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liberty-ca · 06-05-2026, 08:31 AM

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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August 8 – 20, 2000 | Eighty-One and Forty-Four | Rubalcava at 11.12 ERA Over His Last Four Starts | Six and Seven on the Stretch

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SHANE BLAKE HITS A TWO-RUN HOMER TO BEAT FORMER TEAM — AND THAT'S NOT EVEN THE MOST UNSETTLING THING TO HAPPEN

The most unsettling thing is Jordan Rubalcava, who has a 11.12 ERA across his last four starts and no obvious mechanical explanation for what happened to the pitcher who was fifth in the FBL in ERA at the All-Star break. He allowed ten hits and six earned runs in four innings against San Jose. He allowed eight hits and five earned runs in four and one-third against Columbus. The ERA for the season, once tracking at 3.31, now sits at 4.14. Something is wrong, and with six weeks left in the regular season, the organization needs to figure out what before it becomes a postseason problem.

Sacramento's six wins and seven losses is the worst thirteen-game stretch of the year, by record, and one that included Ebizo Suzuki striking out fourteen Sacramento hitters in a shutout, the Blake homer, back-to-back losses in Vancouver, and Ji-hoon Jeon throwing one of the year's best starts and being handed a loss because Benson had a rare bad ninth inning. The magic number is twenty-four. The lead is fourteen games. Sacramento is fine in the standings but genuinely uncertain in the rotation.

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DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

vs. San Jose, August 8-10 (1-2)

Suzuki on August 8th: eight and one-third innings, fourteen strikeouts, zero runs. Andretti lasted three and one-third innings and allowed eleven hits and seven runs before Sacramento was even on the board. The final was nine to nothing and it wasn't that close. Sacramento had five hits and fifteen strikeouts against a pitcher who entered the game 13-5 with a 3.80 ERA. Suzuki is legitimately one of the better pitchers in this league, and on Tuesday night he was untouchable.

The August 9th game featured Rubalcava allowing ten hits in four innings — including a Carnahan homer — and Sacramento's offense hitting into a wall against a San Jose staff with a 7.02 ERA starter. Seven to four, and Rubalcava's recent ERA started its worrying climb. The one Sacramento win in this series came on August 10th when the offense generated fifteen runs for the second time against San Jose this season — a Lozano grand slam, a Lopez three-run homer — and Cruz won despite allowing six earned runs in five innings. When your team needs fifteen runs to feel comfortable, something is out of balance.

vs. Portland, August 11-13 (2-1)

Jeon's August 11th return was worse than his Seattle outing — two and one-third innings, nine runs allowed, a game score of six. Portland scored five runs in the first inning off him, half on a Bonilla double and half on errors and wild pitching. The final was ten to seven despite Sacramento scoring seven runs including three home runs off Sandoval. A 49-67 team handed Jeon his second loss of the year in his second start.

The August 12th game was Strickler at his best. Eight innings against Portland, two earned runs, eight hits, no drama. He hit three batters and didn't walk a single one — which somehow is the most Brian Strickler line imaginable — but the control and command were there. He threw a hundred and nine pitches without much trouble, and Benson closed it for save thirty. Four to two, and suddenly the Charlotte series felt manageable.

Andretti won August 13th with seven and two-thirds innings of one-run ball, Choi homered, Navarro homered, Nakazawa homered, and Sacramento beat a team that is fifty-one and seventy-five. But sometimes those are the wins you need.

@ Vancouver, August 14-15 (0-2)

Ho-joon Kim — a left-hander with a 5.13 ERA — held Sacramento to five hits over six and two-thirds innings on August 14th. Vancouver won four to one. Rubalcava took the loss, leaving after five and two-thirds with four runs allowed, and the problem is starting to look less like individual bad outings and more like a pattern.

Cruz lost August 15th three to four on a walk-off RBI single by Fierro in the sixth. Ten hits against Cruz in five and a third innings. Musselman threw a clean inning but inherited two runners who scored. Sacramento scored three runs and came close enough to feel the loss without being able to prevent it.

vs. Los Angeles, August 16-17 (1-1)

Here is the most painful eighty-nine pitches in recent Sacramento history. Jeon threw eight innings against Los Angeles on August 16th. Two hits, one run allowed, six strikeouts. That is a dominant, complete pitching performance — a game score of seventy-nine — from a pitcher who has been on and off the injured list three times this season and spent three months unable to take a mound without his back betraying him. He walked off after the eighth inning having given his team every chance to win.

