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liberty-ca · 06-18-2026, 07:46 AM

THE HOT CORNER
Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL

SACRAMENTO WINS FIVE CONSECUTIVE GAMES OUTSCORING OPPONENTS FORTY-ONE TO TEN

That is the shape of the last ten days. One masterpiece from the best pitcher in the American League who is not on the Sacramento roster, followed by five straight wins that settled the question of whether Sacramento's response to a dominant opponent would be absorbing the loss and moving forward or absorbing the loss and then dropping two more. The answer was the former and emphatically so — San Jose took game one of their series, then Sacramento took games two and three, then Boston arrived and was outscored thirty-two to three across three games before their bus could make it back to the hotel.

The division lead is seven games with sixty more to play. That is the arithmetic of a team that is playing better than everyone else in its half of the sport.

______________________________

DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

vs. Seattle, July 12-15 (2-2)

The four-game Seattle home series split evenly: Sacramento won the games where the starting pitching was adequate and lost the ones where opposing starters came in and delivered genuinely good outings. On July 12th Jang pitched seven innings and recorded the win despite allowing four runs, Shinohara hitting his twentieth homer and his seventh-inning single providing the go-ahead run. Six to four.

July 13th and 14th games belong to Sergio Baca and Danny Rodine, respectively — two Seattle starters who had no particular reason to dominate Sacramento but did anyway. Baca allowed one run in six innings on July 13th, Rodine allowed two runs in seven and one-third on July 14th. Both times Sacramento's lineup produced exactly four hits, both times the bullpen could not hold a close game, and both times the final was four to two.

July 15th restored equilibrium. Gunn pitched five and two-thirds innings and allowed one earned run, Navarro hit a two-out triple in the sixth that scored two, and then Florez came off the bench in the seventh and drove in two more with a single that and gave Sacramento a lead the Prayers did not relinquish. Gutierrez threw two clean innings to earn the win, his sixth against zero losses on the season. Four to three.

vs. San Jose, July 17-19 (2-1)

July 17th series opener was Ebizo Suzuki's evening. Eight innings, two hits, zero runs, ten strikeouts, three walks, one hundred and eighteen pitches. His ERA entering the game was 2.17. His ERA leaving the game was 2.17. Sacramento's only two hits were a Lopez double in the fourth and a Navarro double in the sixth, both stranded. That is the kind of performance that requires a pitcher who simply has better stuff on a given evening than your lineup can answer.

Jeon won July 18th showdown that evened the series. Six and one-third innings, two earned runs, with Choi driving in three in the first inning — a two-run single that put Sacramento ahead before San Jose could get comfortable. Five to two, the series tied.

Cruz won July 19th with six and one-third innings of one-run ball. Lopez hit a two-run homer in the fifth off St. Clair. Schmitt drove in three runs with two-out singles in what has become a pattern for a player nobody expected to produce at this rate while filling in for Lozano. Five to three, Sacramento took the series, and the division lead moved back toward seven.

vs. Boston, July 20-22 (3-0)

The Boston series was not competitive. July 20th: Gunn threw seven and one-third shutout innings — eight strikeouts, no runs, eighty-eight pitches — and Choi hit two home runs including a grand slam off Ahn in the eighth inning that put the game away. Cruz went three for five with a three-run homer. Fourteen to one. July 21st: Andretti gave Sacramento five and one-third innings of shutout ball, Nakazawa hit a three-run homer, and seven Sacramento hitters recorded at least one RBI. Twelve to zero. July 22nd: Jang threw seven and one-third innings, allowed two runs neither of which were earned, and Mollohan went three for three with two doubles. Sacramento won its fifth straight, six to two, and the division lead stood at seven.

Combined line for the Boston series: Sacramento 32 runs, Boston 3.

______________________________

JANG AT TEN AND FOUR

The mild hamstring strain that sent a brief chill through the fanbase on July 6th resolved itself inside five days and had no visible impact on Jang's performance. He is now ten and four with a 3.36 ERA — the first Sacramento starter to reach double-digit wins this season, the team leader in ERA among starters, and in command of his position at the top of the rotation with the confidence that comes from having now succeeded against every caliber of opponent in the American League. His last two starts: 1.93 ERA over seventeen and one-third innings, with zero earned runs against Boston in the series finale.

