Sacramento Prayers - 1988 FLB Season - Page 20

liberty-ca · 06-12-2026, 08:27 AM

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

By Claude Playball | Baseball Insider & Analyst | Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast

______________________________

Winter 2001 | Gunn Signed, Rodriguez Traded | Hall of Fame Voting Produces No Inductees | 2001 Season Starts Monday

______________________________

THE DEFENDING CHAMPIONS ARE PREDICTED TO FINISH SECOND IN THEIR OWN DIVISION BY SIXTEEN GAMES

Preseason projections, made by the selective pool of FBL analytic experts, have been released on the eve of new 2001 baseball season: San Jose 109-53, Sacramento 93-69. Sixteen games of separation in the same division. The defending World Series champions predicted to lose nineteen more games than they did in 2000 while their first-round playoff opponents from that very October are projected to be historically dominant. Personally, I find it difficult thing to believe. Nobody who makes these projections has seen Jeon throw a bases-empty shutout in the cold at Nat Bailey Stadium. Nobody who makes these projections has watched Navarro in October. The projections are made from what the numbers say about the players, not from what those players have proven they can do when the games actually matter.

That said: the projections are not wrong to flag concerns. Lopez is still healing. Rubalcava is still seven to eight months away. Lozano has an oblique strain entering the week of Opening Day, and Cruz has a sprained knee. The defending champions are banged up in the first week of April, which is not where you want to be. They have been here before. The 2000 season was built on improvisation, adaptability, and the refusal to accept that injury lists are destiny. There is no reason to stop now.

______________________________

THE OFFSEASON TRANSACTIONS

Jose Rodriguez was traded in late January. After spending all of 2000 on the injured list with a broken elbow, Sacramento sent Rodriguez, minor league pitcher Albin Tornatore, a first-round draft pick, and an eighth-round pick to Las Vegas, receiving thirty-eight-year-old reliever Javier Gutierrez and a first-round pick in return. The organization is giving Sacramento a veteran relief arm it can use in the short term and freeing the roster of a shortstop whose health has been a question for two years. The net cost in picks essentially cancels out. What it formalizes is what the 2000 season already made obvious: Alejandro Navarro is the shortstop here for as long as he wants to be.

Chris Blevins was traded to Portland in late February along with minor league outfielder Chase Burrows and three draft picks, receiving twenty-six-year-old reliever Mike Luna, two picks, and $450,000 in cash. Blevins was a fourth outfielder with limited upside. Luna gives the bullpen a younger arm with projection. It is the kind of depth-for-depth exchange that winning organizations make efficiently in the offseason.

John Gunn was signed in late January. Four years, $1.824 million, for a twenty-five-year-old right-hander with a 52-39 career record and a 4.23 ERA. The preseason projections — which are skeptical of Sacramento in general — have him going 15-9 with a 3.06 ERA for 2001. If the model is right, Gunn is the second-best pitcher in the rotation and the most efficient offseason signing Sacramento has made in years.

______________________________

TEIICHI KASHIWABARA

Sacramento's left-field prospect is the sixth-best prospect in professional baseball according to the preseason rankings. Sixth overall. Not sixth in the AL, not sixth at his position — sixth among every player in every organization in the FBL. He is nineteen years old. The organization has very quietly built a pipeline that now has two starting pitchers signed as free agents specifically because the current roster needs depth, and a left-field prospect who is one year younger than Victor Alvarez and ranked higher on the league's prospect list than any Sacramento player has been in recent memory.

Kashiwabara doesn't appear in the 2001 opening day roster. He is in the system, developing, which is where a nineteen-year-old should be. But his ranking tells you something about the organization's future that the current roster's age profile also suggests: Sacramento is not in a rebuilding phase, but the next generation is already arriving beneath the surface of a team still competitive enough to defend a championship.

______________________________

WHERE SACRAMENTO STANDS — A POSITIONAL SURVEY

The preseason positional rankings tell a layered story about who this team is entering 2001.

At shortstop, Navarro is ranked fourth in the league — which is extraordinary for a twenty-three-year-old in only his second full season as a starter. He is ahead of every shortstop in the AL except Crotwell in Milwaukee, Colson in Detroit, and Rastelli in Vancouver. At right field, Shinohara is second in the league, his Gold Glove year apparently translating into the ranking his talent has deserved for several seasons. At starting pitching, Jang ranks fourth — Sacramento's new signing immediately projects as one of the better starters in the AL. The relief corps with Medina ranks first in the league, which speaks to the depth of the bullpen even after a year when Medina's availability was inconsistent.

Where Sacramento ranks below expectation: first base (18th in Alvarez, who is twenty-one and improving), center field (14th with Choi, whose defensive metrics don't match his offensive production in the rankings), and left field (13th with Mollohan, who is a professional hitter but not a positional star). These rankings represent the team's floor. Alvarez at twenty-one has years of development ahead. Choi's bat doesn't disappear because the rankings question his center-field defense.

______________________________

THE INJURY SITUATION

Lopez is listed at two months remaining on his ACL recovery. If the timeline holds, he returns sometime in June. His return won't be quiet — seventy-three stolen bases and twenty home runs from the leadoff spot created an offensive profile that Sacramento has genuinely missed since October, and two months into the season the team will have been playing without him for eight consecutive months. Whether he comes back as the same player immediately or requires a re-acclimation period is impossible to predict. ACL recoveries are individual, and Lopez's athleticism should favor full recovery. The June target is worth watching.

Rubalcava is seven to eight months from returning. That puts him in the range of November 2001 at the earliest — which means his 2001 season, for practical purposes, is over before it begins. Sacramento will not see Rubalcava throw a competitive pitch this year. The rotation will function without him. It has been functioning without him since the wildcard game last October.

Lozano's oblique and Cruz's knee are both short-term. Both are expected back within days. The season doesn't need to wait for either of them.

______________________________

THE WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC AND NAVARRO ON THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE

The United States won the World Baseball Classic in March. Seong-soo Kang of South Korea won MVP. The tournament's top vote-getter among position players not named Kang was, essentially, a collection of familiar names from the FBL's upper tier — Crotwell, Washburn, Davis, Robitaille.

Sacramento's own Alejandro Navarro represented Mexico and finished with forty-nine MVP points. He did not win the award. He received no first-place votes, but what is really remarkable, is him playing in his first World Baseball Classic and competing in the same tournament as players who have been international representatives for five or six years at tender age of twenty-three years old. Forty-nine points means voters across twenty participating nations looked at his tournament performance and found it worth acknowledging. The player who hit .476 in the ALDS and won two games of the ALCS with late-inning home runs is now registering on a global stage. This will not be his last World Baseball Classic appearance.

______________________________

THE HALL OF FAME BALLOT — NO INDUCTEES

Scott Hunt received 72.2 percent of votes in his seventh year on the ballot and fell short of the 75 percent threshold. Forrest Marrs at 66.3 percent. Eli Murguia and Brian Pullum both first-year candidates with significant vote totals, suggesting the ballot logjam will continue.

No Sacramento connections in the top tier of the ballot other than Eli Murguia, which is a curiosity given how many former Prayers have retired over the last decade. Fernando Salazar is already inducted. Strickler won't be eligible for five years. The institution will have to wait for the next generation to present its arguments.

______________________________

AROUND THE LEAGUE — WHAT THE PROJECTIONS SAY

San Jose is predicted at 109-53. Suzuki is projected at 22-6 with a 2.82 ERA. Haddix at 17-7 with a 3.33. If those numbers materialize, Sacramento's division is essentially decided before the calendar turns to August. The Demons return Montemayor, who hit seven home runs against Sacramento's pitching in the ALCS alone, and a lineup that ranked eighth in AL scoring last year with room to improve.

In the NL, Milwaukee is predicted to win the Central at 103-59. Long Beach and Vancouver project as the Pacific leaders. The NL looks like a two-horse race between Milwaukee and whoever emerges from the Pacific, with Vancouver's staff — Corral, Gauthier, Trillo — potentially the best rotation in the NL if health cooperates.

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Linnea Bergström of Sacramento's Curtis Park neighborhood, a pediatric nurse, who asks: "The projections show Sacramento finishing sixteen games behind San Jose. Should the front office be more concerned than they appear?"

The projections are based on what the models know: player aging curves, regression to the mean, the departure of Strickler and the injury to Rubalcava, and the assumption that San Jose's young roster matures at the rate its talent suggests. What the models do not know is that Sacramento went 18-23 in one-run games last year and still won 103 games. They do not know what Navarro looks like entering his age-twenty-three season with a full October of winning behind him. They do not know how Jeon performs with a healthy back and ankle and a full complement of October experience. The front office, to my read, is not unconcerned — the Gunn signing and the bullpen depth additions suggest they take the gap seriously — but they are not panicking, which is the correct response to a computer's preseason estimate. Sixteen games is a number in a regular season. Postseason October is a different beast. The 2000 Sacramento Prayers were predicted to win about ninety-five games. They won a hundred and three and a World Series. The models are useful starting points, not verdicts.

From Obinna Uzoma of Sacramento's Rancho Cordova neighborhood, an accountant, who asks: "The salary sheet shows the entire roster at $11.7 million in 2001. How does Sacramento compete with teams spending more than that?"

By drafting, developing, and signing players before they reach their market value. The franchise has three players signed through arbitration years at below-market rates in Navarro, Alvarez, and Jeon — three of the most important contributors to last October's championship run. Lozano signed a five-year extension right after the World Series for six hundred thousand dollars per year, which is, to be direct, an extraordinary bargain for a player with five postseason home runs who just won a Gold Glove. Cruz is similarly locked in. Shinohara's five-year deal scales up toward fair market over time but is manageable. Sacramento competes on the margins of the salary structure by finding value before the market finds it, which is what the development pipeline and the scouting staff exist to do. The Kashiwabara ranking at sixth overall in the prospect list is evidence that the pipeline is working. The eleven-point-seven-million-dollar roster that just won the World Series is evidence that it has been working for several years.

From Marta Vidaković of Sacramento's Land Park neighborhood, a high school teacher, who asks: "Opening Day is Monday. Sacramento's rotation has Gunn, Cruz, Espenoza, Andretti, and Jeon. Last year's rotation had the same uncertainty entering the year. Should we expect a similar journey?"

Expect a different journey to a possibly similar destination. Last year's uncertainty was injury-driven — Jeon's back and ankle, Rubalcava's wildcard exit. This year's uncertainty is talent-driven — Gunn is an unknown quantity in Sacramento's system, Andretti is forty-one years old, and the back-end of the rotation is still unsettled. The good news is that Espenoza, who was arguably the best starter on the staff in the second half of 2000 and threw eight and one-third innings in a deciding ALCS game, is a legitimate front-of-rotation arm entering his age-thirty-seven season. The concerning news is that thirty-seven is thirty-seven, and the innings Espenoza threw in October will eventually register somewhere in his arm. The most useful prediction I can offer is the one supported by evidence: this organization, when challenged, finds ways to win. The rotation will have a bad month. The bullpen will cover it. The offense will carry stretches where the pitching cannot. Navarro will do something in September that makes everyone forget the bad April starts. That is what defending champions who are built correctly look like in the regular season. The journey this year will have its own shape. It has earned the right to surprise us again.

______________________________

Ninety-three wins predicted. One hundred and three delivered last year. The Seattle Lucifers arrive Monday at Sutter Health Park for Opening Day. Jung-keun Jang takes the ball to pitch for the first time in the Prayers uniform. Alejandro Lopez is two months from coming back. The 2001 Sacramento Prayers begin the defense of their championship with a sprained knee, an oblique strain, and a six-foot-one right-hander from South Korea who the computer thinks will win fifteen games.

See you at the ballpark.

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

liberty-ca · 06-13-2026, 09:10 AM

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

By Claude Playball | Baseball Insider & Analyst | Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast

______________________________

April 2 – 12, 2001 | Shinohara Has Five Home Runs in Six Games | Jang Looks Like the Real Thing

______________________________

SACRAMENTO IS FIVE AND FIVE, SAN JOSE IS EIGHT AND ONE

There was a hope entering 2001 that the injuries were behind us. That hope lasted eight days. On April 3rd, in his first appearance of the season, Ji-hoon Jeon left the mound having thrown sixty-nine pitches with a finger blister. On April 11th, Ha-joon Choi was hit by a pitch in the forearm or hand — the exact location was not specified, his diagnosis is still pending, which is the kind of medical ambiguity that keeps you awake at two in the morning. He appeared briefly the following day as a pinch runner before being removed, which suggests the injury is not catastrophic. What it is, exactly, remains unknown.

The defending champions are five and five. Two walk-off wins in ten games, one of them in ten innings and one in eleven. Two blown starts from Andretti and Flores respectively. One Gunn debut of considerable promise. One Jang start that suggested everything the projections implied about his value was accurate. And the constant, reliable, infuriating background noise of the injury report telling you that the 2001 Sacramento Prayers intend to continue exactly where the 2000 version left off in terms of medical drama.

______________________________

DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

vs. Seattle, April 2-4 (2-1)

Opening Day: Jang pitched seven and one-third innings against Santiago Gomez and lost zero to two. Both numbers are accurate and incompatible-seeming. Jang's game score was sixty-seven on a hundred and three pitches. He allowed four hits, walked nobody, struck out five. Gomez allowed five hits, walked nobody, struck out five. The difference was two runs in the sixth inning off a Jang fastball that Romo put into the outfield and a Najera single that followed. Sacramento put runners on base and left them there in every meaningful inning. A quality start on Opening Day that produced zero runs and a loss is exactly the kind of result that the first game of the year generates more than it should.

Jeon started April 3rd and lasted three and two-thirds innings. He was injured while pitching — the finger blister revealed itself sometime between the forty-fourth and sixty-ninth pitch — and Espenoza came in and threw two and one-third innings in a winning cause. Nakazawa hit a three-run homer in the fifth off Baca to flip a two-nothing deficit into a three-two lead, and the bullpen held. Four to two, Sacramento's first win in 2001.

April 4th was ten innings and Choi's two-run walk-off homer off Glahn. Andretti threw six and one-third innings, allowed three earned runs, and left with the bases loaded for Ke, who let one of those inherited runners to cross the home plate. Multiple blown leads, multiple Seattle comebacks. Chavarria and Choi and Shinohara all contributing. Sacramento won five to three on a ball that Choi put into the seats in the bottom of the tenth, and the crowd finally exhaled.

@ San Jose, April 6-8 (1-2)

Valadez held Sacramento to one run over eight innings on April 6th. Cruz pitched well — six and two-thirds, one earned run — but Luna came in for the eighth, threw twenty-six pitches, two of which were of wild variety, and gave up a Pratly two-run double that decided the game. Three to one, San Jose.

Demon's Suzuki on April 7th: eight innings, no runs, ten strikeouts, one hundred and twenty-two pitches. That is what the number-two starter for the projected hundred-and-nine-win team looks like. Sacramento scored one run in the ninth when Alvarez doubled with two men on and two out. One to two, San Jose's walk-off on Vasquez single, Sacramento at two and three.

April 8th was different. Gunn started his first career game at Sacramento and went six innings of two-hit shutout baseball against a San Jose lineup that had just run Suzuki out there the night before. He threw a hundred and eight pitches with control and movement and made the Demons look ordinary. Lozano — returning from the oblique strain that kept him out of Opening Day — hit a grand slam in the fifth off Haddix to put the game away eight to nothing at that point. Sacramento scored nine runs total. Gunn was game's player of the game in his first career appearance as Sacramento's starter. Nine to five, Sacramento.

@ Portland, April 9-12 (2-2)

Andretti allowed six runs in three and two-thirds innings on April 9th. He is forty-one years old and his ERA entering this week stands at 8.10, which is an early April number that will either come down as he settles into his mechanics or will signal that what he did in the World Series was the final successful thing his body could produce in October before the bills came due in April. That determination cannot be made in two starts. But two starts with an 8.10 ERA are two starts with an 8.10 ERA, and the organization should be mildly concerned at the moment. Shinohara hit two home runs and had three RBI, but that still wasn't enough.

April 10th in eleven innings was exactly the kind of game Sacramento needs to win if it is going to survive the injury attrition of this early schedule. Vic Cruz started and left after four and two-thirds with Portland already scoring at will through the middle innings. Multiple bullpen arms allowed inherited runners to score. Benson blew a save. Sacramento trailed twice and came back twice and then Shinohara hit his fourth homer of the season in the tenth inning to tie it and Nakazawa doubled home the winning run in the eleventh. Ten to eight final, eleven innings, five pitchers for Sacramento, chaos from the third inning through the last.

Jang won April 11th. Six innings, five hits, three runs, nine strikeouts. A hundred and seven pitches. His ERA is 2.14 after two starts and the ground-ball tendency that the organization bought is already manifesting — thirteen ground-outs in eleven innings pitched. Sacramento scored eight runs off three Portland pitchers. Four home runs across the lineup. Everything that was supposed to work, worked this time.

Flores, called up from the minors on an emergency basis to plug the hole in the starting rotation, caused by Ji-hoon Jeon's injury, started April 12th and lasted four and two-thirds innings, allowing six runs on nine hits, including a Garcia three-run homer that turned a manageable game into a rout. Portland won nine to two. The fifth starter question, which was the rotation's biggest uncertainty entering the season, has produced exactly the answer nobody wanted to hear the very first time it had been asked...

______________________________

SHINOHARA'S START

Five home runs in six games. A .391 batting average over that stretch. The Gold Glove winner from 2000 has been the most productive offensive player on the roster through the first week and a half of the season, and he has done it while Lopez heals, while Lozano was working his way back from the oblique, while Choi's health status is uncertain. Shinohara is not typically the player who carries a lineup — his value has always resided in his consistency, his ability to hit in the middle innings for doubles and run-scoring singles, his arm that prevents runners from taking extra bases. What he is doing in April 2001 is something different: he is the force around which the offense is currently organized, and he is doing it without apparent mechanical change or visible explanation.

______________________________

JANG AND THE ROTATION QUESTION

Two starts. Two quality outings. Thirteen innings, fourteen hits, five earned runs, eighteen strikeouts, an ERA of 2.14. The $1.824 million rotation investment is currently performing like a half-price Cy Young candidate, which is either an early April mirage or a signal that Sacramento found genuine value in a pitcher the market underestimated. The ground-ball rate is real. The control is real. Whether it sustains over thirty-five starts is the only question that matters, and two starts cannot answer it. What two starts can do is make the question worth asking with optimism rather than anxiety.

The fifth starter situation is less encouraging. Flores's 11.57 ERA after one outing tells you he is not ready for this role. Jeon has a finger blister. Andretti is struggling. The depth that held Sacramento together during the 2000 October run is being tested before May, which was not the plan.

______________________________

SAN JOSE IS EIGHT AND ONE

The preseason projections said San Jose would win a hundred and nine games. Entering April 13th, they have an eight-and-one record and a run differential that looks exactly like a team capable of winning a hundred and nine games. Suzuki, who the projections put at twenty-two wins with a 2.82 ERA, is already at one win and a game score of eighty-three. Haddix is one and one but allowed eight runs to Sacramento in four and two-thirds innings in a game Sacramento's offense overwhelmed. The Demons are going to lose games. But the early evidence supports the projections in ways that are uncomfortable to acknowledge when you are three and a half games behind them in your own division on April 12th.