In the ninth inning, Benson allowed a solo homer to Batista. Then Shane Blake — who played for Sacramento until July 27th, when the organization traded him to Los Angeles for draft picks and a prospect — fouled off a pitch, worked the count, and hit a two-run homer. Four to two, Los Angeles. Jeon's record is 0-2. Life is genuinely unfair sometimes.

Strickler answered on August 17th with seven innings and three runs allowed — both homers from Balbuena and Chavira, the kind of deep fly balls a pitcher can live with if his stuff is otherwise working. Mollohan hit a three-run homer in the fourth, Van Ham hit one in the third, and Sacramento won six to three. This is the version of Strickler that makes you forget the other version exists.

@ Columbus, August 18-20 (2-1)

Andretti pitched five and two-thirds on August 18th, allowed four runs including two home runs from Benoldi and Aguilar, but Musselman threw two and a third clean innings behind him and Sacramento's offense scored eight. Tenth win for Andretti. Lopez went two for five with a two-run homer and Mollohan drove in three, and Sacramento took the first game of the series despite an uneven starting pitching performance.

August 19th was Rubalcava again: four and one-third innings, eight hits, six runs, two home runs allowed. Choi hit two home runs of his own — one solo, one with a man on — and Sacramento scored three runs and lost seven to three. Rubalcava's ERA for the season is 4.14. Four months ago it was heading toward two and a half. He has not been the same pitcher since the back diagnosis in June, and while the two starts against Nashville and Portland in mid-July suggested he'd found his form, whatever he found has been thoroughly lost again.

Choi collected himself and hit a grand slam off Salviati in the fourth inning on August 20th. Cruz won his fifteenth, Sacramento scored six to three, and the team left Columbus having taken two of three from a fifty-five win team.

______________________________

THE RUBALCAVA QUESTION

Let me get this straight: through the All-Star break, Rubalcava had a 3.31 ERA and was pitching like an ace. Since then, he has four starts with an ERA above eight in three of them. The back diagnosis from late June — day-to-day, resolved quickly on paper — sits in the back of my mind as a possible through-line. Pitchers who pitch through back issues don't always pitch as well as they pitch when they're fully healthy, and Rubalcava may have been doing exactly that for two months before the results caught up.

The alternative explanation is mechanical — something changed in his delivery, his arm angle, his release point — and that's correctable. The frightening explanation is that he's genuinely fatigued approaching one hundred and fifty innings on a back that's been sore since June. Whatever the cause, Sacramento cannot enter October relying on the Rubalcava of August as a postseason starter. If the pitching staff's most talented member is unavailable in a meaningful way, the rotation becomes Cruz, Andretti, Espenoza (whose injury status is still unclear), and the ever-surprising Strickler. That is a rotation that can win a playoff series. It is not the rotation this organization planned around to go all the way to winning World Series.

______________________________

JEON THREW EIGHT INNINGS OF TWO-HIT BALL AND WENT HOME EMPTY-HANDED

I want to sit with this for a moment before moving on, because it deserves it. Jeon has had one of the most difficult individual seasons of anyone in this league. He's been injured repeatedly. Every time he's come back, the question hasn't been whether he'll pitch well — when healthy, he's shown a 3.27 ERA in limited action — it's been whether he'll stay on the mound. On August 16th he threw eight innings and struck out six and allowed one run and gave his team every possible opportunity to win. He was, for one evening, the pitcher this franchise drafted and invested in and waited for. Then the ninth inning happened. His record is 0-2 and his ERA is 5.06, both distorted by the Portland disaster and the luck of the Blake homer. The underlying performance, when his back cooperates, remains something worth believing in. Whether the back cooperates in September and October is the question that nobody in this organization wants to answer out loud.

______________________________

CHOI'S RESURGENCE

The oblique and back issues that interrupted Choi's July and early August appear to be genuinely behind him, and his Columbus series was the best evidence yet. Two home runs in a loss on August 19th. A grand slam in a win on August 20th. He has twenty-five home runs now, which would be a career best. His slash line after 110 games is .282/.367/.512 — not the monster season that Shinohara or Lozano is having by raw numbers, but the all-around production of a left fielder who steals bases, plays Gold Glove defense, and hits in the middle of a lineup that opposing pitchers can't afford to work around. When he's healthy he's one of the most complete players in the American League. He's looked healthy this week.