______________________________

HA-JOON CHOI HAS ARRIVED

Eleven home runs, twenty-four RBI, a .287 average since returning from the fractured finger. The numbers from the Boston series alone — two home runs and six RBI in one game, including a grand slam — would be notable for any player at any point. For a center fielder who spent most of the first three months of the season on the injured list, they represent the organization's bet on Choi's health finally paying off in full. He has been Sacramento's best offensive player in the three weeks since his return. When he is healthy and locked in, he is a player who changes what pitchers can risk against the middle of the Sacramento lineup. Opposing teams that walked around Shinohara in April and May now have Choi waiting on the other side of that decision.

______________________________

THE ROTATION AND THE BULLPEN, MID-JULY

Four starters simultaneously on hot streaks at the end of this stretch: Jang at 1.93 ERA over his last two starts, Gunn at 0.69, Andretti at 0.90, Cruz at 2.38. That is an unusual alignment and it should be enjoyed rather than expected to continue indefinitely. What it reflects is a rotation in which all four of the primary arms have found workable rhythms simultaneously, which means the lineup can operate with the kind of comfort that comes from knowing the starter will give seven innings more often than not.

Benson has converted eight saves in thirteen chances over the last stretch with a 0.57 ERA in that run — a significant recovery from the blown save pattern that ran through mid-June. His ERA overall is 2.42, which is where you want your closer sitting in late July. Gutierrez has six wins and zero losses with a 2.24 ERA, and he remains the most reliable middle-inning arm Sacramento has, and the fact that he is doing it across fifty-plus innings this season is not luck — it is craft.

______________________________

THE INFIELD IS RECOVERING

Garcia's sore elbow will take about four more days to fully heal — he should be back in the lineup around end of July. Lozano's is approximately three weeks away from coming back after being sidelined with shoulder tendinitis — return is expected around mid-August. Gil Cruz's back tightness resolved and he has been playing since July 17th. Schmitt, who was nobody's first thought for third base in April, is hitting .277 with six home runs and twenty-two RBI and currently on a ten-game hot streak at .448. He has earned whatever playing time he receives when the infield returns to full health.

DeVore's season is over. That fact has not changed and will not change. What has changed is that the roster has demonstrated it can compensate, and three weeks from now, with Lozano back at third and Garcia back at second, the infield Sacramento puts together for the stretch run will look substantially different from the patchwork that has been absorbing the load since late June.

______________________________

AROUND THE LEAGUE

Detroit and Charlotte are separated by a game and a half atop the AL Central, with Detroit at fifty-nine and thirty-nine and Charlotte at fifty-seven and forty. Both have played well enough to make the Central the most competitive division race in the league. Cleveland at sixty-four and thirty-three leads everything in the NL. Long Beach is running them close at sixty-four and thirty-four. The October field is becoming clear: Sacramento, Long Beach, Cleveland, Detroit, Charlotte — and San Jose if they can hold the wildcard position they currently occupy by nine and a half games. Six teams that look capable of doing something significant in October, and one of them is ours.

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Ingrid Larsen of Sacramento's Florin neighborhood, a veterinarian, who asks: "Jang reached ten wins in late July. Where does he rank among AL starters at this point in the season?"

Comfortably among the top ten, and in the conversation for top five. His ERA of 3.36 is not the lowest in the league — Suzuki at 2.37 and Robitaille at 2.17 are working at a different altitude — but Jang has thrown ninety-three innings with ninety-three strikeouts, a WHIP that sits under 1.15, and a ground-ball tendency that limits the damage when things go wrong. The ten wins are the most flattering number because they understate what he has done — several of those wins came in starts where he gave up three or four runs and Sacramento's offense carried him. His best starts this season, including the seven and one-third innings of zero earned runs against Boston last Sunday, reflect a pitcher who is truly capable of anchoring of the best starting rotations in baseball. The ten wins are impressive. The career ahead of him may be more impressive still.

From Lilit Minasyan of Sacramento's South Natomas neighborhood, a civil engineer, who asks: "Choi went from injured list to grand slams. How real is this production?"