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Pham Thi Lan of Sacramento's Elk Grove neighborhood, a pharmacist, who asks: "Jeon has a finger blister twelve days into the season. Is there a version of 2001 where his body simply lets him pitch?"

There has to be, because the alternatives are too grim to accept as permanent. A finger blister is among the less severe of the various afflictions Jeon has accumulated over his career — it is not a structural issue, not ligament or bone, not the kind of thing that recurs mechanically the way back injuries or ankle problems do. It is genuinely bad luck of the sort that happens to pitchers who throw hard and grip the ball the way their mechanics require. The concern with Jeon is not the blister in isolation but the cumulative pattern: back, ankle, blister, and underneath all of it a zero-and-four regular season record that distorts what he has actually shown when healthy. His October performances are the argument for patience. His injury timeline is the argument for managing expectations. The most honest thing I can say entering his return from the twelve-day timeline is: Jeon pitching healthy is a legitimate major-league starter, and Jeon pitching is a weekly negotiation between talent and fragility. The franchise knew this when they signed the automatic renewal. They have chosen to bet on the talent. The blister doesn't change the bet.

From Tigran Sargsyan of Sacramento's Arden-Arcade neighborhood, a civil engineer, who asks: "Andretti is 8.10 ERA through two starts. Is he done?"

Two starts in April for a forty-one-year-old pitcher coming off a World Series clinching performance is the smallest sample size you can construct while still calling it data. His Game Six in October was not a fluke — the mechanics, the ground-ball approach, the ability to work deep into games without over-relying on velocity, all of that was real. What happened in the first two starts is likely a combination of spring rustiness, early-season cold weather (games in the forties in Portland do not favor any pitcher over forty years old, frankly), and the natural difficulty of repeating October form across a full spring. The more useful question is not whether Andretti is done but whether he can give Sacramento quality innings in starts three through fifteen. If the answer is yes, the 8.10 ERA is a forgettable artifact. If it is still climbing in June, the organization will face a harder conversation. I am not ready to have that conversation on April 12th.

From Rosario Fuentes of Sacramento's Oak Park neighborhood, a teacher's aide, who asks: "Sacramento is three and a half games behind San Jose eleven days into the season. How does this team catch a hundred-and-nine-win team?"

The honest answer is that it may not need to. The wild card exists, Sacramento is tied for the first wild card spot right now, and winning the World Series last October did not require winning the AL West. What catching San Jose specifically would require is the combination of Sacramento playing at their ceiling — Lopez returning in June and providing the offensive dimension his presence creates, the rotation stabilizing around Jang and Cruz and eventually Jeon, the bullpen returning to its 2000 form — while San Jose plays at something below their own ceiling for a sustained stretch. That combination is possible, not probable. More practically: every team in baseball has a bad month. San Jose will have one too. The question is whether Sacramento is in a position to capitalize when that month arrives. Right now, five and five and competing in a genuinely difficult early schedule, they are capable of being that team. The gap is not insurmountable. It is also not going to close itself.

______________________________

Five and five. Boston on the road for three games starting Friday. Then San Jose comes to Sacramento. Lopez is eight weeks away. Choi's diagnosis hopefully arrives sometime before Monday. The season is only eleven days old.

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

liberty-ca · 06-13-2026, 08:50 PM

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

TIM VAN HAM HITS TWO GRAND SLAMS IN ONE AFTERNOON

The most surprising thing was Bernardo Andretti. Eight innings of two-hit baseball against Seattle on April 20th, with nothing allowed, 584 games into a career that everyone — including, probably, Andretti — briefly worried might be running out of answers after those first two shaky starts of this season. The pitcher who posted an 8.10 ERA through his first two outings of 2001 walked off the mound at T-Mobile Park with a hundred pitches thrown and zero earned runs behind him, and whatever April doubt had accumulated in two weeks of poor results was substantially resolved in one evening.

Sacramento's five and five record had become thirteen and six. Eight wins in nine games. The Boston series went three-for-three. San Jose came to Sacramento and left having lost three straight. The AL West lead is two and a half games and the calendar hasn't turned to May.

______________________________

DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

@ Boston, April 13-15 (3-0)

Gunn went six and two-thirds innings on April 13th, allowed one run on three hits and walked nobody. His ERA dropped to 0.71 after two starts as a Prayer. Three home runs in the fifth inning — Shinohara, Cruz, and Chavarria all went deep against Schlageter — gave Sacramento six runs total. Benson closed it. Six to three.

April 14th was Tim Van Ham's afternoon. Five to two over Boston going into the fifth inning, Sacramento already leading after a first-inning rally. Van Ham came to the plate with the bases loaded and hit a grand slam off Onodera. Then in the ninth inning, bases loaded again, he hit another one off Ito. Two grand slams in a single game, eight RBI total, tying the Sacramento regular season record. He finished two for four with both home runs and eight runs batted in while Andretti pitched six innings against a lineup that hit him for three runs — a serviceable start that the offense made irrelevant before the fifth inning was over. Thirteen to three, and the Van Ham name is in the franchise record book.

The April 15th series finale was Cruz's. Seven and two-thirds innings of shutout baseball, six hits, two walks, five strikeouts. Boston had opportunities and squandered every one of them. Van Ham's run-scoring double in the fourth and Mollohan's two-out RBI in the fifth were all Sacramento needed. Two to nothing, and Cruz's ERA fell to 1.42.

vs. San Jose, April 16-18 (3-0)

Jang started April 16th against the Demons and was torched in the fourth inning — Montemayor solo homer, Vasquez two-run shot, five runs allowed in three and two-thirds innings. Sacramento trailed six to three heading into the seventh and somehow won. Gutierrez threw two and one-third scoreless innings to stabilize the bullpen situation. Navarro drove in three runs including a sac fly that tied the game in the fifth. Chavarria doubled twice and scored twice. Schmitt came off the bench in the ninth inning and hit a two-run walk-off homer off Minghetti. Eight to six in ten innings, Sacramento's fourth walk-off of the young season.

April 17th: Espenoza threw six innings and allowed two runs in a grinding performance that kept Sacramento close enough for Florez's eighth-inning two-run homer to decide it. Ke got the win. Four to two, Sacramento.

April 18th: Sacramento scored five runs off Suzuki in the first three innings — Alvarez homered, Van Ham homered, Cruz homered, Chavarria hit a two-run shot — and then surrendered five runs in turn as Ogle hit two home runs and Montemayor added another. Gunn allowed five runs in four and one-third innings, first rough start after his strong Boston outing, and in the end the game became a seven to six Sacramento win on Shinohara's ninth-inning sac fly. Three walks-off in three games against San Jose. The Demons left Sacramento at nine and six.

@ Seattle, April 20-22 (2-1)

Andretti on April 20th: eight innings, two hits, zero runs, five strikeouts, a hundred pitches. The complete reversal of his Portland outings. The Seattle lineup — which is six and twelve and deeply unimpressive — hit him as poorly as a major-league lineup can be expected to hit a pitcher who is locating his ball and working his ground-ball tendencies. Sacramento scored ten runs. Shinohara homered for the eighth time. Mollohan hit his third. The final was ten to one and Andretti's ERA dropped from 6.75 to 4.50 in one start.

Jang threw five innings of no-run ball on April 21st and lost two to one when Luna's one inning of relief allowed two runs on a Welsh double and a Bay sac fly in the seventh. Sacramento had two hits total. The bullpen erased Jang's quality work in one inning, which is becoming a recurring theme for this team.

Cruz won a two-to-one pitcher's duel on April 22nd, going five innings in cold and rainy conditions with four walks but only one run allowed. Gutierrez, Gonzalez, Medina, and Benson all contributed to the hold, and Shinohara's two-out double in the sixth was the winning run. Two to one, series won by Sacramento.

______________________________

THE ROTATION IN CONTEXT

Cruz is fourth in the AL in ERA at 1.50 and as of late, he has been the most reliable starter in the rotation. His control, which produced six walks in his Seattle outing but only two in Boston, is the one variable that swings his starts between dominant and merely good. When he throws strikes he generates ground balls and keeps the lineup in order; when he walks batters the game turns chaotic fast. The 1.50 ERA reflects the dominant version appearing regularly enough to outweigh the other.

Jang is 3.03 ERA across six starts and has not yet had a game where he was simply removed for ineffectiveness — his April 16th San Jose start was bad, but even there he recorded seventeen outs before Aces pulled him. The strikeout rate is real. The ground-ball tendencies are real. He is what Sacramento paid for.

Andretti's eight-inning Seattle performance was beautiful. Whether it represents a settled mechanical groove or simply an ideal matchup against a bad lineup remains to be seen over his next three starts. The 4.50 ERA entering May is not a crisis. It is a caution flag that turned amber on April 20th and has not yet gone green.

Gunn's April has been uneven — excellent against Boston in his two outings there, roughed up by San Jose in his most recent start. His ERA after four starts as a Prayer is 3.18, which is still respectable. He is twenty-five years old and has never thrown the kind of April he is experiencing at the major-league level in this environment. Some of the variance is expected.

______________________________

SHINOHARA IS CARRYING THIS OFFENSE

Eight home runs in thirteen games. A .373 average over that stretch. Tied for third in the AL in home runs. The Gold Glove right fielder who was supposed to be Sacramento's consistent middle-of-the-order presence has instead become something closer to its offensive engine, filling the role that Lopez would normally occupy at the top and Choi at the heart of the lineup. When both of those players return — Lopez in approximately six to seven weeks, Choi in one week — the offensive picture becomes considerably deeper. What Shinohara has done in April is establish that Sacramento can score runs without its two most important lineup contributors, which is a discovery that should make the rest of April and most of May feel manageable rather than desperate.

______________________________

THE PUGA TRADE

On April 23rd, Sacramento traded catcher Jon Horn, second baseman Rey Puga, right-handed pitcher Nick Coulson, a first-round pick, a second-round pick, and a fifth-round pick to the St. Louis Faith. In return: a first-round pick, a third-round pick, and $250,000 in cash.

The picks roughly cancel. The cash is modest. What the transaction actually accomplishes is clearing roster space and salary by moving three players the organization had determined would not be part of the long-term picture. Puga, at thirty years old and batting .043 through his limited appearances in 2001, was not going to contribute at the major-league level this year. Horn was a catching prospect behind Nakazawa on the depth chart with no clear path forward. Coulson was a minor-league arm without an obvious lane to Sacramento's rotation.

Trading present depth for draft capital is the kind of move that produces value in three years rather than this October. Sacramento's position at thirteen and six gives them the luxury of making this trade without it feeling like panic. The organization believes in what it has on the field. This is housekeeping.

______________________________

AROUND THE LEAGUE

Cleveland leads the NL Central at fourteen and four, which is the best record in the league. Detroit and Sacramento share the best record in the AL at thirteen and six. Charlotte is twelve and six, Houston eleven and seven. The AL is genuinely competitive from top to bottom, which makes Sacramento's current position — leading the West while the projected winner of the division sits two and a half games back — more meaningful than a random mid-April snapshot would normally suggest.

Charlotte reliever, Casey Ford, filed for bankruptcy this morning in a Charlotte court. According to the Chapter 7 filing, Mr. Ford's restaurant chain lost $5.5 million last year. Among his assets, the reliever listed over 2 million in Rolex watches. Casey has been quoted as saying, "What can I tell you? Those timepieces are the epitome of class. I can't say anything about my financial situation. Go through my lawyer."

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Margherita Conti of Sacramento's Midtown neighborhood, a restaurant manager, who asks: "Tim Van Ham hit two grand slams in one game, eight RBI, tied the franchise record. Who is Tim Van Ham?"

The honest answer is that Tim Van Ham is the player most franchises have but rarely acknowledge: a perfectly functional major-league outfielder who does not have the ceiling of a star but has enough skill and professionalism to contribute meaningfully when called upon. He entered 2001 as the team's fourth outfielder, filling in for Lopez while the ACL heals and for Choi while the quadriceps recovers. His career numbers have never suggested what he did on April 14th was coming, which is part of what makes the record so striking. There is no analytical framework that predicted Van Ham as the answer to the question of who would tie Sacramento's single-game RBI record. He just came to the plate with the bases loaded twice and hit the ball as hard as he could hit it. That's baseball, and that's Tim Van Ham, and on one afternoon at Fenway Park in April it was exactly sufficient.

From Seun Adesanya of Sacramento's South Sacramento neighborhood, a logistics coordinator, who asks: "Andretti was 8.10 ERA through two starts, then went eight shutout innings against Seattle. Which version is real?"

Both versions exist, and the question is which one appears more often over the remaining twenty-five or so starts. What the April 20th Seattle start showed is that the mechanics and the game plan that produced a World Series-winning performance in October are still available to him — they did not disappear, they were simply inaccessible in two cold April outings against teams that were swinging at his pitches rather than his approach. The Seattle lineup, which is among the weakest in the AL, provided an ideal environment for Andretti to re-establish his rhythm and remind himself of what his arm can still do. The real version of Andretti in 2001 is probably somewhere between the 8.10 ERA and the shutout — a starter who gives Sacramento six innings and two or three earned runs often enough to remain a functional part of the rotation without being the dominant presence he was in his prime years. If those eight innings proved to himself that he still belongs at this level, they have served their most important purpose.

From Hana Procházková of Sacramento's Curtis Park neighborhood, a librarian, who asks: "Sacramento swept San Jose at home in walk-off fashion all three games. Is this what the AL West race looks like all season?"

It might be. The three-game sweep was built on Sacramento's bullpen advantage and its offensive depth more than its rotation superiority — Jang had a poor start in the series opener, Gunn allowed five runs in four and one-third in the finale, and Sacramento still won all three games. That tells you something important about the relative strengths of these two teams: Sacramento's offense and bullpen can absorb a weak starting performance and still find ways to win, while San Jose's rotation advantage — Suzuki and Haddix are clearly the better top-two starters — does not automatically translate into wins when the offense can't protect the lead. San Jose is ten and eight. They will not stay ten and eight. They will almost certainly finish with more wins than Sacramento's preseason number of ninety-three. Whether they close the current gap depends on which version of each team's rotation shows up most consistently from May through September. The AL West race will look like this — close, competitive, determined by individual series rather than sustained runs of dominance — right through the end of summer.

______________________________

Thirteen and six. Two and a half games up on San Jose. Phoenix is next for two games on the road, then Long Beach and Philadelphia come to Sacramento. Choi is a week away. Lopez is six to seven weeks away. The rotation has found a shape.

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

liberty-ca · 06-14-2026, 10:12 AM

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

By Claude Playball | Baseball Insider & Analyst | Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast

______________________________

April 23 – May 2, 2001 | Twenty-One and Eight | Sacramento Leads the AL West by Four and a Half

______________________________

SOSHU SHINOHARA NAMED THE AMERICAN LEAGUE'S BATTER OF THE MONTH FOR APRIL

There is a version of this team that exists only on paper — the one missing Lopez, the one that started the year worried about its fifth starter, the one that lost Navarro for at least a few days to a rib cage injury suffered in a base-running collision on April 28th. And then there is the version that has actually taken the field for the last ten games, which has gone eight and two, scored runs in bunches, found its forty-first home run of the season before the calendar reached May, and built a division lead that nobody projected in March.

Twenty-one and eight — best record in the American League. Four and a half games up on San Jose, who are themselves sixteen and twelve and would be leading most divisions in baseball. Sacramento has built enough cushion that individual injuries — even significant ones — no longer threaten to derail the season. They simply become subplots.

______________________________

DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

@ Phoenix, April 23-24 (1-1)

April 23rd was Shinohara's signature month-closer in miniature: four for six, a grand slam in the first inning, a double, two more singles, three runs scored, five RBI. The grand slam off Donegan was his ninth home run of the season and turned a scoreless game into a four-nothing laugher before Phoenix had recorded an out in the bottom of the first. Florez added a two-run homer of his own in the same inning. Gunn improved to three and oh. Thirteen to five — the final score in Prayers favor, and Donegan's start — one and two-thirds innings, ten hits, seven runs — was as bad an outing as any Sacramento opponent has produced all season.

April 24th reversed course completely. Rendon threw eight innings of three-hit shutout baseball for Phoenix, striking out eight, and Espenoza's six and one-third innings of two-run ball were wasted entirely. Sacramento was shut out, five to nothing, in a game where the Crucifixes' Ryan Scott hit two home runs off Espenoza and Musselman. All in all, that was a stark reminder that even the best teams get shut down occasionally by a starter throwing the game of his life.

vs. Long Beach, April 25-26 (1-1)

Long Beach is twenty-two and six, the best record in the National League, and they came to Sutter Health Park and took the first game on the strength of Aaron Boemer going five for five — a double in the first, a single in the fourth, an RBI double in the sixth, and singles in the eighth and ninth, tying the Long Beach regular season game record for hits. Andretti pitched well enough — six and two-thirds innings, two earned runs — but the bullpen surrendered the lead in the eighth and Benson took the loss. Six to five, Long Beach.

April 26th belonged to Victor Alvarez. A grand slam off Kim in the third inning put Sacramento up four to nothing, part of a four for thirteen day at the plate that ended with Alvarez at one for four with the slam, two runs scored, and four RBI. Jang threw six and two-thirds innings of two-run ball for the win, and Musselman picked up his first save of the season in the ninth. Nine to two, the series split against the league's hottest team.

vs. Philadelphia, April 27-29 (3-0)

Philadelphia arrived at seven and seventeen, already drawing public frustration from manager Alex Garcia, who used a press conference on April 24th to criticize media coverage of his team's slow start. The Padres' bats showed up against Sacramento's pitching anyway — Cruz allowed five runs in three innings on April 27th, and the Padres led for much of the game before Sacramento scored seven runs in the third inning alone, behind home runs from Chavarria and Lozano. Florez's two-run double off six-time All-Star Mike Young in the bottom of the ninth was the walk-off that won it for Sacramento, nine to eight.

April 28th: Gunn improved to four and oh, throwing five and two-thirds innings of two-run ball, and Sacramento scored ten runs on nineteen hits, with Shinohara going three for five with a home run and a double. Ten to three.

April 29th was Choi's return from the quadriceps contusion that had sidelined him since mid-April. He went two for three with a home run, two walks, and two runs scored — an immediate, uncomplicated return to form. Sacramento scored thirteen runs, including home runs from Choi, Fernando Garcia, and Chavarria, and Espenoza picked up the win despite allowing four runs in six and two-thirds innings. Thirteen to four. Philadelphia left Sacramento at seven and nineteen, and the sweep was complete.

@ Washington, April 30 - May 2 (3-0)

April 30th: Andretti threw seven and two-thirds innings and allowed only one run — his third straight strong outing, continuing the turnaround that began in Seattle. Chavarria, pinch-hitting in the ninth inning, hit a solo home run off Brooks to break a one-one tie. Benson closed it. Two to one, Prayers.

May 1st: Jang went five and two-thirds innings, allowed three runs on only two hits while issuing four walks, and improved to three and one. Chavarria's go-ahead single in the seventh put Sacramento up for good. Five to three.