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AROUND THE LEAGUE

Brooklyn is 86-38 and on a two-game winning streak after an eleven-game win streak that briefly made every other team in the league feel slightly embarrassed about their records. They have the best record in the American League. Detroit is 84-41. Sacramento is 81-44 and has slipped to third in the AL by overall wins, though leading the West by fourteen games remains a comfortable enough position that "slipped" feels too dramatic a word.

Jorge Jaime has sixty-three home runs. He is on pace to finish around seventy-seven, which would be the most in FBL history. The pace has slowed — as it always does, as physics demands — but the number no longer feels hypothetical. Giacomo Benoldi of Columbus hit his 41st at Sacramento, which means Sacramento has now surrendered meaningful home runs to two of the most dangerous hitters in the league in consecutive series. The pitching staff, which led the AL in ERA for months, is showing its August cracks.

Randy Gill of Brooklyn hit his 300th career home run. He has 26 home runs this season and is still one of the five best players in the American League at thirty years old.

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THE INBOX

From Mireille Fontenot of Sacramento's Arden-Arcade neighborhood, a pharmacy technician, who asks: "Shane Blake was traded away for draft picks and hit a game-winning homer off Benson. Does that trade look worse in hindsight?"

Not really, and here's why: the trade wasn't about Blake — it was about Schmitt, who is a 24-year-old organizational prospect, and an equal draft pick exchange. Sacramento gave away three picks and $14,000 and got three picks back, plus Schmitt. Blake, who was a 28-year-old outfielder batting .306 in limited minor-league action, was essentially the sweetener to make the deal work from LA's perspective. The fact that he hit a home run off Benson in one at-bat in the ninth inning of one game doesn't retroactively make him a player Sacramento should have kept. If you reversed the decision and kept Blake on the roster, he'd be Van Ham's backup and unavailable in that situation anyway. What stings about August 16th isn't the trade — it's that Benson, who had been nearly automatic for six weeks, had a rough inning against a team Sacramento should have beaten with Jeon's performance. That's on the ninth inning, not on July 27th.

From Taiwo Olatunde of Sacramento's Rancho Cordova neighborhood, a high school basketball coach, who asks: "Rubalcava struggling, his ERA at 4.14 and climbing. Is it the back? Is he tired? What do you actually think is going on?"

Honestly? I think it's both, and the two are connected. A pitcher managing a back issue — even one that's been officially cleared — alters mechanics over time in ways that aren't immediately visible in the box score. You throw slightly differently to protect the injury. That change compounds. By August, what was a subtle adjustment in June has become a delivery that doesn't look quite like his delivery from April. The hitters in the second half of the season are also seeing him for the second or third time, which always makes life harder for a pitcher who doesn't add new wrinkles. Combine fatigue with altered mechanics with a more prepared opposing offense, and you get four starts with double-digit ERAs out of a pitcher who was genuinely excellent in May and early July. The encouraging news is that none of this is structural — it's correctable if the coaching staff can identify and fix the mechanical drift before the postseason, and Rubalcava is experienced enough that the conversation between pitcher and pitching coach about what's changed shouldn't need to start from scratch.

From Agnieszka Wojciechowska of Sacramento's Land Park neighborhood, an architecture professor, who asks: "Andretti is 10-6 with a 4.10 ERA. He doesn't get mentioned much, but is he actually the most consistent starter Sacramento has right now?"

Yes, and the case is stronger than his ERA suggests. Andretti has the lowest BABIP and opponent average in the rotation, which means hitters are making contact against him but not finding holes — a sign of genuine quality rather than luck. His ERA has drifted upward in August because Columbus touched him for four runs including two home runs, but his underlying profile — ground ball pitcher, limited walks, keeps the ball in the park — is exactly the kind of pitcher you want in a short series when you don't need fifteen strikeouts, just twenty-seven outs. Cruz leads the team in wins and has the better stuff. Rubalcava at his best is the most dangerous arm on the staff. But Andretti is the one who has taken the ball every fifth day without drama, without disaster, without a single start this season that made the coaching staff wonder whether to pull him after two innings. Quietly ten and six on a team that has lost seven of thirteen in August while its rotation went sideways is a performance that deserves more than it's getting.

______________________________

Eighty-one and forty-four. The magic number is twenty-four. Baltimore, Houston, and the back end of the schedule await. What Rubalcava looks like in his next start will tell us something we genuinely need to know.