It is real in the sense that Choi has always had this ability — the three Gold Gloves, the power bat, the contact rate that keeps his average above .280 even when the home runs are not falling. What the fractured finger stole was the first three months of a season he was projected to produce at this level throughout. What the last three weeks have shown is that the ability survived the injury intact. The production is not a hot streak against soft pitching — his two-homer game against Boston came off a pitcher Sacramento had seen multiple times and who knows how to mix speeds. Choi put good swings on good pitches and hit them very hard. That is the definition of a real hitter performing at his level. Whether he sustains a .287 average through October is a different question. Whether he is a legitimate offensive contributor for the second half of this season — that question has already been answered.

From Olumide Adeyemi of Sacramento's Valley Hi neighborhood, a high school athletics coach, who asks: "Sacramento is seven games up with sixty to play. Statistically, what does it take to blow a lead like that?"

For pure context: over the past twenty-five years of professional baseball, teams that hold a seven-game lead with sixty games remaining have converted that lead into a division title approximately ninety-two percent of the time. The eight percent that don't typically feature one of three things: a catastrophic injury to a franchise player, a sustained stretch of injury-related roster issues in September, or a competitor who goes on an extended winning run at precisely the wrong moment. Sacramento has already demonstrated it can manage injury complications this season — the DeVore, Lozano, and Garcia losses have not collapsed the team. San Jose would need to go roughly forty and twenty while Sacramento went something like twenty-eight and thirty-two to close a seven-game gap. Neither of those trajectories seems particularly likely given what both teams have shown across ninety-nine games. I am not telling you the season is over. I am telling you the arithmetic is on Sacramento's side in a significant way, and that seventy-two percent of remaining games can be lost between now and the end of the season and Sacramento still wins the division. It would be, to put it mildly, an "unusual" second half that erases this lead.

______________________________

Sixty-five and thirty-four. Seven games up in the division. Garcia back in days, Lozano back in three weeks. Five-game winning streak. The rotation is the best it has been since May. Two games against Milwaukee on the road, then two versus San Antonio and three versus Nashville at home coming next on the schedule.