May 2nd marked Jeon's return from the stubborn finger blister that had cost him most of April. Six innings, eleven hits, four runs, but only two earned — Jeon committed an error of his own, and Gutierrez and Medina combined for three scoreless innings to seal it. Nakazawa hit two home runs, including a two-run shot in the eighth that provided the final margin. Seven to four. Sacramento finished the road trip three and oh and the homestand-plus-road-trip stretch at eight and two.

______________________________

SHINOHARA, AL BATTER OF THE MONTH

The numbers for April: a .351 average, ten home runs, twenty-six RBI, twenty-six runs scored. Tied for first in the AL in home runs with eleven entering May, third in the league in RBI behind only Aguilar of Phoenix and Duran of Nashville — both of whom play for teams currently under .500. Shinohara's recognition as the American League's Batter of the Month is the first major individual honor of the 2001 season for Sacramento, and it arrives for a player who, twelve months ago, was known primarily for his glove.

What makes the month remarkable beyond the raw totals is the context in which it happened. Lopez has not played an inning this year. Choi missed two weeks. The middle of the lineup has been in constant flux due to injuries and roster shuffling. Through all of it, Shinohara has been the one constant — every single game, every series, producing at a level that would be the best month of most players' careers and is, for him, simply April.

______________________________

NAVARRO, CHOI, AND THE DEPTH QUESTION

Navarro was injured in a collision at a base during the April 28th game and has been diagnosed with a strained rib cage muscle — day-to-day, with no firm timeline. Cruz has shifted to shortstop in his absence, a position he played at points during this stretch, while Fernando Garcia has taken over at second base and has hit well enough — over .300 in his appearances — that the temporary alignment has not cost Sacramento anything offensively.

Choi's return on April 29th was as clean as a return from injury can be. One home run, two walks, immediate offensive impact in his first game back. Between Choi's return and the inevitable eventual return of Navarro from what appears to be a minor injury, Sacramento's lineup depth — already among the best in the league — becomes deeper still. The lineup that produced forty-four home runs in April, first in the AL, did so without two regular contributors for stretches of the month. What happens when everyone is healthy at once is a question Sacramento has not yet had to answer in 2001, and the answer may be frightening for the rest of the league.

______________________________

THE GONZALEZ TRADE AND THE ESPARZA SETBACK

Jeon's return from IL to the starting rotation required the Prayers to make roster decisions. The obvious choice was to send Rafael Gonzalez down to the minors, however the veteran pitcher refused demotion, which forced the management to seek an alternative solution. On April 29th, Sacramento traded right-handed reliever Rafael Gonzalez and minor-league right-hander Ryan McDonald to Columbus for minor-league center fielder Yukinari Sakamoto and $300,000 in cash. A league analyst called it a fairly even transaction, which is as unremarkable an assessment as exists in baseball. Gonzalez, thirty-four, had been a fringe bullpen piece; Sakamoto, twenty-six, adds organizational outfield depth. Nothing about this trade changes Sacramento's 2001 outlook in any direction.

More consequential, unfortunately, is the news that arrived on April 30th regarding Sergio Esparza. The reliever, who has been on the injured list since spring with bone chips in his elbow, suffered a setback in his recovery and will now need at least eight additional weeks before he's ready to return. Combined with Rubalcava's six-to-seven-month timeline and Delgado's seven-month timeline, the bullpen depth chart below the active roster continues to thin. None of this has mattered yet — Benson, Medina, Gutierrez, Ke, and the rest have combined for the second-best bullpen ERA in the league. But injury attrition compounds, and eight more weeks for Esparza is eight more weeks Sacramento needs its current relief corps to hold.

______________________________

AROUND THE LEAGUE

Long Beach is twenty-two and six, the best record in either league, and their Sacramento series even split was their only blemish in an otherwise dominant stretch. Cleveland is twenty-one and seven in the NL Central. El Paso is twenty and eight in the NL Desert. The early-season parity that defined the first two weeks of April has given way to genuine separation at the top of both leagues — and Sacramento, at twenty-one and eight, belongs in that conversation as much as anyone.

Philadelphia's struggles continue to be a story in themselves. Manager Alex Garcia's media outburst on April 24th — accusing reporters of focusing only on the negative — came during a stretch in which his team would go on to lose six of its next seven, including the three-game sweep at Sacramento's hands. The Padres are seven and twenty-two, the worst record in the American League, and the tension between the front office's public messaging and the team's results on the field appears to be intensifying rather than easing.

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Aram Khachaturian of Sacramento's Pocket neighborhood, a high school basketball coach, who asks: "Shinohara won AL Batter of the Month. How does an organization keep a player like that grounded when the attention starts coming?"

The honest answer is that the organization doesn't really need to do much, because the player generally does it himself, and Shinohara's track record suggests he's exactly that kind of person. He's been a consistently excellent, low-drama contributor for four seasons — a Gold Glove winner who was never the headline name even when his performance warranted it. The attention that comes with a league-wide monthly award is, frankly, overdue rather than premature, and players who have spent years being underrated tend not to get carried away when the recognition finally arrives. What the organization can do — and from what I've observed, has done — is continue treating him exactly as they did when he was the quietly excellent right fielder rather than the league's hottest hitter. Consistency from the franchise reinforces consistency from the player. Shinohara doesn't need micromanagement; he needs the room to keep doing what he's doing, and Sacramento has given him exactly that.

From Wioletta Nowakowska of Sacramento's East Sacramento neighborhood, a violinist, who asks: "Navarro is hurt, Lopez hasn't played yet this season, and Sacramento still has the best record in the AL. Is this roster simply deeper than anyone realized?"

Yes, and I think the depth is the actual story of April, more than any individual performance — though Shinohara's award makes for a better headline. Consider what's been absent for stretches of this month: the starting shortstop, the starting center fielder for two weeks, the leadoff hitter and stolen-base threat for the entire month. And consider what's filled in: Fernando Garcia hitting .300 at second base, Cruz capably moving to shortstop, Chavarria providing pinch-hit production and outfield depth, Schmitt delivering a walk-off home run from the bench. This is not a roster built around four or five stars surrounded by replacement-level filler. It's a roster where the eighth and ninth players in the lineup can change a game. That kind of depth doesn't show up in preseason projections — the algorithms that predicted ninety-three wins for Sacramento couldn't have known that Fernando Garcia would hit .300 in extended playing time, because nobody could have known that in March. It's the kind of depth that gets built through years of development and shows its value exactly in months like this one.

From Dimitrios Papageorgiou of Sacramento's Carmichael neighborhood, a barista, who asks: "Sacramento leads the AL West by four and a half games over San Jose, who were projected to win a hundred and nine. What changed?"

Two things, roughly equally important. First, Sacramento has played better than its preseason projection by a significant margin — twenty-one and eight against a projected pace closer to fifteen and fourteen at this point in the season. Second, San Jose has played to roughly their projected level, sixteen and twelve, which is good but not the historic pace the preseason numbers suggested. The gap has opened not because San Jose collapsed but because Sacramento's floor turned out to be much higher than anyone modeled — driven by a healthy April from the rotation's top three, an offense getting career-best months from multiple players simultaneously, and a bullpen that has been the second-best in the league. Four and a half games in early May is not a permanent state. San Jose has a hundred and thirty-some games left to play at their true level, and if that true level is anywhere near a hundred wins, this gap closes. But Sacramento has given itself the cushion to absorb a bad stretch — Navarro's injury, Esparza's setback, the inevitable regression of some hot streaks — without losing the division lead. That cushion is the real accomplishment of April.

______________________________

Twenty-one and eight. Nashville on the road for three games, then trip to Portland. Navarro day-to-day, Choi back in the lineup, Lopez five weeks away. The best record in the American League belongs to the defending World Series champions, and it isn't close.

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

liberty-ca · 06-14-2026, 09:02 PM

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

By Claude Playball | Baseball Insider & Analyst | Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast

______________________________

May 4 – 15, 2001 | Twenty-Seven and Thirteen | Lozano Is Having a Career Year | Cleveland Leads All of Baseball

______________________________

SACRAMENTO WINS SIX, THEN DROPS FOUR STRAIGHT

There is a tale of mid-May that looks triumphant — six wins in a row, Jeon's return from injury producing the best start of anyone's season, Lozano quietly compiling a .295 average with seven home runs and twenty-seven RBI in thirty-two games, a four-game lead that briefly felt like breathing room. And there is the version that actually closed out this stretch: four straight losses, two of them to San Jose at home, two of them in Cleveland against a team that is now thirty and nine and looks, frankly, unbeatable.

Twenty-seven and thirteen. Still the best record in the American League at the start of this stretch. Now 1.5 games ahead of San Jose, who went nine and one over the same period. The margin that felt comfortable ten days ago is suddenly very thin, and Sacramento finishes this stretch having just been outplayed, decisively, by the two best teams it has faced all year.

______________________________

DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

@ Nashville, May 4-6 (2-1)

Gunn lost his first decision of the season on May 4th, allowing four earned runs in four innings as Nashville's Malik Albury threw eight strong innings. Five to one, Sacramento's only loss of this opening stretch.

Andretti rebounded with six and one-third innings of one-run ball on May 5th, his third strong outing in his last four starts. Navarro drove in three runs including a two-run single in the first inning and a solo homer in the ninth — his first home run of the season. Eight to five, Sacramento.

May 6th belonged to Mollohan, who went three for three with a home run, a double, and a walk, driving in three. Jang threw five innings for the win despite committing a fielding error. Choi and Mollohan both homered in the seventh to put the game away. Six to two. Special note: Navarro was injured while throwing the ball during this game — a separate issue from the rib cage strain, though the severity wasn't immediately clear.

@ Portland, May 8-10 (3-0)

Jeon's return from the finger blister that cost him most of April was worth the wait. Seven and one-third innings, three hits, one run, eight strikeouts — his ERA dropped to 2.12 and his record improved to two and oh. Cruz drove in a run and was injured while throwing the ball in this game, though he stayed in and finished the contest. Sacramento scored seven, Choi homered, and the Apocalypse managed only one run off Jeon and Espenoza combined. Seven to one.

Gunn followed with six and two-thirds innings of shutout ball on May 9th, improving to five and one. Van Ham tripled in the second inning to open the scoring and added two more singles. Alvarez and Lozano both homered. Five to nothing, and Sacramento's lead over San Jose stood at four games.

May 10th was an offensive carnival. Lozano hit two home runs, Alvarez hit two home runs, Choi and Fernando Garcia each added one — five Sacramento home runs total — while Portland's Ryoji Hirayama went five for five, including an RBI triple, tying the Portland regular season hit record. Eleven to eight, Sacramento, in a game that resembled batting practice for both sides. Andretti's three and two-thirds innings of five earned runs were the rough edge in an otherwise dominant week, but the offense buried the problem.

vs. San Jose, May 11-13 (1-2)

May 11th was vintage Shinohara — three hits, a grand slam off Haddix in the seventh inning for his twelfth home run of the season, five RBI total. Jang threw five scoreless innings for the win, improving to five and one. Seven to one, and the win streak reached six.

Then San Jose won the next two. May 12th: Cruz allowed four earned runs in four and one-third innings, and despite a Lozano solo homer, Sacramento lost four to two. May 13th: Jeon, coming off his dominant Portland start, allowed three runs in six innings and took the loss as San Jose's Efrain Flores went seven and one-third scattering only two runs. Three to two, San Jose, and the Demons left Sacramento having won the series and cut the lead to 2.5 games.

@ Cleveland, May 14-15 (0-2)

Cleveland is thirty and nine, and Sacramento got a firsthand look at why. May 14th: Gunn pitched well — six innings, one earned run — but Benson blew a save in the ninth and Cleveland's Jose Salcevo delivered a walk-off single. Six to five, Cleveland.

May 15th was worse. Andretti allowed seven runs in three and two-thirds innings, including a three-run homer to Jason Makin in the first inning. Cleveland led six to nothing before Sacramento recorded an out in the second inning. Ten to three, final, and Sacramento's losing streak reached four — its longest of the season.

______________________________

LOZANO'S QUIET SEASON

While Shinohara collects the league-wide attention — thirteen home runs, thirty-eight RBI, a .315 average, tied for second in the AL in total bases — Lozano has assembled a season that would be the headline for almost any other team. Seven home runs, twenty-seven RBI, a .295 average, two home runs in a single game on May 10th. He is doing this while also playing through a hit-by-pitch injury from late April that merited a special note in the box score and apparently required no time off. His defensive numbers — the Gold Glove from 2000 — remain elite. Lozano is twenty-three years old and quietly putting together the best all-around season of his career, in the shadow of a teammate's historic April. That's not a complaint. It's simply what depth looks like.

______________________________

THE NAVARRO SITUATION

Navarro's hot home run on May 5th — his first of the season — and three RBI suggested the rib cage strain was behind him. Then came the May 6th note that he was injured while throwing the ball, and his numbers over his last seven games at the time of this report stood at .043 with zero home runs, a precipitous drop for a player hitting .330 a week earlier. He remains day-to-day, not on the injured list, but the throwing-arm issue layered on top of the rib cage strain is the kind of compounding injury situation that deserves monitoring. Cruz has filled in capably at shortstop when needed, and Fernando Garcia continues to provide value at second base. The depth exists. What's needed now is for Navarro's body to cooperate long enough for him to return to the form he showed in April.

______________________________

CLEVELAND, AND WHAT A 1.5-GAME LEAD MEANS NOW

Cleveland's thirty and nine record is the best in either league by a wide margin, and the two games Sacramento just played against them were not competitive in either direction — a one-run walk-off loss followed by a blowout. Jason Makin is on pace for over forty home runs. The Cardinals' pitching, anchored by Jordan Sepulveda's seven shutout innings on May 15th, looked every bit as dominant as the record suggests.

Meanwhile, San Jose went nine and one over this same stretch and is now 1.5 games behind Sacramento in the AL West — a margin that, two weeks ago, stood at 4.5 games. The division race that seemed settled in early May is, suddenly, a race again. Sacramento's record remains the best in the American League. But "best in the league" and "comfortable" are not the same thing, and this stretch made that distinction clear.

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Adaeze Nwosu of Sacramento's Natomas neighborhood, a nurse, who asks: "Sacramento's lead over San Jose shrank from 4.5 games to 1.5 in less than two weeks. Is this a concerning trend or just baseball being baseball?"

It's mostly the latter, though "mostly" is doing some work in that sentence. Over a hundred-and-sixty-two-game season, every team experiences stretches where they play below their level and stretches where an opponent plays above theirs — San Jose going nine and one is the kind of streak that happens to good teams periodically, and it happened to coincide with Sacramento running into the best team in baseball for two games. The combination compressed what looked like a comfortable cushion into a one-game series swing. What would be genuinely concerning is if this represented a sustained pattern — if Sacramento's pitching depth, particularly Andretti's recent struggles and the bullpen's recent late-inning issues against Cleveland and San Jose, started showing up consistently rather than in isolated bad stretches. One four-game losing streak in mid-May, against a thirty-and-nine team and a divisional rival playing its best baseball of the season, is not a crisis. It's a reminder that the margin in the AL West is real, and Sacramento needs to keep playing at the level that built the cushion in the first place.

From Conor Fitzgerald of Sacramento's Rosemont neighborhood, an auto mechanic, who asks: "Lozano is having a great season but Shinohara gets all the attention. Does that bother the clubhouse at all?"

From everything I've observed about this roster's culture over the past two seasons, no — and I'd point to the way Lozano himself talks about the team as evidence. This is a player who, after a World Series in which he hit five home runs, spent the entire offseason signing a below-market extension because he wanted to stay. Players who operate that way generally aren't keeping score on attention. Shinohara's April was historic — a league-wide monthly award doesn't happen often, and the coverage it generates is proportional and earned. Lozano's season, while less publicized, is being noticed by the people who matter most: his manager, who continues to bat him in a key spot in the lineup, and his teammates, who know exactly what a .295 average with seven home runs from the three-hole means to a lineup's structure. The clubhouse dynamic on a team this deep tends to reward the players who produce quietly and consistently just as much as the ones who produce loudly — sometimes more, because the quiet productivity is what makes the loud productivity sustainable.

From Lilit Hovhannisyan of Sacramento's Fair Oaks neighborhood, an accountant, who asks: "After getting swept by Cleveland, how does Sacramento's pitching staff compare to a team that's thirty and nine?"

Not favorably, at least not in these two specific games — but the comparison is worth being precise about. Cleveland's thirty and nine record reflects sustained excellence across their rotation and lineup over six weeks. Sacramento's twenty-seven and thirteen reflects a roster that has dealt with injuries to Lopez, Choi, Navarro, Esparza, and Rubalcava simultaneously and still produced the best record in the American League. The two games against Cleveland exposed real issues — Andretti's three and two-thirds innings of seven runs on May 15th was his worst start since the early-April Portland disasters, and the bullpen's ninth-inning failure on May 14th continues a pattern of late-inning fragility that has cropped up periodically all season. Those are legitimate concerns. But comparing any team's worst two-game stretch to the league's best team's overall record isn't a fair measure of the gap. The more useful comparison is head-to-head over a full season, and Sacramento and Cleveland play in different leagues — they won't meet again unless October arranges it. If it does, these two games will be worth revisiting. For now, they're a data point, not a verdict.

______________________________

Twenty-seven and thirteen. A four-game losing streak to snap with Fort Worth coming to Sacramento, then a trip to Detroit. Navarro status unclear. Lopez still three weeks away. San Jose is breathing down Sacramento's neck for the first time all season.

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

liberty-ca · 06-15-2026, 11:01 AM

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

DEMONS WIN SIX IN A ROW, ALEJANDRO LOPEZ STARTS REHAB NEXT WEEK

Eleven days ago, Sacramento's lead over San Jose stood at 1.5 games and felt fragile. It is no longer fragile, because it no longer exists. San Jose went nine and one over the span this article and the last one cover combined, capped by a six-game win streak that has them at thirty-six and fifteen — five games clear of Sacramento, who went four and seven over the same eleven days and dropped from first place to second for the first time all season.

The low point arrived this past weekend, when Baltimore — twenty-one and thirty-one, the worst record in the American League — won two of three at Sutter Health Park. Sacramento lost series to Detroit, to Brooklyn, and to Baltimore in succession. The injury report has a new entry: Choi fractured a finger and will miss four to five weeks. And yet, buried in the same injury report, is the best news Sacramento has had in months — Lopez is one week from returning.

______________________________

DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

vs. Fort Worth, May 16-17 (1-1)

Jang threw five and one-third scoreless innings on May 16th, and Mollohan's two-run single in the eighth provided the margin in a three to one win.

May 17th reversed it completely. Cruz allowed seven runs in six and two-thirds innings as Fort Worth's Terrell Miller, Jaylen Bernal, and Jayson Crumsey all homered. Eight to four, Fort Worth, and the series split.

@ Detroit, May 18-20 (1-2)

Jeon allowed five runs in four and two-thirds innings on May 18th, including a bases-clearing triple by Andy Alfonso that turned a two-one Sacramento lead into a four-two Detroit advantage. Eight to two, final, Detroit's largest margin of victory against Sacramento all season.