______________________________
Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.

06-05-2026, 08:31 AM	#372
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 616	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *August 8 – 20, 2000 \| Eighty-One and Forty-Four \| Rubalcava at 11.12 ERA Over His Last Four Starts \| Six and Seven on the Stretch* ______________________________ SHANE BLAKE HITS A TWO-RUN HOMER TO BEAT FORMER TEAM — AND THAT'S NOT EVEN THE MOST UNSETTLING THING TO HAPPEN The most unsettling thing is Jordan Rubalcava, who has a 11.12 ERA across his last four starts and no obvious mechanical explanation for what happened to the pitcher who was fifth in the FBL in ERA at the All-Star break. He allowed ten hits and six earned runs in four innings against San Jose. He allowed eight hits and five earned runs in four and one-third against Columbus. The ERA for the season, once tracking at 3.31, now sits at 4.14. Something is wrong, and with six weeks left in the regular season, the organization needs to figure out what before it becomes a postseason problem. Sacramento's six wins and seven losses is the worst thirteen-game stretch of the year, by record, and one that included Ebizo Suzuki striking out fourteen Sacramento hitters in a shutout, the Blake homer, back-to-back losses in Vancouver, and Ji-hoon Jeon throwing one of the year's best starts and being handed a loss because Benson had a rare bad ninth inning. The magic number is twenty-four. The lead is fourteen games. Sacramento is fine in the standings but genuinely uncertain in the rotation. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY vs. San Jose, August 8-10 (1-2) Suzuki on August 8th: eight and one-third innings, fourteen strikeouts, zero runs. Andretti lasted three and one-third innings and allowed eleven hits and seven runs before Sacramento was even on the board. The final was nine to nothing and it wasn't that close. Sacramento had five hits and fifteen strikeouts against a pitcher who entered the game 13-5 with a 3.80 ERA. Suzuki is legitimately one of the better pitchers in this league, and on Tuesday night he was untouchable. The August 9th game featured Rubalcava allowing ten hits in four innings — including a Carnahan homer — and Sacramento's offense hitting into a wall against a San Jose staff with a 7.02 ERA starter. Seven to four, and Rubalcava's recent ERA started its worrying climb. The one Sacramento win in this series came on August 10th when the offense generated fifteen runs for the second time against San Jose this season — a Lozano grand slam, a Lopez three-run homer — and Cruz won despite allowing six earned runs in five innings. When your team needs fifteen runs to feel comfortable, something is out of balance. vs. Portland, August 11-13 (2-1) Jeon's August 11th return was worse than his Seattle outing — two and one-third innings, nine runs allowed, a game score of six. Portland scored five runs in the first inning off him, half on a Bonilla double and half on errors and wild pitching. The final was ten to seven despite Sacramento scoring seven runs including three home runs off Sandoval. A 49-67 team handed Jeon his second loss of the year in his second start. The August 12th game was Strickler at his best. Eight innings against Portland, two earned runs, eight hits, no drama. He hit three batters and didn't walk a single one — which somehow is the most Brian Strickler line imaginable — but the control and command were there. He threw a hundred and nine pitches without much trouble, and Benson closed it for save thirty. Four to two, and suddenly the Charlotte series felt manageable. Andretti won August 13th with seven and two-thirds innings of one-run ball, Choi homered, Navarro homered, Nakazawa homered, and Sacramento beat a team that is fifty-one and seventy-five. But sometimes those are the wins you need. @ Vancouver, August 14-15 (0-2) Ho-joon Kim — a left-hander with a 5.13 ERA — held Sacramento to five hits over six and two-thirds innings on August 14th. Vancouver won four to one. Rubalcava took the loss, leaving after five and two-thirds with four runs allowed, and the problem is starting to look less like individual bad outings and more like a pattern. Cruz lost August 15th three to four on a walk-off RBI single by Fierro in the sixth. Ten hits against Cruz in five and a third innings. Musselman threw a clean inning but inherited two runners who scored. Sacramento scored three runs and came close enough to feel the loss without being able to prevent it. vs. Los Angeles, August 16-17 (1-1) Here is the most painful eighty-nine pitches in recent Sacramento history. Jeon threw eight innings against Los Angeles on August 16th. Two hits, one run allowed, six strikeouts. That is a dominant, complete pitching performance — a game score of seventy-nine — from a pitcher who has been on and off the injured list three times this season and spent three months unable to take a mound without his back betraying him. He walked off after the eighth inning having given his team every chance to win. In the ninth inning, Benson allowed a solo homer to Batista. Then