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

06-18-2026, 07:46 AM	#391
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 ______________________________ *July 12 – 22, 2001 \| Sixty-Five and Thirty-Four \| Jang Reaches Ten Wins \| Four Starters Simultaneously Hot* ______________________________ SACRAMENTO WINS FIVE CONSECUTIVE GAMES OUTSCORING OPPONENTS FORTY-ONE TO TEN That is the shape of the last ten days. One masterpiece from the best pitcher in the American League who is not on the Sacramento roster, followed by five straight wins that settled the question of whether Sacramento's response to a dominant opponent would be absorbing the loss and moving forward or absorbing the loss and then dropping two more. The answer was the former and emphatically so — San Jose took game one of their series, then Sacramento took games two and three, then Boston arrived and was outscored thirty-two to three across three games before their bus could make it back to the hotel. The division lead is seven games with sixty more to play. That is the arithmetic of a team that is playing better than everyone else in its half of the sport. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY vs. Seattle, July 12-15 (2-2) The four-game Seattle home series split evenly: Sacramento won the games where the starting pitching was adequate and lost the ones where opposing starters came in and delivered genuinely good outings. On July 12th Jang pitched seven innings and recorded the win despite allowing four runs, Shinohara hitting his twentieth homer and his seventh-inning single providing the go-ahead run. Six to four. July 13th and 14th games belong to Sergio Baca and Danny Rodine, respectively — two Seattle starters who had no particular reason to dominate Sacramento but did anyway. Baca allowed one run in six innings on July 13th, Rodine allowed two runs in seven and one-third on July 14th. Both times Sacramento's lineup produced exactly four hits, both times the bullpen could not hold a close game, and both times the final was four to two. July 15th restored equilibrium. Gunn pitched five and two-thirds innings and allowed one earned run, Navarro hit a two-out triple in the sixth that scored two, and then Florez came off the bench in the seventh and drove in two more with a single that and gave Sacramento a lead the Prayers did not relinquish. Gutierrez threw two clean innings to earn the win, his sixth against zero losses on the season. Four to three. vs. San Jose, July 17-19 (2-1) July 17th series opener was Ebizo Suzuki's evening. Eight innings, two hits, zero runs, ten strikeouts, three walks, one hundred and eighteen pitches. His ERA entering the game was 2.17. His ERA leaving the game was 2.17. Sacramento's only two hits were a Lopez double in the fourth and a Navarro double in the sixth, both stranded. That is the kind of performance that requires a pitcher who simply has better stuff on a given evening than your lineup can answer. Jeon won July 18th showdown that evened the series. Six and one-third innings, two earned runs, with Choi driving in three in the first inning — a two-run single that put Sacramento ahead before San Jose could get comfortable. Five to two, the series tied. Cruz won July 19th with six and one-third innings of one-run ball. Lopez hit a two-run homer in the fifth off St. Clair. Schmitt drove in three runs with two-out singles in what has become a pattern for a player nobody expected to produce at this rate while filling in for Lozano. Five to three, Sacramento took the series, and the division lead moved back toward seven. vs. Boston, July 20-22 (3-0) The Boston series was not competitive. July 20th: Gunn threw seven and one-third shutout innings — eight strikeouts, no runs, eighty-eight pitches — and Choi hit two home runs including a grand slam off Ahn in the eighth inning that put the game away. Cruz went three for five with a three-run homer. Fourteen to one. July 21st: Andretti gave Sacramento five and one-third innings of shutout ball, Nakazawa hit a three-run homer, and seven Sacramento hitters recorded at least one RBI. Twelve to zero. July 22nd: Jang threw seven and one-third innings, allowed two runs neither of which were earned, and Mollohan went three for three with two doubles. Sacramento won its fifth straight, six to two, and the division lead stood at seven. Combined line for the Boston series: Sacramento 32 runs, Boston 3. ______________________________ JANG AT TEN AND FOUR The mild hamstring strain that sent a brief chill through the fanbase on July 6th resolved itself inside five days and had no visible impact on Jang's performance. He is now ten and four with a 3.36 ERA — the first Sacramento starter to reach double-digit wins this season, the team leader in ERA among starters, and in command of his position at the top of the rotation with the confidence that comes from having now succeeded against every caliber of opponent in the American League. His last two starts: 1.93 ERA over seventeen and one-third innings, with zero earned runs against Boston in the series finale. ______________________________ HA-JOON CHOI HAS ARRIVED Eleven home runs, twenty-four RBI, a .287 average since returning from the fractured finger. The numbers from the Boston series alone — two home runs and six RBI in one game, including a grand slam — would be notable for any player at any point. For a center fielder who spent most of the first three months of the season on the injured list, they represent the organization's bet on Choi's health finally paying off in full. He has been Sacramento's best offensive player in the three weeks since his return. When he is healthy and locked in, he is a player who changes what pitchers can risk against the middle of the Sacramento lineup. Opposing teams that walked around Shinohara in April and May now have Choi waiting on the other side of that decision. ______________________________ THE ROTATION AND THE BULLPEN, MID-JULY Four starters simultaneously on hot streaks at the end of this stretch: Jang at 1.93 ERA over his last two starts, Gunn at 0.69, Andretti at 0.90, Cruz at 2.38. That is an unusual alignment and it should be enjoyed rather than expected to continue indefinitely. What it reflects is a rotation in which all four of the primary arms have found workable rhythms simultaneously, which means the lineup can