May 19th: Gunn allowed five runs in three and two-thirds, Jimmy Rosen's three-run homer in the fourth was the difference, and Sacramento lost five to four. Detroit's third straight win; Sacramento's third straight loss.

May 20th salvaged the series. Andretti threw six and one-third innings of two-run ball — his second strong outing in three starts — and the game went to extra innings tied at two. Fernando Garcia's run-scoring double in the top of the tenth put Sacramento ahead for good, and Musselman picked up his first win of the season in relief. Four to two, Sacramento, in ten innings.

@ Brooklyn, May 21-23 (1-2)

Brooklyn is thirty-five and fifteen, the best record in the American League, and they extended a winning streak to eight games at Sacramento's expense across the first two games of this series. May 21st: Jang threw six innings of two-run ball — a quality start — but Brooklyn's bullpen shut the door and Sacramento lost two to three, with Randy Gill's eighth-inning RBI groundout breaking the tie.

May 22nd: Cruz allowed three runs in six innings, Mollohan hit a home run, but Brooklyn's Luis Vasquez threw seven strong innings and the Priests won five to three, extending their streak to eight.

May 23rd: Chavarria. Two for five with two home runs, including a two-run shot off Tejeda in the top of the tenth inning that broke a four-four tie and ended Brooklyn's eight-game streak. Jeon allowed three runs in five innings, the bullpen held on through extra innings, and Sacramento won six to five. After two frustrating losses against the league's hottest team, Sacramento found a way to take the finale.

vs. Baltimore, May 25-27 (1-2)

Baltimore arrived having lost four in a row and left having won two of three. May 25th: Alvarez hit two home runs and drove in four, Shinohara added a solo shot, and Gunn threw seven innings of three-run ball. Five to three, Sacramento, the high point of the homestand.

May 26th: Jang allowed seven runs — six earned — in four and two-thirds innings, his worst start since the early-season struggles. David Ryals hit a bases-clearing double and a home run, finishing three for five with six RBI. Eleven to four, Baltimore.

May 27th: Cruz allowed five runs in six and one-third innings, his fourth straight start without a win. Tony Villalobos hit a home run and drove in two. Six to two, Baltimore, completing a series loss to the worst team in the league.

______________________________

LOPEZ: ONE WEEK

The injury report listed Lopez's ACL recovery at one week remaining as of May 27th — down from three weeks just two weeks ago, down from eight weeks the week before that. The timeline is accelerating, which is the best possible sign for a recovery of this kind. When Lopez returns, Sacramento gets back its leadoff hitter, its center fielder, and the player who stole seventy-three bases and hit twenty home runs in 2000. He has not played a single game in 2001. The lineup that has carried this team through April and most of May — built around Shinohara's historic production, Lozano's quiet excellence, and contributions up and down from Mollohan, Alvarez, Chavarria, and Van Ham — is about to get considerably deeper, at almost the exact moment it needs it most.

______________________________

CHOI'S FRACTURE AND THE OUTFIELD SITUATION

Choi fractured a finger and will be out four to five weeks — a frustrating setback for a player who had returned from the quadriceps contusion just a month ago and was hitting well in his time back. The timing is awkward: Choi's absence and Lopez's impending return overlap almost exactly, meaning the outfield picture in early June will be in transition regardless. Van Ham, Durango, and Chavarria have all filled outfield innings capably this season and will continue to do so. The good news is that Sacramento's outfield depth has been tested all year and has not yet failed to produce.

______________________________

THE ROTATION'S ROUGH PATCH

Every starter not named Andretti had a rough outing somewhere in this stretch. Jang, who carried a sub-3.00 ERA into mid-May, allowed thirteen runs combined in his last two starts against Baltimore — the same team that was the worst in the American League entering the series. Cruz's struggles have now extended across four winless starts, with his ERA climbing to 4.83. Jeon's two starts produced eight runs in nine and two-thirds innings combined. Gunn was the exception, his Baltimore start a model of efficiency.

None of these are individually alarming — every pitcher has bad stretches — but the cumulative effect, arriving at the same time as a four-and-seven overall record, is what turned a comfortable lead into a five-game deficit. The rotation needs to find its May form again, and soon, because San Jose's six-game win streak suggests they have no intention of slowing down.

______________________________

AROUND THE LEAGUE

San Jose's surge to thirty-six and fifteen — a six-game win streak that coincided almost exactly with Sacramento's worst stretch of the season — has flipped the AL West standings completely. Sacramento now sits five games back in the division but holds a comfortable 4.5-game lead in the wild card race, which remains a meaningful safety net.

Brooklyn's eight-game win streak, snapped by Sacramento on May 23rd, leaves them at thirty-five and fifteen, tied with San Jose for the best record in the American League. Cleveland remains the NL's best at thirty-four and sixteen. The top of both leagues continues to separate from the pack, and Sacramento — currently 31-20 — needs to decide which group it belongs in.

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Priya Chandrasekaran of Sacramento's Land Park neighborhood, a software engineer, who asks: "Sacramento just lost a series to the worst team in the AL. How worried should fans be at this point in the season?"

Worried is probably the wrong word, but attentive is the right one. Losing a series to a twenty-one-and-thirty-one team is never a good look, and the way it happened — Jang and Cruz both getting hit hard in consecutive games — is the part that deserves scrutiny more than the result itself. Baltimore has talented individual hitters even on a bad team, and Ryals's six-RBI day on May 26th was simply a great individual performance rather than evidence of some systemic Baltimore strength. What matters more is whether Jang and Cruz's recent struggles represent fatigue, mechanical issues, or simple variance. Both pitchers carried excellent numbers for the first two months of the season; both had rough two-start stretches in late May. If those rough patches extend into June, that's when concern becomes warranted. Right now, it's the kind of stretch that happens over a hundred-and-sixty-two-game season, magnified by the fact that it coincided with San Jose's best stretch of the year.

From Marcus Delacroix of Sacramento's Tahoe Park neighborhood, a postal worker, who asks: "Lopez comes back in about a week. What does that actually change for this team?"

It changes the top of the lineup and the bottom of the defensive alignment simultaneously, which is rare for a single player's return. Offensively, Lopez gives Sacramento a true leadoff hitter — someone who gets on base and creates pressure with his legs in a way nobody currently in the lineup quite replicates. Seventy-three stolen bases last year is not a typo, and even accounting for some natural decline in his first weeks back from an ACL tear, the speed element alone changes how opposing pitchers approach the top of the order. Defensively, Lopez in center field allows Choi — when he returns from his finger fracture — to shift to a corner, and gives the outfield its best defensive alignment of the season. The timing, with Choi out and Lopez in, means there won't be a moment where Sacramento has both at full strength immediately. But by late June, if both are healthy, this lineup and defense look meaningfully different — and better — than anything Sacramento has fielded in 2001 so far.

From Anezka Novotna of Sacramento's Greenhaven neighborhood, a dental hygienist, who asks: "Chavarria's walk-off-style home run in the tenth inning snapped Brooklyn's eight-game win streak. How significant was that game in the context of this rough stretch?"

More significant than its place in the standings suggests. Sacramento had just lost two straight to the best team in the American League, on the road, with a rotation that was starting to show cracks. A third straight loss in that series — extending Brooklyn's streak to nine — would have compounded a difficult week into something approaching a crisis narrative heading into the Baltimore series. Instead, Chavarria's two-homer game, capped by the go-ahead shot in extra innings, gave Sacramento a tangible response: yes, we can still beat the best team in the league, even on the road, even after losing the first two. That the very next series against Baltimore went poorly anyway tells you the Chavarria game didn't fix everything — but it prevented a bad week from becoming something worse, and it's the kind of performance that, in retrospect, often marks the bottom of a stretch like this one rather than the middle of it. We'll know more in the next ten days.

______________________________

Thirty-one and twenty. Five games behind San Jose, 4.5 up in the wild card race. Portland pays visit to Sacramento, homestand then continues with three-game series against Seattle. The defending champions need to find their May form again, fast.

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

liberty-ca · 06-15-2026, 09:33 PM

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

By Claude Playball | Baseball Insider & Analyst | Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast

______________________________

May 29 – June 7, 2001 | Ten Wins in Ten Games| Cruz Throws Consecutive Shutout-Quality Starts | Jeon One-Hits Seattle

______________________________

FROM FIVE GAMES BEHIND TO SHARED LEAD IN ELLEVEN DAYS

The math is simple and the implication enormous. On May 27th, Sacramento trailed San Jose by five games in the AL West. On June 7th, both teams are forty-one and twenty, the identical record, sharing first place in the division. Sacramento won ten consecutive games. San Jose went five and five. The gap that opened during Sacramento's late-May stumble was erased in eleven days by the kind of sustained excellence this organization has produced repeatedly this season when the moment demanded it.

The defense of the championship is no longer a subplot. Friday night in San Jose, with both teams at forty-one and twenty, the game will matter as much as any regular-season game has mattered this year.

______________________________

DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

vs. Portland, May 29-31 (3-0)

The first game of the win streak nearly ended before it began. Jeon allowed four home runs in four and one-third innings — Gorum, Garcia, Burrows, and Ruiz all went deep — and Sacramento trailed five to one going into the sixth. The offense clawed back: Mollohan drove in two, Lozano homered in the seventh, Nakazawa doubled in the ninth to tie it, and then Chavarria's double moved runners up before Durango drew a walk-off walk from Gorham. Six to five. A win that required heroics from multiple hitters, was followed the next day by a performance that made things look easy.

May 30th: Gunn threw seven and one-third innings, Van Ham's two-run single in the eighth turned a three-all tie into a six-four lead, and Sacramento won. May 31st: Alvarez hit two home runs off Sandoval, Mollohan added another, and Sacramento swept the Portland series with a seven-five win despite Luna blowing a save and Blevins — the Portland right fielder who was in Sacramento's organization earlier this year — hitting a three-run homer off him in the sixth.

vs. Seattle, June 1-3 (3-0)

June 1st was the clearest signal yet that Vic Cruz had rediscovered himself. Six and one-third innings of one-hit shutout baseball against Seattle, four strikeouts, two walks, ninety pitches. Van Ham hit two home runs. Lozano hit another. Six to one, and Cruz improved to three and four with an ERA that had fallen to 4.29 and would fall further.

June 2nd: Andretti threw five innings and allowed one run. Shinohara hit his sixteenth home run. Mollohan hit his seventh. Sacramento scored five in the first inning and won seven to one.

June 3rd was Jeon. One hit in six innings. Zero walks, ten strikeouts on ninety-three pitches, the economy of an ace who located every pitch and made hitters look helpless. The final was two to one, decided by Mollohan's RBI single in the seventh and preserved by Ke, Medina, and Benson combining for two scoreless innings after Jeon exited. Seattle went ten in a row on the losing side, Sacramento had won six straight.

@ Tucson, June 4-5 (2-0)

June 4th game in the desert required patience. Marco Cervantes threw eight and one-third innings of two-run ball for Tucson, and Sacramento sat at one to one through eight until Navarro doubled home the go-ahead run in the top of the ninth, Benson closed it, and the win streak reached seven.

June 5th was less restrained. Jang threw five scoreless innings. Fernando Garcia hit two home runs, driving in four. Shinohara hit his seventeenth. Van Ham hit his ninth. Sacramento scored eleven and the sweep was complete.

vs. Albuquerque, June 6-7 (2-0)

Cruz's second shutout-quality start in eight days: seven innings against Albuquerque on June 6th, three hits, eight strikeouts, no runs. Sacramento scored in six of eight innings and reached fourteen runs total — the bullpen allowed eight in the ninth to make the final less comfortable than the game itself, but the result was never in doubt. Alvarez homered for the twelfth time. Garcia was hit by a pitch and walked twice on top of the offensive contributions he'd made the night before. The win streak reached nine.

Ten: On June 7th Andretti allowed four runs in five and two-thirds innings but Sacramento doing enough to win anyway. Van Ham hit his tenth homer, Chavarria homered his tenth as well, and Florez delivered the decisive RBI single in the seventh with two out and a runner in scoring position. Benson's sixteenth save. Five to four, and the ten-game streak was complete.

______________________________

VIC CRUZ'S TURNAROUND

His ERA was 4.83 at the end of May. It stands at 3.82 entering this weekend. The Seattle game — six and one-third innings of one-hit baseball — and the Albuquerque start — seven innings of three-hit shutout work — represent the best consecutive starts Cruz has had all season. The mechanical questions that surfaced during the Baltimore series, where he allowed five runs in six and one-third innings and absorbed the loss, appear to have resolved themselves. What caused the rough patch is less important than what has followed it: two starts in which the ground-ball tendencies that made him effective in the Boston series returned in full, and the strike zone expanded to include all corners rather than just the ones the hitter expects.

He is now three and four in 2001. The record understates what his best looks like, which is among the better things a manager can say about a starting pitcher heading into a three-game series against the division co-leader.

______________________________

JEON'S ONE-HITTER

Six innings, one hit, ten strikeouts, zero walks against Seattle on June 3rd. That is not just a quality start — it is a statement, coming from a pitcher whose ERA entering the game was 4.19 and whose health has been a recurring concern all season. The Seattle lineup, which has been one of the worst in the American League, did not make the performance meaningless; Jeon's stuff was demonstrably better than anything he had produced since his Portland start in May, and the ten-strikeout, zero-walk combination suggests command and velocity working simultaneously rather than the usual situation where one compensates for the other. Whether this was the beginning of a sustained run of good health and good mechanics is the question that frames the rest of his season. The answer requires more starts.

______________________________

VICTOR ALVAREZ IS HITTING

Twelve home runs, thirty-nine RBI, a .248 average. Three home runs in four days against Portland and Albuquerque. The twenty-one-year-old first baseman who entered the season at the bottom of the lineup's expected power contributors has become, unambiguously, one of Sacramento's most important offensive players. He is currently fourth in the AL in home runs. His RBI total trails only Shinohara on the roster. The June version of Victor Alvarez looks almost nothing like the April version who was batting .120 through twelve games, which is either evidence that an extended April adjustment period finally resolved itself into production, or evidence that this team has enough depth that even a struggling first baseman could get the at-bats needed to find his swing. Both explanations are probably partially true. The result is that Sacramento now has four players — Shinohara, Alvarez, Van Ham, and Chavarria — with at least nine home runs each, and the team leads the AL in home runs. That kind of offensive depth, distributed across the lineup, makes the team extremely difficult to neutralize with any single pitching strategy.

______________________________

LOPEZ AND THE INJURY REPORT

Alejandro Lopez no longer appears on the injury list. He was expected to return around this week or at the beginning of the next after brief rehab stint in Oxnard, where he appeared as a pinch hitter in three games with six at-bat appearances, and his absence from the IL means he has been officially activated. When he does step into the lineup — likely in the coming days, possibly in San Jose — Sacramento will have its leadoff hitter and starting center fielder back for the first time since October. The offensive lineup that produced those ten wins will immediately become deeper.

Choi remains out with the fractured finger — minimum three weeks away from coming back — and Esparza's elbow surgery recovery expectation stands at two weeks. The deep problems, Rubalcava and Delgado with their torn rotator cuffs, are still months away. But the overall injury picture is meaningfully better than it has been at any point in 2001.

______________________________

MEDINA'S STREAK

This is something that absolutely deserves its own paragraph: Edwin Medina has not allowed a run in twenty-two consecutive appearances. That is not a typo. Twenty-two games, zero earned runs, against lineups ranging from Portland to Albuquerque to the best teams Sacramento has faced. He is listed at an ERA of 0.46 for the season. The bullpen reliever who was the subject of legitimate concern as recently as April has become arguably the most reliable arm in the Sacramento bullpen, used in the middle innings of close games and emerging without damage every time. Twenty-two appearances. Nothing across.

______________________________

AROUND THE LEAGUE

Cleveland stands at thirty-nine and twenty-one in the NL Central — still the best record in baseball — and Jorge Jaime of Baltimore has been placed on the injured list with a strained thoracic spine, two weeks out at a time when he was hitting .304 with nineteen home runs and forty RBI. The injury is significant for Baltimore's already-slim playoff chances but changes nothing about anyone else's October calculus.

Long Beach at forty-one and twenty in the NL Pacific is running neck-and-neck with both Sacramento and San Jose for the best record in professional baseball. Three teams at the same winning percentage at the quarter-pole of the season is an unusual alignment, and it speaks to the depth of quality across both leagues this year.

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Benedikt Auer of Sacramento's Elmhurst neighborhood, a pastry chef, who asks: "Sacramento went ten and zero and is now tied with San Jose. You wrote last month that this team needed to find its May form again. Has it?"

It has found something even better than its May form. May was when Sacramento first built its lead — the April offensive explosion, the strong rotation work from Jang and Cruz and Gunn, the win streak that pushed the lead to four and a half games. What happened in late May was a regression to something closer to the team's true floor. What has happened in this ten-game stretch is a combination of the May offense — the home runs, the relentless middle-of-the-lineup production — and improved starting pitching, particularly from Cruz. The rotation's ERA over these ten games is significantly better than it was over the four-and-seven stretch that preceded them. What I can say with confidence entering this San Jose series is that Sacramento has found a version of itself that can compete with anyone. Whether it has found a version that can sustain ten wins in ten games over the rest of the season is a different and longer question.

From Chiamaka Okorie of Sacramento's Del Paso Heights neighborhood, a warehouse supervisor, who asks: "Van Ham has ten home runs and thirty-one RBI from the bench and in spot starts. How is that possible from a player nobody expected to contribute at this level?"

Tim Van Ham is the kind of player organizations discover when circumstances force them to find hidden gems in difficult circumstances. Before this season, he had never been asked to carry lineup responsibility. He came into 2001 as the fourth outfielder, filling in for Lopez and Choi as needed and providing the team insurance coverage against injury. What has happened instead is that the injuries created a runway long enough for Van Ham to establish himself as a legitimate lineup contributor, not a placeholder. His swing is compact and his approach to left-handed pitching is particularly effective. He is not the player Shinohara is, not the player Alvarez has become, not the power threat Lozano is. But he is a professional hitter who, given consistent at-bats, has produced at a level that would have ranked among the top five on most teams' expected offensive contributions at the start of the year. When Lopez returns fully and Choi comes back from the fractured finger, Van Ham's role will diminish. What he has done while in that role will not be forgotten.

From Soo-jin Park of Sacramento's Fruitridge neighborhood, a physical therapist, who asks: "Friday's game in San Jose is arguably the biggest regular-season game of the year so far. What are the stakes?"

The standings stakes are obvious: whoever wins the series will certainly move to first place outright. The momentum stakes are equally significant — Sacramento arrives on a ten-game win streak against mostly weaker opposition; San Jose arrives having gone five and five over the same period, including a loss on June 7th. The psychological stakes are perhaps the most interesting. This is the same team Sacramento lost two of three to at home in mid-May, with Suzuki and Haddix and Flores at the top of their rotation. Sacramento's lineup, particularly with Alvarez hitting, Cruz finding his form, and Lopez likely to appear in some capacity, looks different than it did in May. Whether that difference is enough to take two of three at Excite Ballpark — where San Jose is twenty-two and eight this season — is the most important question in the American League this week.