Shane Blake — who played for Sacramento until July 27th, when the organization traded him to Los Angeles for draft picks and a prospect — fouled off a pitch, worked the count, and hit a two-run homer. Four to two, Los Angeles. Jeon's record is 0-2. Life is genuinely unfair sometimes. Strickler answered on August 17th with seven innings and three runs allowed — both homers from Balbuena and Chavira, the kind of deep fly balls a pitcher can live with if his stuff is otherwise working. Mollohan hit a three-run homer in the fourth, Van Ham hit one in the third, and Sacramento won six to three. This is the version of Strickler that makes you forget the other version exists. @ Columbus, August 18-20 (2-1) Andretti pitched five and two-thirds on August 18th, allowed four runs including two home runs from Benoldi and Aguilar, but Musselman threw two and a third clean innings behind him and Sacramento's offense scored eight. Tenth win for Andretti. Lopez went two for five with a two-run homer and Mollohan drove in three, and Sacramento took the first game of the series despite an uneven starting pitching performance. August 19th was Rubalcava again: four and one-third innings, eight hits, six runs, two home runs allowed. Choi hit two home runs of his own — one solo, one with a man on — and Sacramento scored three runs and lost seven to three. Rubalcava's ERA for the season is 4.14. Four months ago it was heading toward two and a half. He has not been the same pitcher since the back diagnosis in June, and while the two starts against Nashville and Portland in mid-July suggested he'd found his form, whatever he found has been thoroughly lost again. Choi collected himself and hit a grand slam off Salviati in the fourth inning on August 20th. Cruz won his fifteenth, Sacramento scored six to three, and the team left Columbus having taken two of three from a fifty-five win team. ______________________________ THE RUBALCAVA QUESTION Let me get this straight: through the All-Star break, Rubalcava had a 3.31 ERA and was pitching like an ace. Since then, he has four starts with an ERA above eight in three of them. The back diagnosis from late June — day-to-day, resolved quickly on paper — sits in the back of my mind as a possible through-line. Pitchers who pitch through back issues don't always pitch as well as they pitch when they're fully healthy, and Rubalcava may have been doing exactly that for two months before the results caught up. The alternative explanation is mechanical — something changed in his delivery, his arm angle, his release point — and that's correctable. The frightening explanation is that he's genuinely fatigued approaching one hundred and fifty innings on a back that's been sore since June. Whatever the cause, Sacramento cannot enter October relying on the Rubalcava of August as a postseason starter. If the pitching staff's most talented member is unavailable in a meaningful way, the rotation becomes Cruz, Andretti, Espenoza (whose injury status is still unclear), and the ever-surprising Strickler. That is a rotation that can win a playoff series. It is not the rotation this organization planned around to go all the way to winning World Series. ______________________________ JEON THREW EIGHT INNINGS OF TWO-HIT BALL AND WENT HOME EMPTY-HANDED I want to sit with this for a moment before moving on, because it deserves it. Jeon has had one of the most difficult individual seasons of anyone in this league. He's been injured repeatedly. Every time he's come back, the question hasn't been whether he'll pitch well — when healthy, he's shown a 3.27 ERA in limited action — it's been whether he'll stay on the mound. On August 16th he threw eight innings and struck out six and allowed one run and gave his team every possible opportunity to win. He was, for one evening, the pitcher this franchise drafted and invested in and waited for. Then the ninth inning happened. His record is 0-2 and his ERA is 5.06, both distorted by the Portland disaster and the luck of the Blake homer. The underlying performance, when his back cooperates, remains something worth believing in. Whether the back cooperates in September and October is the question that nobody in this organization wants to answer out loud. ______________________________ CHOI'S RESURGENCE The oblique and back issues that interrupted Choi's July and early August appear to be genuinely behind him, and his Columbus series was the best evidence yet. Two home runs in a loss on August 19th. A grand slam in a win on August 20th. He has twenty-five home runs now, which would be a career best. His slash line after 110 games is .282/.367/.512 — not the monster season that Shinohara or Lozano is having by raw numbers, but the all-around production of a left fielder who steals bases, plays Gold Glove defense, and hits in the middle of a lineup that opposing pitchers can't afford to work around. When he's healthy he's one of the most complete players in the American League. He's looked healthy this week. