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 1 – September 16, 1998 | Eighty-Nine and Fifty-Eight | Daniel Mele of Baltimore Shatters Record
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JEON'S SEASON IS OVER, MAGIC NUMBER IS NINE
The five-game losing streak that opened September was the worst of the season, and two of the five losses came against a Boston team that entered the series at fifty-eight and seventy-four. Jimmy Aces said after the third Boston game that his team had the game right there for the taking and decided not to take it. That quote did not land well in the Sacramento clubhouse, I suspect, and it did not fully describe what actually happened — which was that Andretti pitched six and a third innings and the bullpen handed the lead back in the ninth for the second time in as many weeks. But the directness of it was accurate. Sacramento left Boston having lost three games they should have won, to a team going nowhere, and the division lead that had been twelve games in July had thinned to five.
What happened in the sixteen days since is a more encouraging story. Nine wins in the last eleven games. A four-game winning streak entering the Charlotte series. Lozano over one hundred RBI. Navarro turning into a legitimate contributor. The magic number sitting at nine with thirteen games remaining. The rotation — battered and complicated by injuries and bad outings — still leads the FBL in ERA through its top three starters.
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DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY
@ Boston, September 1-3 (0-3)
The first game had a familiar shape by now: Andretti pitched well enough to win, Sacramento carried a three-three tie into the ninth, and Medina faced Eddie Shields with two outs and a full count and watched him hit a walkoff homer into the Boston night. Four to three. The second game was considerably less elegant — Espenoza lasted one and two-thirds innings, surrendered six runs before the second inning was finished, and Sacramento spent the rest of the afternoon losing eight to two against a team that arrived at Fenway on a six-game losing streak. The third game: Strickler allowed a Molina three-run homer in the bottom of the first inning before the Sacramento offense had batted, fought back to trail by one run, and watched Tabone strand two runners in the ninth for the save. Three consecutive losses to a last-place team, the bullpen or the early innings doing the damage in each, and September had barely started.
vs. San Jose, September 4-6 (1-2)
Rubalcava allowed three runs in six and a third innings on September 4th and Trillo shut Sacramento out through eight, which extended the losing streak to four. September 5th: Montemayor led off with a two-run homer in the first inning, Sato gave up six runs in four and two-thirds innings, and Sacramento's offense — four hits in the first five innings — couldn't mount a response in time. Five straight losses, the worst run of the season.
Andretti ended it on September 6th with six shutout innings, Perez hitting a two-run homer in the fifth and Cruz adding a solo shot in the eighth. The losing streak stops at five. Three to nothing.
@ Milwaukee, September 7-8 (1-1)
Milwaukee is a legitimate team — eighty-six wins entering the series, the NL Central already clinched — and the September 7th result felt genuinely difficult rather than embarrassing. Sacramento led six to two going into the bottom of the fourth, Espenoza already departed having surrendered six runs in under four innings, and then the Bishops chipped away until Lara hit a two-run homer off Medina in the eighth to seal an eight to six Milwaukee win.
September 8th was the corrective: Strickler threw eight innings of one-run ball against the best team in the NL Central, Choi went three for three with two home runs and a double, and Mollohan hit a two-run shot to cap an eight to one win that felt like the rotation returning to its natural state. The Milwaukee series ended split, which under the circumstances counts as a reasonable result.
vs. Fort Worth, September 9-10 (2-0)
Fort Worth is fifty-eight and eighty-two, and the two-game series produced the kind of performance that recalibrates the mood. September 9th: Sacramento sent eighteen men to the plate in the sixth, seventh, and eighth innings combined and scored sixteen runs in that span, with Cruz hitting a grand slam in the seventh, Choi and Lozano and Florez all connecting for home runs, and Rubalcava holding Fort Worth to four runs across seven and two-thirds innings. Twelve to four. September 10th: Sato threw eight and a third shutout innings, Chavarria doubled home three in the eighth, and Sacramento won six to nothing.
@ Portland, September 11-13 (2-1)
The Portland series produced one of the strangest innings of the season and one of the quieter losses. September 11th: Sacramento scored twelve runs in the eighth inning alone — Cruz hit a grand slam to break it open, Navarro hit a three-run shot, Lozano hit a three-run shot, and Berrios capped it with a three-run shot of his own. Four grand slams in the context of the same inning from four different hitters is a line that belongs in a box score trivia question. Andretti pitched eight innings. Seventeen to three.
September 12th: Espenoza was pulled early — injured while pitching in the fourth inning, Portland taking the lead on a Torres single in the seventh off Cruz. Two to three. Espenoza's status is worth watching; the injury report does not list him on the IL, but he was removed from a game mid-inning against a last-place opponent, and the rotation has thirteen games left to navigate.
Strickler answered on September 13th with six and two-thirds innings and nine strikeouts against a Portland team that managed three hits. Choi, Cruz, and Lozano all homered off Paine before the fifth inning finished. Three to two.
@ Seattle, September 14-16 (3-0)
The Seattle sweep was built on three very different performances that all arrived at the same destination.
September 14th: Rodriguez — typically among the quietest bats in the lineup — went three for four with a home run and two singles, drove in three, and provided the margin in a five to four win. Rubalcava pitched six and a third innings. Benson saved it.