______________________________

Forty-one and twenty on the season and tied with San Jose. Lopez activated. Friday night showdown looms big at Excite Ballpark, with first place in the AL West on the line for the first time since the first week of the season.

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

liberty-ca · 06-16-2026, 10:34 AM

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

By Claude Playball | Baseball Insider & Analyst | Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast

______________________________

June 8 – 17, 2001 | Forty-Seven and Twenty-Three | Demon's Haddix Out Three Months | Medina's Streak Reaches Twenty-Seven Games

______________________________

LOPEZ COMES OFF THE BENCH IN EXTRA INNING TO COMPLETE THE SWEEP

He entered the June 10th game in the tenth inning, replacing Shinohara in center field. He drew a walk in his first plate appearance back. In the twelfth, with Sacramento tied at seven and Lozano on third base with nobody out, Alejandro Lopez hit a sacrifice fly off Danny St. Clair, the Prayers took an eight-to-seven lead, Musselman got the final out, and Sacramento had swept three games at Excite Ballpark from a San Jose team that entered the series four games over .500 and left it having lost four straight.

There are moments in a season that arrive with more meaning than their statistical weight suggests. Lopez has one walk and one sacrifice fly in his 2001 line. What those two plate appearances actually represent is eight months of rehabilitation, a postseason that was ripped away from him in the third game of the ALDS, and a return timed so precisely to a meaningful moment that it would read as convenient fiction if it were invented. It was not invented. He walked to the plate in the twelfth inning of a tied game, seven hours into a baseball trip to San Jose, and produced the run that won the sweep. That is the story.

______________________________

DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

@ San Jose, June 8-10 (3-0)

Jeon threw five and one-third innings on June 8th, allowed one run, struck out seven, and left with a lead the bullpen protected comfortably. Shinohara's two-run homer in the first set the tone. Van Ham added a two-run shot in the second. Chavarria hit his eleventh home run in the seventh. Six to one, Sacramento, and first place was theirs outright.

June 9th was Navarro's afternoon. Two for four with a double and a home run, five RBI. Lozano hit his tenth homer. Van Ham his twelfth. Durango, stepping into a lineup that had shuffled considerably, hit his first home run of the season. Gunn went five and one-third innings and the offense scored eleven runs against a San Jose rotation that was showing early signs of the vulnerability that would become apparent by the end of the week. Eleven to two, and Sacramento led the division by two.

June 10th went twelve innings. Jang was excellent through six, allowing one run, then the bullpen unraveled in the late innings: Benson allowed San Jose to tie in the ninth, Ke allowed Montemayor's two-run homer in the tenth to give San Jose the lead, Sacramento answered with Garcia's two-run homer in the eleventh to retake it, then San Jose tied it again on Vasquez's shot off Ke in the same inning. Eight pitchers and a thousand heartbeats later, Lopez walked in his first trip to the plate, advanced to third during the inning's action, and hit a sacrifice fly in the twelfth that stood as the winning run. Luna picked up the win. Musselman closed. Eight to seven, Sacramento, and the sweep was done.

@ Charlotte, June 12-14 (1-2)

The Charlotte series opened in extra innings on June 12th, Cruz allowing four earned runs in four and one-third innings before the bullpen bridged to the tenth. With Charlotte leading five to four and one out, Alvarez singled home the tying run, then Garcia's double pushed the go-ahead run across. Gutierrez got the final out, Benson closed the tenth for the save, and Sacramento won seven to five. In the fifth inning of that game, Lopez pinch hit for Mollohan and singled home a run. He is now hitting .333.

June 13th was the inverse. Jeon allowed six runs in six and one-third innings, though only three were earned — Charlotte's errors and Sacramento's errors combined to make the game messy in both directions. The decisive moment was a Cifuentes three-run homer in the fourth. Sacramento scored five runs in the fifth, including Lopez's three-run double off Guerra with the bases loaded that temporarily tied the game, but Charlotte rallied and won in eleven innings on a Galindo sacrifice fly off Benson. Eight to seven, Charlotte.

June 14th: Steve James threw seven and one-third shutout innings, Rosario hit a two-run homer off Gunn in the fifth, and Sacramento managed four hits total. Three to nothing, Charlotte, the series disappointing loss complete.

vs. Houston, June 15-17 (2-1)

Jang dominated on June 15th — five and one-third innings, zero runs, eight strikeouts, a 2.90 ERA entering the weekend. Cruz hit a two-run homer off Guzman in the second inning, and Sacramento won five to one in a game that was never remotely competitive after the second inning. Cruz's fourth home run of the season from the shortstop position added to a day that felt like the whole roster was performing correctly at once.

June 16th game lasted twelve innings and ended in a loss, which is the kind of result that requires a full accounting. Andretti went six and one-third innings of two-run ball — a quality start. Then Luna blew a save in the seventh, Houston tied it in the seventh, Sacramento led again in the fourth through the ninth, and when Benitez — Houston's closer — allowed a Durango two-run double in the tenth to put Sacramento ahead, the game finally seemed settled. It was not. Medina allowed a McSherry double in the eleventh to tie it again. In the twelfth, with Ke on the mound, Brady hit a sacrifice fly. Houston eight, Sacramento seven, after four hours and twenty-two minutes and enough bullpen arms for two ordinary games.

Cruz redeemed the series on June 17th. Six and two-thirds innings, one run, seven strikeouts — his third quality start in four outings. Navarro hit two home runs, including a three-run shot in the second, and drove in five. Five runs in the first two innings and the game was functionally over. Eight to one.

______________________________

ALEJANDRO LOPEZ, SEVEN GAMES IN

Nineteen at-bats, six hits, a .316 average, seven RBI, zero home runs, and the game-winning sacrifice fly at San Jose. Those are the numbers. What they do not capture is the quality of contact — Lopez is hitting the ball to the gaps, not undercutting it or pulling off in the way hitters often do when returning from long injury absences. His first week back suggests a player who spent his rehabilitation time working on his mechanics rather than simply waiting for the healing to finish. Whether the power returns to the level of his 2000 season — twenty home runs and seventy-three stolen bases — is a longer question. What is evident already is that he can play at this level, and that his presence in the lineup changes how opposing pitchers approach the top of the order.

Choi is one week from returning. When both are healthy simultaneously, the outfield and the offensive structure around Shinohara become considerably more dangerous.

______________________________

HADDIX AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR SAN JOSE

The news arrived June 19th: George Haddix has ulnar nerve entrapment and expects to miss three months. He was six and eight on the season with a 4.55 ERA — not the dominant pitcher San Jose projected him to be — but he was still a rotation innings-eater and a name opposing lineups had to prepare for. His absence removes the third arm from a rotation that now relies on Suzuki, Flores, and whoever fills in. San Jose was already on a five-game losing streak entering the week. They are now four and a half games back in the division with their third starter gone until September.

This does not mean the division race is over. San Jose is forty-three and twenty-eight and will not stay on a losing streak indefinitely. Suzuki's ERA is 2.55 and he is one of the best pitchers in either league. The Demons are a better team than their recent results suggest. But a three-month absence for Haddix, layered on top of the losses to Sacramento last weekend, makes the path back to the division lead meaningfully harder than it looked on June 7th when both teams were tied.

______________________________

THE HOT STREAKS THAT AREN'T GETTING ENOUGH ATTENTION

Jang is seven and two with a 2.90 ERA — the best among Sacramento starters and among the AL's best overall. His last three starts produced a 0.55 ERA. He is doing this while walking fewer than three batters per nine innings and generating ground-ball outs at a rate that keeps his pitch counts manageable. The organization paid $1.27 million per year for this, and by mid-June it looks like a bargain in the same way Lozano's extension looked like a bargain in November.

Cruz is three and zero with a 1.85 ERA over his last four starts — a complete reversal of the rough patch that produced two losses in late May. The June version of Cruz works quickly, changes speeds effectively, and trusts his ground-ball rate to generate early-count outs. When he is pitching like this, Sacramento's rotation depth looks very different than it did during the Charlotte series opener.

Medina has not allowed an earned run in twenty-seven consecutive appearances. He is being asked to bridge between the starters and Benson in the seventh and eighth innings of close games, and he has delivered every time. His ERA is 0.75 for the season. His WHIP is 1.17. He has become the most reliable arm in the bullpen.

______________________________

AROUND THE LEAGUE

San Jose's five-game losing streak — all losses to Sacramento, Charlotte, and Detroit — dropped them from a half-game back of Sacramento on June 7th to four and a half games back by June 17th. The most dramatic ten-day swing in the AL West standings this season. Whether they recover depends largely on whether the rotation can absorb Haddix's absence. Suzuki and Flores are capable. The back of the rotation is now a question.

Long Beach at forty-six and twenty-five remains the NL's standard. Brooklyn at forty-five and twenty-four is running them close in the East. Cleveland at forty-four and twenty-five continues to make the NL Central look like its personal property. The October landscape is beginning to take shape, and Sacramento's forty-seven and twenty-three record places them firmly among the teams that look like October participants.

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Vahan Gevorgyan of Sacramento's Hagginwood neighborhood, a school bus driver, who asks: "Lopez came back and immediately hit a walk-off sacrifice fly in twelve innings at San Jose. Was that the moment of the season so far?"

It competes seriously for that title. The list of comparable moments includes Van Ham's two-grand-slam afternoon at Boston, Navarro's five-RBI game in the June 9th series opener here, the ten-game win streak that erased the five-game deficit in May. But there is something particular about the Lopez sac fly that the others cannot quite replicate: it was the first meaningful at-bat of his return, it came in the highest-leverage situation in the highest-stakes series of the year, and it came against the team Sacramento needs to beat to win the division. Eight months of recovery work, arriving precisely on schedule, in the twelfth inning of a game that produced the sweep. Baseball has a taste for the dramatic. Sometimes it actually delivers.

From Beatriz Almeida of Sacramento's Meadowview neighborhood, a registered nurse, who asks: "Benson has seven blown saves. Is that a problem heading into the second half?"

It is a data point worth watching but not yet a crisis. Benson is seven and three with seventeen saves and a 3.27 ERA. The blown saves have arrived in clusters — June 10th at San Jose, June 13th at Charlotte, June 16th against Houston — but they have also been followed, in most cases, by wins that absorbed the damage. What the blown save total tells you is that Benson's command in very high-leverage situations — tie game or one-run lead in the ninth — has been inconsistent, which is the one thing a closer cannot afford to be consistently. His underlying numbers are good: he's striking out more than a batter per inning, his walk rate is manageable, and the home run rate is low. This does not look like a closer who has lost his ability. It looks like a closer who has had some bad nights in the wrong games. Whether that pattern continues in the second half is the relevant question, and the honest answer is that nobody knows. I will say this: if Sacramento reaches October with a division title or a playoff spot, the blown saves will be a footnote. If they cost the team a series, they will be the story. Right now they are neither.

From Kwame Osei of Sacramento's North Sacramento neighborhood, a restaurant owner, who asks: "Sacramento is 47-23 and San Jose just lost Haddix for three months. Is the division race effectively over?"

It is not, and I say that with confidence based on evidence rather than false optimism. Forty-seven and twenty-three is an excellent record. Four and a half games is a meaningful lead. A hundred and one games remain on the schedule. San Jose is still forty-three and twenty-eight, which would be the best record in the AL Central as of today. Suzuki is still one of the best pitchers in professional baseball. The Demons' offense, which produces runs at one of the highest rates in the AL, does not become less dangerous because Haddix is pitching from a couch for three months. What the Haddix injury changes is the probability distribution — it tilts the odds meaningfully in Sacramento's favor, it makes the kind of ten-game losing streak that erased a five-game lead less likely to recur. But it does not end the race. The race ends in September. Sacramento needs to play at its current level for the next three months and maintain the lead. That is the task. A four-and-a-half-game lead with a hundred-and-one games left is a cushion, not a guarantee.

______________________________

Forty-seven and twenty-three. Four and a half up on San Jose, who have lost five straight. Lopez is hitting .316, Choi is a week away. Esparza is four days away, but will require some serious rehab in the minors. Prayers travel to Seattle for three games beginning Tuesday, then return home to host Portland.

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

liberty-ca · 06-16-2026, 11:04 PM

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

THE INFIELD IS FALLING APART — LOZANO, GARCIA, AND DEVORE ALL HURT

Lozano has shoulder tendinitis and went on the injured list after being hurt throwing in the June 27th game. Fernando Garcia has a sore elbow and has been out since June 24th. Cody DeVore developed knee tendinitis and is listed as day-to-day. Three of Sacramento's infielders are unavailable simultaneously, which on most rosters would constitute a genuine crisis. On this roster, it has produced: Vic Cruz going three and zero with a 2.29 ERA over three starts, Jang going three and zero with a 2.45 ERA over five starts, Andretti posting a 2.21 ERA over three starts, and Espenoza allowing zero runs in his last eight appearances. Four Sacramento pitchers on simultaneous hot streaks, during a week when the infield behind them was being rebuilt with utility players and, please forgive me unintentional pun, daily prayers.

Sometimes the only way a pitching staff can protect a shaky defense is to not need it. These four have found a way.

______________________________

DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

@ Seattle, June 19-21 (1-2)

Jeon allowed seven runs in five innings on June 19th. Seattle's Garza tripled and doubled. Welsh tripled. The last-place Lucifers won seven to one in a performance that belongs in the category of things that happen to defending champions who have been playing very good baseball for a long time and are due for a difficult evening. One bad start is one bad start.

June 20th ended Medina's streak. After twenty-seven consecutive scoreless appearances, he entered with Sacramento trailing three to two in the eighth inning and allowed five runs in two-thirds of an inning — a Matthews two-run double, a Matney two-run double — and the game was over. His ERA, which had been sitting at 0.75, jumped to 2.55. Every streak ends. The way Medina's ended, in an inherited-runner situation in Seattle, while his starter had already left him nothing to protect, is the least catastrophic way of how a twenty-seven-game scoreless run concludes, and I am sure he will be fine. Lopez hit his first home run of the season in this game — a leadoff shot in the first inning — which was the one positive note in a seven-to-three loss.

Gunn rebounded on June 21st with five innings of two-hit shutout ball through a rain delay that lasted nearly an hour. When play resumed, Sacramento scored five runs in the seventh on a bases-clearing double from Gil Cruz. Seven to nothing, a clean series split that would have been a cleaner road trip if Jeon had been better in the opener.

vs. Portland, June 22-24 (3-0)

Cruz on June 22nd: six and one-third innings, six hits, one run, nine strikeouts, zero walks. His ERA sits at 3.67 and falling. When Vic Cruz is working with that kind of control — ninety pitches and not a single walk issued — he is as difficult to score against as anyone in the rotation. Navarro had a two-run single in the third to stake him the early lead and the bullpen held it. Four to one.

June 23rd was eleven innings of something approaching controlled chaos. Andretti threw six and one-third fine innings before Musselman allowed an inherited run and Medina surrendered a Deveney two-run homer in the eighth to give Portland a three-to-two lead. In the bottom of the ninth Sacramento tied it, the game extended to the eleventh, and in the end Chavarria was hit by a Sullivan pitch with the bases loaded to force in the winning run. Four to three. The win went to Benson, who threw two scoreless innings — his record now is eight and three in 2001.

Jeon won June 24th start with six and one-third innings of two-run ball. Shinohara's double in the eighth scored the decisive run. Gutierrez and Medina closed it out. Garcia was injured while throwing the ball during this game; the elbow issue that has sidelined him for the foreseeable future.

@ Los Angeles, June 25-26 (1-1)

June 25th was Florez's day. Three for four, four runs scored, two RBI, a home run in the second inning, and energy from the bottom of the lineup that Sacramento needed after Garcia's injury forced another roster shuffle. Jang allowed four earned runs in five innings but Sacramento scored twelve. Navarro homered. Alvarez hit his thirteenth. Mollohan was hurt in a base collision during this game — a day-to-day minor issue that he shook off quickly enough to play two days later.

On June 26th Gunn allowed five runs in five innings — his third start in the last six where he has surrendered four or more earned runs — and the offense couldn't overcome it. A Schoff pinch-hit single in the sixth scored the go-ahead run off Luna and Sacramento lost five to four. Gunn's ERA climbed to 3.77 and the question of whether his occasional roughness represents a pattern worth monitoring has returned.

vs. Salt Lake City, June 27-28 (2-0)

Cruz pitched six and two-thirds innings on June 27th and Sacramento scored eleven times. Lozano was hurt in the fourth inning throwing the ball and left — DeVore came in at third base and contributed a two-RBI double in the sixth. The win was straightforward and the injury was not.

Andretti turned in seven and two-thirds innings on June 28th. Zero walks. Inning after inning of absolute command through a lineup that had no answer for his sequencing and location. His ERA dropped to 4.03. The offense provided eight runs. Eight to two.

______________________________

THE INFIELD SITUATION

Lozano, Garcia, and DeVore are all unavailable, all with different timelines. Lozano with a shoulder tendinitis will be sidelined for a minimum of seven weeks — a timeline that doesn't align well with the kind of early-July schedule Sacramento can manage with depth. Garcia's sore elbow, as the early indication from training personnel suggests, will require about a month to heel.

What replaces them in the interim: DeVore's knee has taken him off the field, Gil Cruz has been moving between second base and shortstop amid his own recurring hip strain that keeps surfacing whenever he runs hard, and Schmitt and Navarro are absorbing the bulk of the third-base innings. The good news is that Sacramento built a roster with this kind of redundancy specifically because the 2000 season demonstrated how quickly an injury list can compound. The less-good news is that compounding is exactly what has happened in the past ten days.

______________________________

THE ROTATION IN JUNE

Four Sacramento starters have simultaneous hot streak going. Jang is three and zero over his last five starts with a 2.45 ERA. Cruz is three and zero over three starts with a 2.29 ERA. Andretti is one and zero over three starts with a 2.21 ERA. Espenoza has zero runs allowed in his last eight relief appearances. This does not happen often. When it does, it tends to carry a team through periods where the offense and defense are not performing at their ceilings, which is exactly the function it is serving right now.

Cruz and Jang have been the most consistent. Cruz's evolution from late-May struggles — where his ERA briefly climbed toward five — back to the pitcher who threw seven shutout innings at Seattle in early June represents the rotation's most significant individual improvement. Andretti continues to provide the old-professional quality start four out of every five times he takes the ball. Jeon remains the one rotation variable: capable of one-hit performances like the June 3rd Seattle game and seven-run disasters like the June 19th Seattle game, sometimes in consecutive starts against similar competition.

______________________________

THE SEVEN-GAME LEAD

Sacramento leads the AL West by seven games with about eighty games remaining. San Jose is forty-seven and thirty-three — a record that would lead the AL Central by three games over Detroit and Charlotte right now. They are a good team losing ground to a better one.

The Haddix injury, the five-game losing streak in late May and early June, and the inability to gain ground during Sacramento's two-game Seattle stumble have combined to put Sacramento in a position where the division race — not yet over — is beginning to look like a formality. Seven games with eighty to play is the kind of lead that requires a specific kind of catastrophic month to overcome, and so far Sacramento has shown no inclination to have that month.