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE Brooklyn is 86-38 and on a two-game winning streak after an eleven-game win streak that briefly made every other team in the league feel slightly embarrassed about their records. They have the best record in the American League. Detroit is 84-41. Sacramento is 81-44 and has slipped to third in the AL by overall wins, though leading the West by fourteen games remains a comfortable enough position that "slipped" feels too dramatic a word. Jorge Jaime has sixty-three home runs. He is on pace to finish around seventy-seven, which would be the most in FBL history. The pace has slowed — as it always does, as physics demands — but the number no longer feels hypothetical. Giacomo Benoldi of Columbus hit his 41st at Sacramento, which means Sacramento has now surrendered meaningful home runs to two of the most dangerous hitters in the league in consecutive series. The pitching staff, which led the AL in ERA for months, is showing its August cracks. Randy Gill of Brooklyn hit his 300th career home run. He has 26 home runs this season and is still one of the five best players in the American League at thirty years old. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Mireille Fontenot of Sacramento's Arden-Arcade neighborhood, a pharmacy technician, who asks: "Shane Blake was traded away for draft picks and hit a game-winning homer off Benson. Does that trade look worse in hindsight?" Not really, and here's why: the trade wasn't about Blake — it was about Schmitt, who is a 24-year-old organizational prospect, and an equal draft pick exchange. Sacramento gave away three picks and $14,000 and got three picks back, plus Schmitt. Blake, who was a 28-year-old outfielder batting .306 in limited minor-league action, was essentially the sweetener to make the deal work from LA's perspective. The fact that he hit a home run off Benson in one at-bat in the ninth inning of one game doesn't retroactively make him a player Sacramento should have kept. If you reversed the decision and kept Blake on the roster, he'd be Van Ham's backup and unavailable in that situation anyway. What stings about August 16th isn't the trade — it's that Benson, who had been nearly automatic for six weeks, had a rough inning against a team Sacramento should have beaten with Jeon's performance. That's on the ninth inning, not on July 27th. From Taiwo Olatunde of Sacramento's Rancho Cordova neighborhood, a high school basketball coach, who asks: "Rubalcava struggling, his ERA at 4.14 and climbing. Is it the back? Is he tired? What do you actually think is going on?" Honestly? I think it's both, and the two are connected. A pitcher managing a back issue — even one that's been officially cleared — alters mechanics over time in ways that aren't immediately visible in the box score. You throw slightly differently to protect the injury. That change compounds. By August, what was a subtle adjustment in June has become a delivery that doesn't look quite like his delivery from April. The hitters in the second half of the season are also seeing him for the second or third time, which always makes life harder for a pitcher who doesn't add new wrinkles. Combine fatigue with altered mechanics with a more prepared opposing offense, and you get four starts with double-digit ERAs out of a pitcher who was genuinely excellent in May and early July. The encouraging news is that none of this is structural — it's correctable if the coaching staff can identify and fix the mechanical drift before the postseason, and Rubalcava is experienced enough that the conversation between pitcher and pitching coach about what's changed shouldn't need to start from scratch. From Agnieszka Wojciechowska of Sacramento's Land Park neighborhood, an architecture professor, who asks: "Andretti is 10-6 with a 4.10 ERA. He doesn't get mentioned much, but is he actually the most consistent starter Sacramento has right now?" Yes, and the case is stronger than his ERA suggests. Andretti has the lowest BABIP and opponent average in the rotation, which means hitters are making contact against him but not finding holes — a sign of genuine quality rather than luck. His ERA has drifted upward in August because Columbus touched him for four runs including two home runs, but his underlying profile — ground ball pitcher, limited walks, keeps the ball in the park — is exactly the kind of pitcher you want in a short series when you don't need fifteen strikeouts, just twenty-seven outs. Cruz leads the team in wins and has the better stuff. Rubalcava at his best is the most dangerous arm on the staff. But Andretti is the one who has taken the ball every fifth day without drama, without disaster, without a single start this season that made the coaching staff wonder whether to pull him after two innings. Quietly ten and six on a team that has lost seven of thirteen in August while its rotation went sideways is a performance that deserves more than it's getting. ______________________________ Eighty-one and forty-four. The magic number is twenty-four. Baltimore, Houston, and the back end of the schedule await. What Rubalcava looks like in his next start will tell us something we genuinely need to know. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.