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 1 – May 17, 1998 | Seventeen and Twenty | Three and Ten in One-Run Games
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THE WORST START IN FRANCHISE HISTORY
Let me state the relevant facts in sequence, because the sequence matters.
Sacramento's pitching staff has the best combined ERA in the American League — starters second at 3.70, bullpen first at 3.56, fewest runs allowed in the AL. The team is seventeen and twenty. Both statements are accurate simultaneously, and the gap between them is the story of 1998 so far.
The team is three and ten in one-run games. Last season they went thirty-one and thirteen. The offense ranks thirteenth in the AL in batting average at .236 and twelfth in on-base percentage at .310. They are scoring fewer runs per game than they give up, despite pitching better than almost every other team in the league, because the offense has been among the worst in the division and the close games — the ones that the rotation keeps close by surrendering two and three runs instead of five and six — keep ending in losses.
Now add to this: Strickler was injured while pitching on May 9th. He went one and two-thirds innings against Washington before leaving the game with what was later called "back spasms" by the medical staff. He pitched again on May 15th and got the win in five innings, so the injury appears minor, but his ERA over his last three starts is 10.32 and his full-season ERA has climbed to 5.26. Medina hyperextended his knee while pitching on May 13th and is on the IL for two weeks. Cruz sprained his knee on May 8th and is day-to-day for five days.
This is the franchise's worst start through April and first half of May. It is not time to panic. It is time for precise, honest accounting of what is happening and what needs to change.
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DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY
@ Brooklyn, May 1-3 (1-2)
May 1st: Espenoza won his fourth game. Chavarria went three for five with a triple and two singles and scored three times. Benson saved it cleanly. Four to two.
May 2nd: Rubalcava threw seven innings and gave up three runs. Prieto allowed a Galindo two-run homer in the eighth. Five to three. The one-run record ticks to three and eight.
May 3rd: Strickler allowed six runs across four and two-thirds innings and Sacramento lost nine to eight in a game that was theoretically close but never actually comfortable. The ninth inning produced five Sacramento runs that were seven runs too late. Sacramento scored eight times and still managed to lose the game.
@ Columbus, May 4-6 (1-2)
May 4th: Sato allowed four runs in seven innings and Benoldi — the Columbus third baseman hitting .421 — had a two-run homer in the first and three hits total. Schlageter pitched well. Four to two, Columbus.
May 5th: Andretti was excellent — six and two-thirds innings, two hits, one run. Choi hit his ninth homer. Lozano hit his fourth. Perez hit his fourth. Five to two. Three homers from the middle of the order in a game that needed them.
May 6th: Espenoza gave up three runs in five innings, including a Roberto Lopez double that scored two in the third. Bruce of Columbus closed the final inning for his fifth save. Three to two. The game was another one-run loss. The record goes to four and nine in one-run games.
vs. Washington, May 8-10 (1-2)
May 8th: Rubalcava pitched six and two-thirds innings against a nine-and-twenty-one Washington team and won his second game. Four to three. Cruz was injured running the bases.
May 9th is clearly the worst game of the season. Strickler was injured while pitching and left after one and two-thirds innings allowing five runs, including a Washburn three-run homer. The bullpen gave up nine additional runs. Sacramento scored thirteen runs and lost fourteen to thirteen because the bullpen allowed nine earned runs across six and a third innings. Benson entered in the ninth with a ten-to-nine lead and allowed five runs. Five! Dedeaux stroked a two-run single with the bases loaded and Sacramento was done.
I want to highlight this game specifically for future reference: Sacramento scored thirteen runs against a ten-and-twenty-one team, had a lead entering the ninth, and lost by one run because the bullpen allowed five runs in the final inning. Four losses of the three-and-ten one-run record follow this exact pattern. The rotation creates a margin. The bullpen erases it.
May 10th: Andretti pitched six and two-thirds innings against Washington and allowed one run. Musselman held two and a third innings without allowing anything. Medina entered in the eleventh, surrendered a Caballaro three-run homer, and lost. Four to two, Devils. This was also an eleven-inning one-run loss. The record in these one-run games goes to four and ten.
@ Seattle, May 11-13 (2-1)
May 11th: Espenoza threw eight complete innings and allowed three runs — two of them on an Oaks two-run homer in the fifth. Three to two, Lucifers. Espenoza pitched eight innings and lost. Another close game lost.
May 12th: Sato went six and two-thirds innings. Chavarria went three for five with a three-run homer. Lozano hit his sixth. Eight to three, Prayers.