______________________________

AROUND THE LEAGUE

Charlotte and Detroit are tied atop the AL Central at forty-six and thirty-four, which makes the Central the most competitive division race in the league. The NL is shaping up around Long Beach, El Paso, and Cleveland — all above fifty wins, all looking like October participants. Marco Corral of Vancouver leads the league in strikeouts at a hundred and thirty-two, which is the kind of number that makes the fact that he was on the mound against Sacramento in the World Series last October feel recent and relevant.

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Roksana Wiśniewska of Sacramento's Woodlake neighborhood, a kindergarten teacher, who asks: "Medina's twenty-seven-game scoreless streak finally ended. Was the streak sustainable at all, or was the end inevitable?"

All streaks are eventually inevitable to end — the question is always when and how. What made Medina's run remarkable was the consistency of the circumstances in which he was deployed: inherited runners, high-leverage middle innings, against lineups that were actively trying to score. He was not stringing together scoreless outings against weak opponents in blowout games. He was holding leads when the starters left the game with problems unresolved. The Seattle ending — five runs in two-thirds of an inning with two inherited runners already on base — was rough, but the losses those runs produced were already structural before he threw a pitch. His ERA over the season remains 2.55. He has been one of the two or three most important bullpen arms in the American League in 2001. A bad inning in Seattle does not change what he has built, and the two subsequent appearances in which he allowed nothing suggest the rust shook off quickly.

From Sébastien Mbeki of Sacramento's Colonial Heights neighborhood, a software developer, who asks: "Lozano, Garcia, and DeVore are all hurt. Can this roster actually absorb three infield injuries at once?"

The evidence from this ten-game stretch suggests yes — barely and inelegantly, but yes. Gil Cruz has played through a recurring hip strain. Navarro has absorbed some third-base innings while also managing his own earlier rib-cage soreness. Schmitt, who has been the first utility infielder off the bench all season, has accumulated seven home runs in limited playing time and shown he can handle more than pinch-hit appearances. DeVore, before his knee issue arrived on June 28th, delivered a four-RBI double in what turned out to be his final healthy at-bat of the stretch. The infield depth is thinner than the pitching depth — but when Lozano and Garcia return, the depth picture will look considerably better again. The organization planned for two concurrent injuries. Three at once is the kind of thing that tests planning beyond its design limits. Sacramento is at the edge of that threshold but not past it.

From Kenji Watanabe of Sacramento's Arden Acres neighborhood, an accountant, who asks: "With a seven-game lead and the rotation pitching like this, is it time to start preparing for October planning?"

It is not time to prepare for October, because July and August still exist on the calendar and baseball tends to punish teams that declare victory before September. What the seven-game lead does allow is a shift in risk tolerance — Sacramento can absorb a rough week or even a rough series without it constituting a genuine threat to the division. It can afford to manage Andretti's innings more carefully. It can afford to bring Lozano and Garcia back from their respective injuries at a pace that prioritizes their long-term health rather than their short-term availability. Those are real advantages produced by a real lead. They are not, however, a championship. The team that won the 2000 World Series trailed in every playoff series at some point and found ways to win anyway. The 2001 team leading by seven games in late June needs to maintain its focus as much as any version of this franchise ever has, because seven games feels large right now and will feel different if October arrives with a rotation that has been mismanaged or a third baseman who has been pushed back too quickly from a shoulder injury. The October planning begins when the division is clinched. Until then, there are games to play.

______________________________

Fifty-four and twenty-six. Seven games up. The Prayers will face Columbus and Washington at home this week. The rotation is the best it has been all season and the infield is being rebuilt underneath it.

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

liberty-ca · 06-17-2026, 07:44 PM

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

By Claude Playball | Baseball Insider & Analyst | Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast

______________________________

June 29 – July 8, 2001 | Fifty-Eight and Thirty-One | Van Ham Signs Five-Year Extension | Columbus Sweeps Sacramento at Home

______________________________

NEWS ON THE INJURY FRONT TELL EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS STRETCH

When Jang walked off the mound in the third inning at Philadelphia, the rotation math started assembling itself in a very unpleasant direction in the minds of everyone watching. Eight and two, best ERA in the rotation, and then — a trainer, a slow limping walk, an early exit. The diagnosis arrived in hours: mild hamstring strain, around five days for recovery. We dodged the bullet, folks — Jang started warming up again before most people had finished catastrophizing. The rotation stayed intact.

The genuine bad news belongs to Cody DeVore, whose broken kneecap confirmed officially as a season-ending injury this week, and to Daniel Lozano, who is five weeks away from possibly returning from shoulder tendinitis. Those losses are real and the roster has been managing around them with functional improvisation. But they are not the rotation, and the rotation is fine. Vic Cruz just won the AL Pitcher of the Month award for June. Tim Van Ham won Player of the Week and then signed a five-year extension before the ink on the award was dry. Sacramento enters the All-Star break tied with Long Beach for the best record in professional baseball.

______________________________

VIC CRUZ — AL PITCHER OF THE MONTH

The June numbers: five starts, five wins, a 2.17 ERA, thirty-seven and one-third innings, thirty-nine strikeouts, opponents hitting .199 against him. The baseball writers noticed what the box scores had been reporting since the first week of the month — that the pitcher who struggled in late May had found something, corrected something, and become one of the most difficult starters to score against in the American League. The Pitcher of the Month award is recognition of what anyone watching already knew.

What Cruz found in June was location. His secondary pitches — the changeup and the two-seam fastball — stopped arriving middle-out and started arriving down and away, which is the difference between pitches hitters attack and pitches hitters beat into the dirt. His ground-ball rate in June was the highest it has been all season. Hitters were not getting the ball in the air. When hitters cannot get the ball in the air against Vic Cruz, they cannot score against Vic Cruz. That is the equation, and he executed it for five consecutive starts. On the year he stands at eight and four with a 3.95 ERA — the last number slightly inflated by a rough July 7th outing against Philadelphia. The June version is the pitcher the Prayers paid for.

______________________________

TIM VAN HAM — PLAYER OF THE WEEK AND FIVE-YEAR EXTENSION

The week that produced the Player of the Week recognition: ten for sixteen, .625 batting average, four home runs, eleven RBI. Those are not numbers that require explanation. A triple and a homer against Philadelphia, four hits and four RBI in the July 2nd Washington blowout including a three-run shot in the seventh. The American League voters made the obvious selection.

The front office responded with something more consequential than a minor award: a five-year extension at $337,200 per year, keeping Van Ham in Sacramento through 2006. He entered 2001 as the fourth outfielder, the depth chart player whose name appeared in the lineup when Lopez tore his ACL and Choi fractured a finger and the other options ran thin. What he has become since then — seventeen home runs, a .262 average, a sustained contributor rather than a temporary solution — is the kind of player franchises retain precisely because he is difficult to replace at his cost. The extension is the organization making a decision that should have been obvious by May: Van Ham is more then a hot-streaking hitter. He is a really valuable player, and Sacramento wants him for the next five years of what looks increasingly like a genuine championship window. Lets now talk about how things were unfolding for the Prayers over last stretch heading in to All-Star break one game at a time.

______________________________

DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

vs. Columbus, June 29 - July 1 (0-3)

Jeon pitched seven solid innings on June 29th and received nothing for it. Benson gave up a Gil single in the tenth that scored the go-ahead run. Three to four — Sacramento lost a game it controlled for most of nine innings.

Jang gave up five runs in five innings on June 30th — a Palacios two-run homer, a Strait solo shot — and the offense could not overcome the deficit. Shinohara hit his nineteenth home run. Four to five, Columbus again.

July 1st was Gunn's roughest outing since May: five innings, ten hits, four earned runs against a Columbus lineup that had no business being this difficult against home team. Gil, the Heaven's catcher who had been a nonfactor for most of the series, went three for four and hit a three-run homer in the seventh to break a game Sacramento was still close enough to win. Seven to five, final. Sacramento had been swept at home by a team that entered the series below .500. The division lead fell from seven games to five and a half in three days.

vs. Washington, July 2-4 (2-1)

Cruz won July 2nd with five and two-thirds innings of one-run ball, and the offense did everything else. Van Ham had four hits and four RBI, including a three-run homer in the seventh. Alvarez hit a three-run homer. Schmitt added a two-run shot. Fifteen to seven, Sacramento, and the series was off in the right direction — though Gil Cruz was hurt in a base collision during the game and is a week away from returning with back tightness.

July 3rd was Choi's first game back from the fractured finger. He went three for three with a home run, two singles, and two walks. Game started with a bang, as Chavarria and Washington's Montalvo were ejected in the first inning for their respective roles in a bench-clearing brawl. Then DeVore hit a solo homer — his first of the season, and as it turned out, his last — he was hurt later in a base collision and was forced to leave the game. The broken kneecap diagnosis was made public shortly thereafter. Sacramento won the game seven to three, with England — the second baseman acquired from Nashville in a minor transaction to address an emergency situation with Sacramento's infield — contributing a double in his second game in a Prayers uniform. Great win, terrible development with yet another injury to a roster player.

July 4th: Jeon threw seven fine innings and absorbed the loss despite strong showing — Ke surrendered a Taylor triple in the eighth that broke a tie. Three to four, Washington, on a holiday that for the home side ended without celebration.

@ Philadelphia, July 6-8 (2-1)

The July 6th win required ten innings and produced the Jang scare. He left after three and one-third innings, but the bullpen thankfully held on, and Shinohara's bases-loaded sac fly in the tenth off Young won it six to five. Medina got the win, Benson recorded his nineteenth save, and the Jang's postgame diagnosis — mild hamstring strain, five days — arrived to general relief.

July 7th was Cruz's worst start in two months: four and two-thirds innings, six earned runs, followed by a Ke appearance that featured a Gonzalez grand slam in the fifth. Philadelphia won eleven to seven, which is the kind of result that appears occasionally on every team's schedule and is best processed quickly and forgotten entirely.

The July 8th gamer was a true statement, in my opinion. Lopez went three for four with a home run, two singles, two walks, three runs scored, and three RBI. Van Ham hit his seventeenth homer. Navarro had three hits and two RBI. Gunn threw six innings and won his eighth game. Sixteen to six against a last-place team, which is the appropriate response to any preceding ugliness.

______________________________

DEVORE AND THE INFIELD

It pains me to say this, but Cody DeVore is done. The broken kneecap ended a season that had already been unusual — he came to Sacramento as a depth piece, was thrust into regular action by Lozano and Garcia's injuries, homered in his final at-bat, and then broke his knee on the same play. He is twenty-three years old. The organization loses the infield depth it had assembled, which was already operating near its limits with Lozano five weeks away on his shoulder tendinitis.

What fills the gap in the interim is the same patchwork that has been operating since late June: Schmitt at third, Navarro and Gil Cruz sharing the middle infield workload when both are healthy, England adding depth at second base, and the hope that Lozano's return in mid-August comes on schedule. It has worked well enough to stay two and a half games ahead of where Sacramento stood when Lozano first went down. That is the most accurate measure of how the team has managed a situation that would have been plainly unworkable for most rosters.

______________________________

THE ALL-STAR BREAK IN CONTEXT

Shinohara was named to the American League All-Star roster: .297 batting average, nineteen home runs, twenty-six stolen bases, a 141 wRC+ and 4.0 WAR. The selection was not debated. Gutierrez also made it — five wins, no losses, a 2.32 ERA, fifty-one innings of relief work that represents some of the most consistent middle-inning production in the league from any arm. Two Sacramento players on the AL roster is appropriate recognition for a franchise currently tied for the best record in baseball.

The American League won the All-Star Game ten to four. Nashville's Jose Morales was the day's featured performer. The result has no bearing on October but serves as a useful reminder of where the league's best currently sit, and Sacramento's two representatives were not embarrassed in the company they kept.

The midseason prospect update delivered two pieces of news worth tracking. Zamora holds the ninth overall ranking with twenty-four saves for Oxnard at Triple-A level and a 3.63 ERA — a legitimate prospect timeline that suggests a potential call-up option if the bullpen situation deteriorates. Kashiwabara, who opened the season ranked sixth overall, dropped off the top ten after hitting .177 at Triple-A. The ceiling that generated the preseason ranking has not lowered. The gap between that ceiling and his current performance has simply become visible. He is still a prospect. He is simply not a near-term solution.

______________________________

AROUND THE LEAGUE

Detroit has won nine straight and sits at fifty-five and thirty-four, the best record in the AL Central by four and a half games over Charlotte. The Preachers are the most dangerous team in the league not named Sacramento or San Jose. Long Beach at fifty-eight and thirty-one shares the best record in professional baseball with Sacramento — two franchises from the western half of the continent, neither of whom has shown meaningful vulnerability for the better part of two months. Cleveland at fifty-eight and thirty leads the NL Central and is the third team in the conversation for best record in the sport. October is taking shape in the standings.

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Nnamdi Eze of Sacramento's College Greens neighborhood, a paramedic, who asks: "Cruz wins Pitcher of the Month, then goes out and gets roughed up in Philadelphia. How do you read the rotation going into the second half?"

The July 7th Philadelphia game is noise, not signal. Cruz pitched badly for four and two-thirds innings against a below-.500 lineup on a warm night in a ballpark that plays small. Every pitcher in the American League has a game like that somewhere in his season. What matters is the surrounding context: dominant starts on either side of that performance, an ERA that has come down thirty points since the end of May, and a command profile that is demonstrably better than anything he showed in April. The rotation entering the second half is Jeon, Jang, Cruz, Gunn and Andretti — five starters who each have quality-start stretches on their resume and each have rough games as well. It is not the 1927 Yankees, and it is not what Jang and Cruz would have been at full health in a perfect world. But it is a rotation that can win a division and survive a playoff round. I would not trade it for what San Jose is currently assembling.

From Astrid Magnusdóttir of Sacramento's Arden Park neighborhood, a piano teacher, who asks: "The Van Ham extension locks him up through 2006. Is the franchise making a long-term bet on him, or is this primarily about the current window?"

Both, and the two are not in conflict. The current window — the one built around Shinohara, Navarro, Alvarez, Cruz, Lozano — runs through at least 2004 based on existing contracts. Van Ham's five-year extension ensures he is present for the entirety of that window and beyond. What makes this more than a short-term convenience move is that Van Ham is twenty-four years old and has not yet been asked to carry lineup responsibility in a full healthy season. His power has developed ahead of schedule. His on-base skills — a .357 OBP entering the break — suggest a hitter who does more than swing hard at elevated fastballs. The franchise is betting that what they are seeing now is not the ceiling of what he becomes. Based on the trajectory, that is a defensible bet at $337,200 per year.

From Andriy Kotick of Sacramento's Boulevard Park neighborhood, a structural engineer, who asks: "Sacramento was swept at home by Columbus, a team that was below .500. The lead dropped from seven to four. Should Prayers fans be worried?"

No. And here is the simplest way I can explain why: Columbus won three games from Sacramento in three days at Sutter Health Park, and despite that, the division lead is still four games. That is the nature of a seven-game cushion — it absorbs a bad series, it even absorbs a bad week, and it still leaves the team in first place with the second half ahead. The sweep by Columbus was a genuine rough stretch: Jang uncharacteristically poor in his start, Gunn allowing ten hits in five innings in the finale, the offense going quiet against three pitchers who had no particular reason to dominate Sacramento. None of that is structural. None of it changes the fact that this team has played .652 baseball for nearly ninety games. San Jose would need Sacramento to go something like twenty and thirty in the second half for the lead to evaporate entirely, and the team that spent the first half building a seven-game lead is not going to play .400 ball for the next sixty days. Be watchful. Be informed. Don't be worried.

______________________________

Fifty-eight and thirty-one. Tied with Long Beach for the best record in baseball. Four games up on San Jose. Jang healthy. Lozano five weeks away. Seattle comes for four games starting Thursday, then San Jose visits for a three-games series that will tell us everything about the second half of the season.

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

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.

liberty-ca · 06-18-2026, 07:58 PM

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

By Claude Playball | Baseball Insider & Analyst | Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast

______________________________

July 23 – August 1, 2001 | Seventy-Two and Thirty-Seven | Garcia Traded to San Jose on Deadline Day | Division Lead is Seven Games

______________________________

VICTOR CRUZ MELTS DOWN, SACRAMENTO WINS IN TEN INNINGS REGARDLESS

It required three home runs from Nashville in the second inning, a 8-2 deficit through four innings, six pitchers after Cruz exited, Florez hitting a grand slam in the same second inning that partially offset what Cruz allowed, Van Ham clearing the bases with a double in the third to tie it, multiple lead changes across the middle innings, Benson coming on in the ninth and holding things, and finally Choi hitting a sacrifice fly in the tenth off Bass to win it. The entire exercise lasted nearly four hours and ended with Sacramento one game closer to whatever October is going to look like.

The 13-12 victory on July 29th followed a 9-8 walk-off win the previous afternoon when Lopez drew a bases-loaded walk in the tenth inning off Edgar. Back-to-back extra-inning walk-off wins against a Nashville team that fought on every pitch thrown. If Sacramento were a lesser club, either game produces a loss that shifts the narrative completely. Instead they are seventy-two and thirty-seven with the best record in the American League and Lozano is one to two weeks away from returning to the infield.

______________________________

DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

@ Milwaukee, July 23-24 (1-1)

The game on July 23rd featured Jeon at his least convincing: four and two-thirds innings, four earned runs, three home runs allowed — two to Mesa and one to Ramos in the first inning alone. Labra threw eight innings with eleven strikeouts and made Sacramento loss inevitable from the third inning forward. Sacramento scored all three of its runs in the ninth, on Shinohara's twenty-first homer and Cruz's seventh. The rally was real; the final margin was not. Five to three, Milwaukee.

July 24th: Cruz threw six innings of two-run ball and the offense produced just enough. England hit his first home run as a Prayer in the first inning — a solo shot off Crossley that came in his first week with the organization. Navarro homered in the eighth. Van Ham contributed a sacrifice fly. Three to two, Sacramento, with Musselman and Benson closing it efficiently.

vs. San Antonio, July 25-26 (2-0)

The Hell Fire have lost eighty games and the series against them was handled appropriately. July 25th: Gunn pitched adequately if not dominantly, England drove in three runs, Florez hit a bases-clearing double, and the offense scored eleven times. July 26th: Andretti threw seven innings against a lineup that offered very little resistance, Navarro went four for four with two doubles and two singles, and Benson closed his twenty-sixth save. Five to two. No drama whatsoever.

vs. Nashville, July 27-29 (2-1)

July 27th was Nick Brown's remarkable evening. Eight and one-third innings, four hits, zero runs, three strikeouts, and a command that Sacramento's lineup simply could not locate a solution for. Jang gave up four runs in five and one-third innings including a Ritter three-run homer. Zero to four, a loss that came from a good pitcher pitching a great game.

July 28th was ten innings of something else entirely. Jeon gave up five earned runs in four innings but Florez hit a grand slam in the second inning that briefly gave Sacramento the lead. Nashville took it back, Sacramento tied it, Benson entered in the ninth with a one-run lead and walked two batters before allowing Nashville to tie it in the eighth — wait, the actual sequence went wrong in more directions than the official description captures. What matters is that Lopez drew a walk with the bases loaded in the tenth off Edgar, and Sacramento won nine to eight. Musselman got the win. The crowd at Sutter Health Park had earned its concessions.