September 15th: Navarro hit two home runs and a triple, drove in four, and announced that his September presence in this lineup has moved from prospect novelty to genuine run-producer. Sato held Seattle to two runs in six and a third innings. Eight to three, the most complete offensive performance of the road trip.
September 16th: A rain delay. Ten innings. Andretti allowed three runs in four innings, his shortest outing in months. Musco entered as a substitute and hit a solo homer in the eighth to tie it, then Lozano hit a three-run shot in the tenth off Gutierrez to win it. Medina worked two clean innings in relief and collected the win. Six to three.
The aftermath: Cruz was injured running the bases in the September 16th game. Sprained knee, nine days on the IL. His absence will require coverage, and Musco — hitting .433 over his last twenty-eight games — is the most natural substitute.
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AROUND THE LEAGUE
The news that will define the 1998 season in the history books arrived on September 17th: Daniel Mele of Baltimore hit his seventy-first home run at Yankee Stadium, off Javier Navarro, breaking Manuel Hernandez's single-season FBL record. He received a standing ovation from a crowd that had come to watch his opponent play. In 140 games Mele is batting .395 with 154 RBI and 157 runs scored. The combination of average, power, and run production he is producing simultaneously has no clear precedent in the league's recent history. Whatever the MVP conversation has been, it is over.
Philadelphia leads the AL East at ninety-seven and forty-nine, two and a half games ahead of Baltimore at ninety-five and fifty-two. Baltimore has clinched a wild card berth. The second wild card spot is a genuine race — Brooklyn and San Jose are tied at eighty-two and sixty-five with thirteen games remaining. That is the wildcard game Sacramento is watching, because whoever emerges from that race is likely an ALDS opponent.
Milwaukee clinched the NL Central division title this week. Manager Vazquez called it a goal achieved, then immediately pivoted to October. Crotwell at forty-four home runs, Felts at thirty-eight — Milwaukee's offense is the second most dangerous in the NL behind Mele's Baltimore team, and that puts them in a different class than most of their division peers.
Two pieces of difficult news also arrived this week. First: Alejandro Navarro's fellow top prospect Ji-hoon Jeon has been lost for the season with a torn labrum, sustained September 1st while pitching for Triple-A Oxnard. Jeon was thirteen and six with a 2.17 ERA in twenty-six starts — the kind of prospect season that generates legitimate excitement — and his absence from the postseason rotation next year will be felt regardless of which level he pitches at in 1999.
Second: Milwaukee owner Steve Davis passed away this week after a short illness. His son Josh Davis will assume leadership of the franchise. The baseball world extends its sympathies to the Davis family.
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THE INBOX
From Siobhan Gallagher of Sacramento's Land Park neighborhood, a midwife, who asks: "Five straight losses to Boston and San Jose, what actually went wrong?"
The Boston losses come down to a pattern we've discussed before: the starters pitched adequately or well, and the late innings failed at the exact moments that required holding. Medina's walkoff allowed homer in game one. Espenoza's catastrophic two-inning outing in game two, which had nothing to do with the bullpen but exposed what happens when a rotation start falls apart early in the month. Strickler giving up a three-run homer in the first inning of game three before Sacramento had swung a bat. The San Jose stretch added two more: a Trillo complete game on September 4th where the offense didn't generate enough for the result to matter, and Sato's worst start of the month on September 5th. Together those five games reveal the gap between what this team is at its best and what it can be when the rotation and bullpen both have poor days on the same afternoon.
From Kenji Watanabe of Sacramento's East Sacramento neighborhood, a restaurant owner, who asks: "With Cruz hurt, what does Navarro's role look like for the rest of September?"
Cruz's sprained knee puts him out for nine days, which covers the Charlotte series and Nashville. Navarro has started at shortstop and second base in recent games and handled both competently. More importantly, his bat has become a genuine asset — the Seattle series included two home runs and a triple in a single game, and his line over the last two weeks reflects a prospect who has stopped looking like one. The question for the front office is whether he stays active through October or returns to Triple-A to preserve eligibility. Given how he's playing, the baseball answer is to keep him.
From Priscilla Abubakar of Sacramento's Oak Park neighborhood, a social media manager, who asks: "Magic number is nine. How does this actually work?"
Sacramento clinches when their wins plus San Jose losses equal nine. With thirteen games remaining against Charlotte, Nashville, San Antonio, and Houston — none of whom are contenders — there is no realistic scenario where Sacramento finishes below ninety-one wins. Any combination of Sacramento wins and San Jose losses totaling nine gets it done. If San Jose cooperates, this could happen within the next few days. If not, the math still closes out well before the final weekend. The division is not in doubt. The seeding conversation — whether Sacramento finishes with enough wins to avoid Philadelphia or Baltimore in the first round — is the more interesting question.
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Charlotte comes to Sacramento starting Friday the 18th. Zeiders is seventeen and eight and will pitch the opener. This is not Fort Worth or Portland. After Charlotte, Nashville series on the road.
Eighty-nine and fifty-eight. Division lead is seven games. Nine more wins needed to clinch.
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Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.