May 13th: The extra-inning win where almost everything went right, but one thing that went wrong was Medina hyperextending his knee. He threw one and a third innings after entering with a two-run lead and allowed a tying Holst homer in the ninth — not from poor performance but from a pitch sequence that ended in knee contact with the mound — and then Gonzalez held the final out, and Perez drove in the winning run with a tenth-inning single. Three to two. Medina is on the IL.
@ San Jose, May 15-17 (2-2, including makeup game)
The makeup game from April 9th, which was rained out in the third inning, was played as the first game of May 15th doubleheader. Andretti gave up six runs in four and two-thirds innings, including two Adams homers. Eight to five loss.
The second game of May 15th: Strickler went five innings, allowed three earned runs off eleven San Jose hits, and won because the offense erupted for thirteen runs against St. Clair and the San Jose bullpen. Thirteen to six. Strickler is two and three.
May 16th: Espenoza pitched five innings and Lawson, entering in the sixth, held two and two-thirds innings without allowing a run to earn his first win of the season. Eight to four.
May 17th: Sato gave up six runs across five innings. Gonzalez entered in the ninth with the score tied, threw one pitch, and Montemayor hit a walk-off homer. Seven to six, Demons. Sacramento's one-run record falls to three and ten.
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THE HONEST ACCOUNTING
Jimmy Aces has said the right things after each of these losses. He has not said anything wrong. He has also not produced results that reverse the pattern, and I want to be clear that at some point the pattern itself — not any individual game — becomes the subject of legitimate scrutiny.
The specific problem: Sacramento is three and ten in one-run games against a league where they have the best pitching ERA. This means they are winning the games they should win comfortably and losing the games that demand late-inning execution. The late-inning execution requires Benson to close without allowing five runs in the ninth, and Benson has not reliably done that this season. His ERA is nine. The blown save in the May 9th Washington game — the worst single performance by a Sacramento pitcher in at least two seasons — represents the extreme version of a failure mode that has appeared multiple times.
Medina is the traditional answer to this challenge, and he was until he hyperextended his knee. Medina returns in approximately eleven days. Until then, Aces has a rotation that is second in the AL by ERA and a closer who cannot be trusted in single-run situations.
The offense is not carrying its weight. The team hits .236 and has a .310 OBP against a league average that is meaningfully higher. Cruz is one of the few hitters performing near his career levels. Lopez has found some rhythm. Choi has twelve home runs and will continue hitting. But Perez at .235, Rodriguez at .177, Shinohara at .193 — these are gaps that compound over a month and produce the run-scoring deficits that make one-run losses inevitable.
This is not a panic situation. It is a below-.500 situation that contains a correction mechanism — Medina's return in eleven days, Strickler apparently healthy enough to pitch, the lineup containing enough talent that the offensive drought cannot last at this pace through June. But it is a real worrisome situation and the question of whether this franchise misses the playoffs for the first time since 1993 is no longer theoretical.
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THE INBOX
From Chioma Eze of Sacramento's Arden-Arcade neighborhood, a dentist, who asks: "Should fans be panicking?"
No. A team that leads the AL in runs allowed while sitting three wins out of the wildcard in May does not panic. It identifies the specific failure mode — the bullpen in one-run games — and waits for Medina to return. Panic is for teams without answers. Sacramento has an answer. The only problem — "the answer" has a knee hyperextension...
From Bram Vandenberghe of Sacramento's East Sacramento neighborhood, an architect, who asks: "Is there a point at which the rotation's brilliance just doesn't matter anymore?"
Yes and we've been watching it for six weeks. A rotation ERA of 3.70 in the American League is elite. A one-run record of three and ten tells you it isn't translating to wins. The architecture works beautifully until the ninth inning and then something in the structure fails. Medina was the load-bearing element the design required. With him injured, the design is exposed.
From Nadia Serrano of Sacramento's Midtown neighborhood, a nurse practitioner, who asks: "What's the realistic floor for this team — how bad can it get before things turn around?"
The realistic floor is somewhere around fifteen games under .500, which would require another month of this pace. I don't think that happens because Medina returns, the offense has enough talent to correct toward the mean, and the rotation won't allow the run-scoring deficits to stay this extreme indefinitely. The more relevant question is how much ground is lost to San Jose before the correction arrives. San Jose is twenty-two and sixteen. Sacramento is four and a half back. A month-long slump in May while San Jose plays .579 ball does real damage to a division race, and even if Sacramento rights itself in June, catching four and a half games on a legitimately capable team is not guaranteed.
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Two-game trip to Los Angeles starting May 18th. Then St. Louis twice at home. Then on the road again to play three-game series against Detroit. Medina returns around May 24th. Cruz returns within five days. The rotation needs no fixing. The one-run record needs to be corrected, and that is on bullpen.
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Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.