July 29th began with Cruz taking the mound. He retired five of the first seven batters he faced in the first, and then the second inning arrived. Six walks. Oliver's three-run homer. Vargas's two-run homer. Seven earned runs in one and two-thirds innings. That was quite an ugly meltdown, the kind of start that produces pregame-show segments about rotation questions for three days. Sacramento trailed eight to two and still won thirteen to twelve in ten innings because Van Ham had four RBI, Florez hit his eleventh homer, Alvarez hit two doubles, and Choi's sac fly ended it.

vs. Charlotte, July 30 - Aug 1 (2-1)

On July 30th Gunn earned his tenth win with six and one-third innings of four-run ball, which Sacramento outscored ten to seven on the strength of a Lopez homer and double, a Cruz two-run shot, and a Nakazawa bases-clearing double in the fourth inning that turned a two-run deficit into a three-run lead.

July 31st: Andretti threw six excellent innings allowing one run, and Sacramento led six to one going into the ninth inning. Then Xin Ke entered and allowed Landau's three-run homer and Thomas's solo shot to tie it at seven, and Charlotte scored once more to win eight to seven. One of the more dispiriting losses of the second half — a quality start wasted, a lead vanished in minutes. Ke's ERA climbs toward five.

August 1st: Sacramento rebounded without delay. Four consecutive doubles in the fourth inning off James — Schmitt, Nakazawa, England, and Choi all hitting doubles in sequence — produced six runs in the frame. Jang won his eleventh game with five and one-third innings. Six to four, the series taken.

______________________________

THE GARCIA TRADE

At the July 31st trade deadline, Sacramento traded Fernando Garcia to San Jose for outfield prospect Manny Mendez and a first, a second and a third-round picks. Garcia was hitting .256 with six home runs and twenty RBI for Sacramento, filling in capably at second base during the Lozano injury stretch and before that serving as the utility infielder of first resort throughout the season's first half.

The draft capital haul is significant — three picks in the top three rounds, along with a twenty-four-year-old outfield prospect, represents genuine organizational depth. The complication is that Garcia went to San Jose, the team Sacramento is trying to put away in the division race. Garcia is a solid contributor at the level he has been deployed; adding him to a San Jose roster that is seven games behind does not change the division outcome, but it provides them a capable utility option for whatever October role they earn.

Sacramento's infield calculation going forward: Lozano returns within two weeks, England holds the second base role, Gil Cruz remains at shortstop, and the third base combination of Schmitt and Navarro continues to cover admirably. The roster is thinner in the middle infield than it was before the trade. The draft picks and Mendez represent the bet that the team is healthy enough to win the division without Garcia and will be better positioned over the next three seasons because of what they received.

______________________________

THE PITCHING PICTURE — HEAT AND COLD

Andretti is three and zero with a 1.87 ERA over his last seven starts. That is not a statistical artifact — his ground-ball rate over this stretch, his command of the sinker at the bottom of the strike zone, and the consistency with which he has worked deep into games all reflect a forty-one-year-old veteran who has found the version of himself that wins at this level. His ERA for the season sits at 3.53. He has been this organization's steadiest starter since the All-Star break.

Medina has a 0.56 ERA over his last fifteen appearances, his ERA now 1.91 on the season. Whatever disrupted his twenty-seven-game scoreless streak in Seattle has been fully corrected. He is again the most reliable arm between the starters and Benson, doing it in high-leverage situations and coming out clean.

Espenoza is the concern the hot streak indicators have been confirming: 10.59 ERA over his last thirteen appearances. He was one of Sacramento's best pitchers from April through the first week of July. He has been a liability since. The causes are not fully transparent from the box score alone — the command metrics suggest he has lost some precision with his breaking ball, and opposing hitters who saw him twenty-five times in April and May have made adjustments. Whether this corrects itself or represents a more durable problem is the most important pitching question Sacramento carries into August.

Cruz's July 29th start belongs to a different category — a complete mechanical breakdown in a single start rather than a trend. His last four appearances other than that game have been serviceable. One disaster does not define a pitcher's trajectory.

______________________________

LOZANO COMING BACK SOON?

One to two weeks. After spending nearly six weeks on the injured list with shoulder tendinitis, Lozano is within a fortnight of returning to the Sacramento lineup. His presence reinstates the infield's best player at third base, takes the defensive pressure off Schmitt's overtime deployment, and — perhaps most importantly — returns the bat that anchors the five and six spots in the order. Lozano was hitting .259 with ten home runs and thirty-eight RBI when he went down. Those are not All-Star numbers but they represent legitimate offensive output, and the lineup with Lozano in it is significantly better than the lineup without him.

______________________________

AROUND THE LEAGUE

Charlotte and Detroit are tied atop the AL Central at sixty-three and forty-five — the tightest race remaining in the American League, with both teams playing well enough to argue for the division crown deep into September. Long Beach at seventy and thirty-eight is running the best record in the NL Pacific. Cleveland at sixty-nine and thirty-nine continues to make the Central their property. Alex Aguilar of Phoenix has forty-two home runs and one hundred and seventeen RBI at the start of August, which is the kind of pace that makes award conversations irrelevant — when someone is that dominant, the award is already decided.

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Solange Tchibinda of Sacramento's Lemon Hill neighborhood, a community college professor, who asks: "Sacramento traded Garcia to San Jose — a division rival — on deadline day. Should fans be uncomfortable with that?"

Some discomfort is reasonable and I would not dismiss it with a purely financial argument. The draft picks and Mendez represent genuine organizational value, and the front office clearly decided that Garcia's contribution to Sacramento's 2001 chances was smaller than the long-term return from three top-three-round picks. That is probably correct. What makes the trade feel complicated is that Sacramento's window for winning is open right now, and adding a capable utility infielder to San Jose — even a seven-games-back San Jose — creates a scenario where Sacramento could face Garcia in October if both teams advance. The calculus here depends on your read of how close San Jose can actually get. At seven games back with fifty-three to play, the Demons would need to play forty-three and ten to force a coin flip, which is not going to happen. The division pick haul is the right call. The optics will smooth over as soon as Sacramento clinches.

From Ragnar Sigurdsson of Sacramento's River Park neighborhood, a civil contractor, who asks: "Cruz allowed seven runs in less than two innings on July 29th and then Sacramento won the game. What does that start tell us about him?"

Mostly it tells us about the offense, not about Cruz. One start does not determine a rotation slot, and Cruz's body of work — nine wins, one hundred strikeouts, a 4.23 ERA that has been hovering between 3.57 and 4.23 for three months — is the relevant data set. What the July 29th start did reveal is that Cruz's command of the strike zone remains fragile in ways that can cascade: when he cannot locate the fastball early in counts, he falls behind, he nibbles, he walks batters, and the walks lead to runs faster than average because the hitters behind the walks are good enough to drive them in. Six walks in one and two-thirds innings is not a pitcher having bad luck. That is a pitcher who lost his release point and could not recover it. Whether that was a one-time mechanical break or an early signal of something worth monitoring is the question his next three starts will answer.

From Hyun-soo Lim of Sacramento's Campus Commons neighborhood, a dentist, who asks: "Espenoza is ice cold and Andretti is as hot as he's been all year. With Lozano returning, what does the roster look like entering the final two months?"

It looks like a team with a reasonable amount of depth in most places and one growing concern. The infield returns to full strength when Lozano comes back in the next week or two — third base covered, Garcia's departure absorbed, England and Cruz splitting the middle infield work competently. The rotation is Jang, Gunn, Andretti, Cruz, and Jeon — five starters with varying degrees of reliability, none of them dominant enough to be automatic, all of them capable of quality starts on a given day. The bullpen is Benson closing, Gutierrez and Medina bridging, and then a collection of arms — Musselman, Luna, Espenoza, Ke — that range from serviceable to concerning depending on the week. The Espenoza cold streak is the one thread that worries me most right now. He was used heavily in a starting and high-leverage relief role through the first half, and it is possible he has run into the fatigue wall that can claim innings-heavy relievers in late July. If he does not correct before September, Sacramento will need Ke or Luna to step into his role with more consistency than either has shown. That is a solvable problem. It is not yet a solved one.

______________________________

Seventy-two and thirty-seven. Seven games up on San Jose. Lozano in one to two weeks from returning to the lineup. Portland home for three, then trip San Jose for the series of the year. The rotation question is Cruz. The bullpen question is Espenoza. Everything else can wait.

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

liberty-ca · 06-19-2026, 11:26 AM

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

By Claude Playball | Baseball Insider & Analyst | Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast

______________________________

August 3 – 12, 2001 | Seventy-Six and Forty-Two | Ha-joon Choi Is Playing the Best Baseball on the Roster | Andretti's Rough Night in Seattle

______________________________

SACRAMENTO DOES NOT LOOK LIKE ITSELF THESE PAST TEN DAYS

I don't want to push the panic button yet, and perhaps we are simply witnessing the inevitable cost of a long summer, but the truth be told, I am starting to feel somewhat uncomfortable observing current situation the Prayers find themselves in. You be the judge: Sacramento lost two of three to Portland at home — a team that has lost sixty-six games and counting. They lost two of three at San Jose, conceding ground in the division for the first time in a month. They lost Alejandro Lopez to a back strain that will keep him out four weeks, just days after he had finally looked like himself again following the ACL recovery. And in the final game of the stretch, Bernardo Andretti — who had been the best pitcher on the staff for three weeks running — recorded two outs and allowed five earned runs in his last start before manager Jimmy Aces had seen enough and took him out of the game.

Now, that being said, none of that erases what Ha-joon Choi has done in the same span: five home runs in his last eight games, a .333 average, the best player on this roster by a wide margin over the past two weeks. Nor does it erase the fact that Sacramento remains six games up with forty-four to play, still owns the best record in the American League, and gets Daniel Lozano back in the lineup any day now. But this is the first ten-day stretch since June where the team has looked genuinely vulnerable, and it is worth taking seriously rather than waving away.

______________________________

DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

vs. Portland, August 3-5 (1-2)

Series opener on August 3rd got away from Sacramento in the worst possible fashion. Jeon allowed six runs in four and one-third innings, the bullpen could not stop the bleeding, and Sacramento still found itself tied at ten in the ninth before Oscar Garcia's single off Xin Ke won it for Portland, eleven to ten. Lopez was hurt running the bases in this game — painful back strain will sideline him for at least a month. A frustrating loss compounded by a worse injury.

August 4th corrected things emphatically. Cruz threw six innings of two-run ball, Choi went three for five with a home run and three RBI, and Schmitt added a two-run shot. Nine to two, the kind of response Sacramento needed.

The closing game on August 5th slipped away in extra-inning fashion. Andretti was rocked early — five runs in three and two-thirds innings — and though Sacramento clawed back to tie it at nine with Choi hitting two more home runs, Benson walked in the go-ahead run with the bases loaded in the ninth on a free pass to Raimondi. Ten to nine, Portland, and a series loss to a team currently sitting at twenty-four games under .500 on the season.

@ San Jose, August 6-8 (1-2)

The biggest series of the stretch did not go Sacramento's way either. August 6th: Jang pitched well — seven innings, two earned runs — but Benson again blew the save in the ninth and Barbosa's walk-off single won it for San Jose, four to three. The division race tightened by a game.

The following day on August 7th was the response Sacramento needed and delivered completely: Gunn threw six and one-third shutout innings for his eleventh win, Gil Cruz hit a three-run homer, Choi and Navarro both went deep, and Sacramento blew the doors off, eleven to one.

August 8th series finishing game undid the good feeling. Jeon was adequate — five innings, two earned runs — but now it was Gutierrez, who imploded in relief, recording one out while allowing five runs on five hits. Finocchiaro went four for five for San Jose. Nine to four, San Jose, and Sacramento left Excite Ballpark having lost the season series to its closest competitor for the first time all year.

@ Seattle, August 10-12 (2-1)

Cruz won August 10th matchup with five and one-third innings of shutout ball, Chavarria drove in two with a pair of doubles, and Sacramento closed out a clean six-to-two win in the rain.

Jang won his twelfth game on August 11th — six innings, two earned runs, and Choi continued his tear with a double and a home run. Nine to two.

Then August 12th arrived and Andretti, to everybody's dismay in the Prayers' dugout, could not get out of the first inning. Seven hits, five earned runs, two outs recorded, and Sacramento's bullpen was left to absorb the rest of an ugly nine-to-two loss. Jun-young Cho went three for three with two doubles for Seattle. It was Andretti's second poor outing in eight days after three weeks of being the best pitcher on the staff — the kind of reversal that, paired with Espenoza's ongoing struggles, has turned the back of the rotation into a genuine question mark heading into the stretch run.

______________________________

WHO'S HOT AND WHO'S COLD

Who's Hot: Ha-joon Choi, without much competition. Five home runs and a .333 average over his last eight games, sixteen home runs and thirty-nine RBI for the season despite missing the season's first three months with a fractured finger. He has been the most dangerous hitter in the Sacramento lineup since the All-Star break, full stop. Gil Cruz has also quietly strung together a strong two weeks at the plate and on the bases, with twenty-two stolen bases and a renewed presence at the top of the order.

Who's Cold: Mario Espenoza's ERA over his last eighteen appearances sits at 9.62. That is not a slump — that is a pitcher who has lost something, whether it is fatigue from heavy first-half usage or a mechanical issue that has not yet been corrected. Andretti's last two outings — five and five earned runs in a combined four and one-third innings — represent the same category of concern, though his larger sample this season argues he is more likely to rebound than not. The bullpen behind Benson and Gutierrez has carried significant water all season. The last ten days suggest that water is starting to feel heavier, or maybe the buckets in which it is being carried are leaking...

______________________________

LOPEZ OUT FOUR WEEKS

The latissimus dorsi strain that sidelined Lopez on August 3rd is the kind of injury that, while not requiring the multiple months Rubalcava or Delgado have needed, removes a player at precisely the moment he was rounding into form for several weeks minimum. He was hitting around .240 with the kind of on-base skills and base-stealing instincts that had begun to look like the Lopez of 2000 again. Optimistic assessment of four weeks to full recovery puts his return somewhere in early September, which would still allow him a meaningful runway before the postseason — assuming Sacramento gets there, which remains the heavy favorite outcome.

In the meantime, the outfield rotation of Chavarria, Mollohan, Van Ham, and Choi will absorb the workload, with Durango available off the bench. It is a deep enough group to manage a month without disaster. It is not as deep as it was with Lopez healthy.

______________________________

LOZANO IS BACK

One day remained on Lozano's injured list timeline as of the most recent report, which means by the time this reaches print he is very likely activated or close to it. After nearly two months sidelined by shoulder tendinitis, the team gets back its starting third baseman and a bat that was hitting .259 with ten home runs when he went down in late June. His return restores the defensive alignment the organization built this roster around and takes the everyday burden off Schmitt, who has performed admirably as a fill-in but is not the long-term answer at the position.

______________________________

AROUND THE LEAGUE

San Jose closer Vince Brooks recorded his three hundredth career save on August 4th in a 3-1 win over Seattle, a milestone reached over six hundred and six relief appearances. The Excite Ballpark crowd gave him a standing ovation, and it is worth pausing to recognize the achievement even as his team competes directly against ours for the division.

Daniel Mele of Vancouver collected his 2,500th career hit on August 8th, a milestone for a thirty-six-year-old third baseman who has hit .327 for his career with four hundred and thirty-eight home runs. These are the markers that remind you how long professional careers can run, and how rare it is to sustain excellence across that many seasons.

Alex Aguilar of Phoenix now has forty-five home runs and one hundred twenty-four RBI with seven weeks remaining in the season — a pace that, if it holds, will be remembered for a long time regardless of what division he plays in.

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Tamar Avetisyan of Sacramento's Glenbrook neighborhood, an orthopedic surgeon, who asks: "Sacramento lost two of three to a last-place Portland team. How worried should fans actually be?"

Genuinely worried, no. Attentive, yes. A series loss to a sub-.500 club happens to every good team over a hundred-and-sixty-game season — Sacramento itself has been on the other side of similar results against weaker opponents earlier this year. What makes this stretch worth attention rather than dismissal is the convergence: the Portland series loss, the San Jose series loss, Lopez's injury, and two rough Andretti starts all landed inside the same ten days. Any one of those alone is background noise. Together, they represent the first sustained wobble Sacramento has shown since the early-June stretch that preceded the ten-game winning streak. History suggests this team responds well to adversity. The next ten days will tell us whether that pattern holds.

From Wanjiru Kamau of Sacramento's South Land Park neighborhood, an electrician, who asks: "Choi has been the best hitter on the team for weeks. Does he deserve more national attention than he's getting?"

Yes, unambiguously. Sixteen home runs and a .298 average from a player who didn't appear in a game until June, who has been at his best precisely when the rest of the lineup has needed him most — that is the profile of a player who would be generating significant buzz on a team with a less crowded star system. Shinohara is the headline name on this roster and deserves to be. But over the last month, Choi has arguably been the more impactful player, and the gap between his actual production and his national profile is wider than it should be. If Sacramento makes a deep October run, expect that gap to close quickly.

From Esteban Quiroga of Sacramento's Parkway neighborhood, a pastry chef, who asks: "With Lozano back and Lopez out, how does the lineup shake out for the stretch run?"

The likely everyday alignment: Lozano at third, Navarro at short, Gil Cruz and England splitting second base duties, Alvarez at first, Shinohara, Choi, and a rotation of Chavarria, Mollohan, and Van Ham across the outfield with Lopez sidelined. That is a deep, professional lineup even without one of its better hitters. The bigger question is not the lineup construction but the bullpen behind the rotation — whether Espenoza rights himself, whether Andretti's last two outings are an aberration or a trend, and whether Xin Ke and Luna can provide enough length in middle relief to keep the late innings from becoming an adventure every night. The position-player depth chart looks fine. The pitching depth chart is the thing to watch over the next three weeks.

______________________________

Seventy-six and forty-two. Six games up on San Jose. Lopez out four weeks. Lozano back any day. Choi is the hottest hitter in the league and nobody outside Sacramento seems to have noticed yet. Coming up next: two games in Vancouver, then back to Sacramento to face Las Vegas and Detroit at home.

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

liberty-ca · 06-19-2026, 08:29 PM

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

By Claude Playball | Baseball Insider & Analyst | Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast

______________________________

August 13 – 22, 2001 | Eighty-Three and Forty-Five | A Three-Game Sweep of Brooklyn to Close the Stretch | Jang's Brief Scare

______________________________

WHAT A CHAMPIONSHIP-CALIBER TEAM LOOKS LIKE WHEN IT REMEMBERS WHO IT IS

After the wobble of early August, Sacramento needed a response, and over these ten days it delivered one in installments. The road trip was uneven — a walk-off loss in Vancouver, a response win, a frustrating loss to Las Vegas sandwiched around a blowout. But the homestand that followed was the version of this team that built a seven-game lead in July: two of three from a genuine AL Central contender in Detroit, then a clean sweep of Brooklyn to finish it off. Seven wins in ten games, the best record in the American League intact, and Daniel Lozano back in the lineup at third base for the first time since late June.

