stadium. Vancouver sends Hernandez — seven and eighteen, 5.86 ERA — to face Sacramento's rotation. The World Series begins.
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Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.