operate with the kind of comfort that comes from knowing the starter will give seven innings more often than not. Benson has converted eight saves in thirteen chances over the last stretch with a 0.57 ERA in that run — a significant recovery from the blown save pattern that ran through mid-June. His ERA overall is 2.42, which is where you want your closer sitting in late July. Gutierrez has six wins and zero losses with a 2.24 ERA, and he remains the most reliable middle-inning arm Sacramento has, and the fact that he is doing it across fifty-plus innings this season is not luck — it is craft. ______________________________ THE INFIELD IS RECOVERING Garcia's sore elbow will take about four more days to fully heal — he should be back in the lineup around end of July. Lozano's is approximately three weeks away from coming back after being sidelined with shoulder tendinitis — return is expected around mid-August. Gil Cruz's back tightness resolved and he has been playing since July 17th. Schmitt, who was nobody's first thought for third base in April, is hitting .277 with six home runs and twenty-two RBI and currently on a ten-game hot streak at .448. He has earned whatever playing time he receives when the infield returns to full health. DeVore's season is over. That fact has not changed and will not change. What has changed is that the roster has demonstrated it can compensate, and three weeks from now, with Lozano back at third and Garcia back at second, the infield Sacramento puts together for the stretch run will look substantially different from the patchwork that has been absorbing the load since late June. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE Detroit and Charlotte are separated by a game and a half atop the AL Central, with Detroit at fifty-nine and thirty-nine and Charlotte at fifty-seven and forty. Both have played well enough to make the Central the most competitive division race in the league. Cleveland at sixty-four and thirty-three leads everything in the NL. Long Beach is running them close at sixty-four and thirty-four. The October field is becoming clear: Sacramento, Long Beach, Cleveland, Detroit, Charlotte — and San Jose if they can hold the wildcard position they currently occupy by nine and a half games. Six teams that look capable of doing something significant in October, and one of them is ours. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Ingrid Larsen of Sacramento's Florin neighborhood, a veterinarian, who asks: "Jang reached ten wins in late July. Where does he rank among AL starters at this point in the season?" Comfortably among the top ten, and in the conversation for top five. His ERA of 3.36 is not the lowest in the league — Suzuki at 2.37 and Robitaille at 2.17 are working at a different altitude — but Jang has thrown ninety-three innings with ninety-three strikeouts, a WHIP that sits under 1.15, and a ground-ball tendency that limits the damage when things go wrong. The ten wins are the most flattering number because they understate what he has done — several of those wins came in starts where he gave up three or four runs and Sacramento's offense carried him. His best starts this season, including the seven and one-third innings of zero earned runs against Boston last Sunday, reflect a pitcher who is truly capable of anchoring of the best starting rotations in baseball. The ten wins are impressive. The career ahead of him may be more impressive still. From Lilit Minasyan of Sacramento's South Natomas neighborhood, a civil engineer, who asks: "Choi went from injured list to grand slams. How real is this production?" It is real in the sense that Choi has always had this ability — the three Gold Gloves, the power bat, the contact rate that keeps his average above .280 even when the home runs are not falling. What the fractured finger stole was the first three months of a season he was projected to produce at this level throughout. What the last three weeks have shown is that the ability survived the injury intact. The production is not a hot streak against soft pitching — his two-homer game against Boston came off a pitcher Sacramento had seen multiple times and who knows how to mix speeds. Choi put good swings on good pitches and hit them very hard. That is the definition of a real hitter performing at his level. Whether he sustains a .287 average through October is a different question. Whether he is a legitimate offensive contributor for the second half of this season — that question has already been answered. From Olumide Adeyemi of Sacramento's Valley Hi neighborhood, a high school athletics coach, who asks: "Sacramento is seven games up with sixty to play. Statistically, what does it take to blow a lead like that?" For pure context: over the past twenty-five years of professional baseball, teams that hold a seven-game lead with sixty games remaining have converted that lead into a division title approximately ninety-two percent of the time. The eight percent that don't typically feature one of three things: a catastrophic injury to a franchise player, a sustained stretch of injury-related roster issues in September, or a competitor who goes on an extended winning run at precisely the wrong moment. Sacramento has already demonstrated it can manage injury complications this season — the DeVore, Lozano, and Garcia losses have not collapsed the team. San Jose would need to go roughly forty and twenty while Sacramento went something like twenty-eight and thirty-two to close a seven-game gap. Neither of those trajectories seems particularly likely given what both teams have shown across ninety-nine games. I am not telling you the season is over. I am telling you the arithmetic is on Sacramento's side in a significant way, and that seventy-two percent of remaining games can be lost between now and the end of the season and Sacramento still wins the division. It would be, to put it mildly, an "unusual" second half that erases this lead. ______________________________ Sixty-five and thirty-four. Seven games up in the division. Garcia back in days, Lozano back in three weeks. Five-game winning streak. The rotation is the best it has been since May. Two games against Milwaukee on the road, then two versus San Antonio and three versus Nashville at home coming next on the schedule. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.