The headline number, though, belongs to Soshu Shinohara. Twenty-eight home runs. Ninety-one RBI. A .290 average that has crept steadily upward all season. He is no longer just Sacramento's best player — he is making a serious claim to be the best player in the American League, full stop.

______________________________

DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

@ Vancouver, August 13-14 (1-1)

Game on August 13th went eleven innings and ended badly. Jeon was excellent — seven innings, one earned run — but Benson allowed Daniel Mele's two-run double in the bottom of the eleventh, and Vancouver won three to two. Mele's blast came off a future Hall of Fame arc that has nothing to do with Sacramento's fortunes, but it stung all the same.

August 14th showdown turned into a track meet in Sacramento's favor. Shinohara hit two home runs and drove in six. Gunn surrendered one run in five and one-third innings for his twelfth win. Eight to one, though the afternoon is better remembered for Mollohan and Vancouver's Jason Garcia getting ejected in the third inning for igniting a bench-clearing brawl. Baseball tempers run hot in August.

vs. Las Vegas, August 15-16 (1-1)

Cruz had a rough one on August 15th — three earned runs in five and two-thirds innings — and Tetsuharu Sakakibara, who has had Sacramento's number more than once this season, went three for four with a homer. Four to one, Las Vegas.

August 16th was a laugher in the other direction. Sacramento scored five in the first inning, Shinohara and Choi both homered, and the Prayers won nine to one. Jang was pulled early after being hurt while pitching — a moment that briefly raised alarm given the season's run of rotation injuries — but Espenoza, Gutierrez, and Musselman combined to cover the rest of the game capably, and the injury proved minor enough that Jang would take the mound again less than a week later.

vs. Detroit, August 17-19 (2-1)

August 17th was the kind of game that announces itself immediately as memorable. Shinohara hit a grand slam in the fifth. Choi homered twice. Nakazawa went four for four with a home run, two doubles, and a walk — four runs scored, three driven in, the best game of his season. Andretti cruised through six and one-third innings. Fifteen to three, against a Detroit team that came in seventy-two and fifty.

August 18th was tighter and cleaner: Jeon allowed one run over five innings, Mollohan drove in two with a first-inning single, and the bullpen — Musselman, Luna, and Medina — combined for four scoreless innings to close it out. Six to one.

August 19th went the other way. Gunn allowed two earned runs in five innings before Gutierrez surrendered a three-run Jimmy Rosen homer that put Detroit ahead for good. Nine to four, Detroit, and the series — taken two games to one — still represented real validation against one of the better teams in the league.

vs. Brooklyn, August 20-22 (3-0)

The sweep began with a tight one. Vic Cruz threw seven strong innings, Mollohan's two-out single in the eighth provided the decisive run, and Medina and Benson combined to close out a three-to-two win over a Brooklyn team getting a strong outing from Steve Robitaille.

August 21st belonged to Hector Florez — four for five with a double and three RBI — while Jang, fully recovered from his brief scare, threw five and one-third innings for his thirteenth win. Nine to two.

August 22nd completed the sweep. Andretti threw six shutout innings, Lozano hit a home run in his first week back, and Sacramento won five to two. The Brooklyn series, against a team that had been playing well in the AL East all summer, ended in the most one-sided fashion possible.

______________________________

LOZANO'S RETURN

He has been back at third base since the middle of this stretch, and the results have arrived quickly: a home run against Brooklyn on August 22nd, doubles, stolen bases, the full complement of what made him a thirty-home-run threat a season ago. More important than any single box score line is what his presence does structurally — Schmitt moves back to a true utility role, Navarro and Cruz settle into their customary positions, and the defensive infield Sacramento built this roster around is whole again for the stretch run. Two months on the injured list is a significant absence to overcome in six weeks, but the early returns suggest he has lost very little.

______________________________

SHINOHARA'S MVP CASE

Twenty-eight home runs. Ninety-one RBI. Thirty-five stolen bases. A .290 average that keeps climbing despite the power numbers that would normally come with some trade-off in contact rate. He leads the team in nearly every meaningful offensive category and has done it while playing plus defense in right field. The American League MVP conversation has been centered on Alex Aguilar of Phoenix and a handful of others in the National League, with Ebizo Suzuki rightfully drawing Cy Young attention in San Jose's own division. But within the American League specifically, it is difficult to point to a position player having a better all-around season than Shinohara. The grand slam against Detroit on August 17th was simply the most visible recent example of a player performing at the peak of his abilities in the most important stretch of the season.

______________________________

WHO'S HOT, WHO'S COLD

Who's Hot: Shinohara, obviously, but also Jang and Gunn, who combined to allow four earned runs over their last two starts apiece, and Jeon, who has quietly strung together a 1.50 ERA across his last two outings after a summer of inconsistency. The rotation, as a unit, has looked like its July self again over this final stretch.

Who's Cold: Tim Van Ham is hitting .107 with no home runs over his last eight games — a significant comedown from the player who signed a five-year extension in early July. Some of this is mechanical, some is simply the variance that comes with a smaller role since Lopez's injury and Choi's emergence have squeezed his playing time. He remains a useful piece. He has not looked like one in two weeks.

______________________________

AROUND THE LEAGUE

Detroit is seventy-seven and fifty-one, two and a half games up on Charlotte in the AL Central — the tightest divisional race remaining in the American League, and a team Sacramento now knows can compete with anyone after splitting that three-game set at Sutter Health Park. Brooklyn's Steve Robitaille threw eight strong innings in a losing effort against Cruz on August 20th, a reminder that pitching performances and pitching results do not always align. Cleveland at seventy-nine and forty-eight continues to lead the NL, with Long Beach at eighty-one and forty-six running them close. Marco Corral of Vancouver has two hundred and twelve strikeouts with over a month still to play — a number that will likely stand as one of the league's defining individual achievements this season regardless of how his team's record looks.

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Knarik Hovhannisyan of Sacramento's Gardenland neighborhood, an urban planner, who asks: "Lozano came back and already has a home run. How much does his return change the lineup's ceiling for the stretch run?"

Meaningfully. The lineup performed well in his absence — that much is obvious from the record — but performing well without your third-best power threat and performing at full strength with him are different propositions. Lozano gives Sacramento a fifth legitimate home run threat alongside Shinohara, Choi, Alvarez, and Van Ham, which makes it considerably harder for opposing pitchers to navigate the lineup without exposure somewhere. His defense at third base, even two months removed from regular play, has looked sound rather than rusty. If he sustains anything close to his pre-injury production through September, this lineup is deeper than it has been at any point since Opening Day.

From Folasade Bankole of Sacramento's Robla neighborhood, a mechanic, who asks: "Shinohara has 28 home runs and 91 RBI. Is he the best position player in the American League right now?"

He belongs firmly in that conversation, and a strong case exists that he is exactly that. The combination of power, average, speed, and defensive value is rare — most thirty-home-run hitters are not also stealing thirty-five bases, and most players with his stolen-base totals are not driving in ninety-one runs. Where the case gets complicated is the comparison pool: this is genuinely a strong year for hitters across both leagues, and reasonable people will weigh different statistical categories differently. What I can say without hesitation is that no Sacramento player has had a season this complete in recent memory, and few players anywhere in the American League have matched his combination of skills in 2001.

From Itzel Reyes of Sacramento's Avondale neighborhood, a graphic designer, who asks: "Six games up with about a month left. When does it start to feel safe to think about October planning?"

The math says Sacramento needs to play roughly .500 baseball over the remaining thirty-two games for the lead to hold, assuming San Jose plays at a strong-but-not-historic pace the rest of the way. That is an extremely comfortable position, and I would not blame anyone in the organization for beginning to think seriously about postseason roster construction, pitching matchups, and health management at this point. That said, "safe to think about" and "safe to assume" are different things. The lead can still shrink if Sacramento goes through a genuine slump, and Lopez's continued absence plus the questions around Espenoza's role mean there are real variables left to resolve before October arrives. My honest answer: it is reasonable to start planning now. It is not yet reasonable to stop paying attention to the day-to-day.

______________________________

Eighty-three and forty-five. Six games up on San Jose with thirty-two to play. Lozano back. Lopez two weeks away. Shinohara making an MVP case in real time. Baltimore on the road, then to Portland to close the month.

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

liberty-ca · 06-20-2026, 08:34 AM

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

By Claude Playball | Baseball Insider & Analyst | Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast

______________________________

August 24 – September 2, 2001 | Eighty-Eight and Forty-Nine | Shinohara at Ninety-Seven RBI | Andretti's Complete Turnaround

______________________________

AFFORDING INCONSISTENCY THAT WOULD SINK MOST CONTENDERS

There is a pattern emerging in the late-season schedule that deserves naming plainly: Sacramento has now lost series to two of the league's worst teams in the span of a month — Portland in early August, Baltimore in this stretch — while continuing to struggle against the one team chasing them in the standings. San Jose has now taken two of three from Sacramento in back-to-back series, including a one-to-nothing shutout loss on August 31st in which William Rodriguez threw eight scoreless innings against this lineup. None of that has dented the lead, which sits at six games with twenty-five remaining, because Sacramento's overall record remains the best in the American League regardless of who beats them on a given week.

What carries this team through the inconsistency is increasingly obvious: Soshu Shinohara, who has ninety-seven RBI and thirty-one home runs and is going to flirt seriously with one hundred RBI before the calendar turns to mid-September.

______________________________

DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

@ Baltimore, August 24-26 (1-2)

The opening game on August 24th ended on a walk-off solo homer from Jimmy Voss in the bottom of the ninth, five to six, despite a three-for-three day from Chavarria and a two-out Shinohara homer in the first. Jeon had given up five runs in five and two-thirds innings, and the late-inning home runs — Sacramento hit two of its own in the ninth from Van Ham and Alvarez — were not enough to survive Voss's answer.

August 25th was a clean loss to a good outing: Hiroshi Toyama of Baltimore allowed one run over six and two-thirds innings, Tyler Baskin homered, and Cruz could not match the performance, allowing three earned runs in four and one-third. Five to one, Baltimore.

August 26th was the response — but barely. Sacramento scored nine runs on fifteen hits, with Tony Villalobos doing damage in the other direction for Baltimore, and the Prayers survived a back-and-forth slugfest, nine to six. The series was still lost, two games to one, to a team currently twenty-two games under .500.

@ Portland, August 27-29 (3-0)

Series on the road in Portland showed us the version of Sacramento that makes the inconsistency elsewhere tolerable. Andretti threw six shutout innings on August 27th, Alvarez hit a three-run homer, and Sacramento won six to nothing — Andretti's record improving to ten and three.

Next day, on August 28th, Gunn went seven innings allowing three earned runs, Lozano delivered the go-ahead RBI single in the seventh, and Sacramento won six to four for Gunn's thirteenth victory of the season.

August 29th: Jeon threw five and two-thirds innings and Nakazawa drove in two with a double and a single. Five to three, the clean sweep complete, with Sacramento moving to six and a half games up in the division — the high-water mark of the stretch.

@ San Jose, August 31 - September 2 (1-2)

August 31st was as quiet a loss as Sacramento has suffered all season. William Rodriguez threw eight scoreless innings, struck out seven, and allowed three hits. Choi had two of them. One to nothing, San Jose, in a game where Sacramento simply could not solve a pitcher having the best night of his season.

September 1st, midpoint game of the series, was a real heartbreaker. Alvarez went three for four with a home run and two RBI, Sacramento built leads multiple times, but still lost when Jose Adams delivered a walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth off Benson. Six to five, San Jose, and the blown save dropped Benson's record on the season further into uncomfortable territory.

September 2nd salvaged the series. Andretti continued his remarkable turnaround with six innings of one-run ball, Lozano's two-run double in the first set the tone, and Shinohara's thirty-first home run in the sixth sealed it. Seven to two, Sacramento, and a series loss that could have been a sweep instead ended with a much-needed answer.

______________________________

SHINOHARA'S MARCH TOWARD ONE HUNDRED

Ninety-seven RBI with twenty-five games remaining. Thirty-one home runs. A .294 average that has held remarkably steady across a season of increasing power production — the rare hitter whose contact rate has not eroded as his home run total climbed. He will almost certainly cross one hundred RBI within the next week, and the larger question — whether he finishes the season as the best position player in the American League, full stop — gets harder to argue against with every passing series. What stands out watching him now is the complete absence of any visible slump all season. Other hitters in this lineup have had cold stretches, sometimes lasting weeks. Shinohara has not had one.

______________________________

ANDRETTI'S COMPLETE TURNAROUND

Three weeks ago, Andretti recorded two outs against Seattle and allowed five earned runs, the kind of outing that raises real concerns about a forty-one-year-old starter's remaining gas in the tank. Since then: three starts, three wins, a 0.50 ERA. Six shutout innings against Portland. Six innings of one-run ball against San Jose. The disaster start in Seattle looks, in retrospect, like an aberration rather than a trend — a single bad night rather than the beginning of a decline. His season ERA now sits at 3.64, his record is eleven and three. For a pitcher who has been the subject of durability questions for two consecutive seasons, this is precisely the kind of stretch the organization needed to see as the games that matter most approach.

______________________________

THE INJURY LEDGER, BRIEFLY

Lopez has four days remaining on his latissimus dorsi recovery timeline, which puts his return inside this coming week. Gil Cruz, hurt running the bases in the August 31st game at San Jose, is day-to-day with a bruised knee and expected back within three days. Neither is a significant concern. The deeper injuries — DeVore's kneecap, Rubalcava's rotator cuff, Delgado's rotator cuff — remain unchanged and effectively off the table for 2001.

______________________________

AROUND THE LEAGUE

Detroit and Charlotte remain locked in the tightest race in the American League, separated by a game and a half in the Central with twenty-five games to play. Long Beach at eighty-seven and forty-nine continues to hold pace with Sacramento for the best record in professional baseball. Cleveland at eighty-four and fifty-two leads the NL Central comfortably. Alex Aguilar of Phoenix has fifty-one home runs and one hundred thirty-nine RBI — numbers that, with a month still remaining, put him in rarefied historical territory regardless of division standings.

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Armine Petrosyan of Sacramento's Wilhaggin neighborhood, a massage therapist, who asks: "Sacramento has now lost series to two of the league's worst teams this month. Should that worry fans more than it seems to?"

It is a real pattern worth tracking, but I would not let it overwhelm the larger picture. Both losses came against teams playing meaningfully better baseball in those specific series than their overall record suggested — Baltimore got strong starts from Toyama and a walk-off from Voss, Portland got nothing extra and simply lost three straight, which suggests the Baltimore series was closer to bad luck than systemic weakness. The more worrisome signal, frankly, comes from the San Jose results: losing two of three to your direct division competitor twice in a row is worth more attention than losses to non-contenders. Even there, though, the lead has not moved. Six games with twenty-five to play remains an extremely comfortable position. Worried is too strong a word. Watchful is correct.

From Chinwe Okafor of Sacramento's Sierra Oaks neighborhood, an IT technician, who asks: "Shinohara is closing in on 100 RBI. Has any Sacramento player had a season this complete in recent memory?"

Not that I can point to with confidence. The 2000 championship roster had standout individual seasons — Lozano's home run binge in the World Series, Rubalcava's Cy Young campaign before the injury — but a single-season combination of thirty-plus home runs, a sub-.300 but genuinely productive average, near-forty stolen bases, and approaching one hundred RBI is the kind of complete offensive profile that very few players in this organization's recent history have produced. What makes it more remarkable is the consistency: no extended slumps, no visible fatigue as the calendar moves into September. If he finishes anywhere close to his current pace, this becomes one of the signature individual seasons of the championship era.

From Mai Phuong Nguyen of Sacramento's Foothill Farms neighborhood, a florist, who asks: "With twenty-five games left and a six-game lead, what does the path to clinching actually look like from here?"

The cleanest way to think about it: Sacramento needs to maintain roughly the same winning percentage it has shown all season — somewhere around .640 — for the lead to either hold or grow, and even a more modest .500 stretch over the final twenty-five games would likely be enough given San Jose's need to play at an extremely high level just to close the gap. The schedule ahead includes St. Louis and El Paso on the immediate horizon, both manageable opponents, before Seattle returns to Sutter Health Park. Barring an extended collapse — something this roster has not shown any inclination toward even during its roughest ten-day stretches — the division title is Sacramento's to claim somewhere in the final two weeks of the season. The more interesting question by mid-September will not be whether they clinch, but what kind of form they carry into October when it matters most.

______________________________

Eighty-eight and forty-nine. Six games up with twenty-five to play. Shinohara at ninety-seven RBI and climbing. Andretti has rediscovered himself completely. Lopez back within days. St. Louis on the road, then El Paso and Seattle at home are next on the schedule.

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

liberty-ca · 06-20-2026, 03:10 PM

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

A MOMENT THAT WILL DEFINE THE NEXT MONTH

The baseball was as good as it has been all year. Sacramento swept St. Louis, swept El Paso, took two of three from Seattle, then swept Portland to close the stretch — the kind of dominant ten-day run that builds a champion's cushion with two and a half weeks remaining. The division lead grew from six games to eight. The magic number, which tracks the combination of Sacramento wins and San Jose losses needed to clinch, now sits at eight — single digits for the first time all season.

None of that changes what happened on September 11th. Shinohara was hit by a pitch in the fourth inning against Portland and left the game. The diagnosis that followed — iliopsoas tendinitis, five to six weeks — removes the best player in this organization, arguably the best position player in the American League this season, for the remainder of the regular season and a good chank of whatever comes after it. Combined with Victor Alvarez's shoulder labral tear, suffered in a base collision on September 4th and projected to keep him out three weeks, Sacramento now enters its final stretch of meaningful baseball without its two most productive power hitters.

______________________________

DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

@ St. Louis, September 3-4 (2-0)

Mollohan went three for four on September 3rd, capped by a two-run double in the eighth that put away a six-to-two win. Jeon worked through traffic for four and one-third innings before handing things to Espenoza and Medina, who combined for four and two-thirds scoreless innings of relief.

September 4th turned into a rout: Navarro homered and drove in three, Lozano added a home run of his own, and Sacramento scored eleven runs against a St. Louis pitching staff that had no answers. Gunn picked up his fourteenth win. The only sour note came when Alvarez was injured in a base collision — the play that would later be diagnosed as a shoulder labral tear.

vs. El Paso, September 5-6 (2-0)

September 5th ended on a walk-off note: Chavarria's two-run homer off Rich Flores in the bottom of the eighth turned a tied game into a seven-to-five win, Sacramento's fourth straight victory. Jang battled through five and one-third innings allowing three earned runs, and the bullpen held.

September 6th brought Alejandro Lopez back into the lineup for the first time since his back strain, and he delivered immediately — a home run in his second at-bat back. Nakazawa added a two-run shot of his own, Cruz threw six strong innings, and Sacramento won seven to two.

vs. Seattle, September 7-9 (2-1)

September 7th was Santiago Gomez's night — six and two-thirds innings, two earned runs, and a Chase Welsh home run that set the tone early. Andretti struggled, allowing five runs in four innings. Five to two, Seattle, snapping Sacramento's win streak at four.

September 8th was a complete reversal: Jeon allowed nothing over six and one-third innings, Chavarria drove in four runs, and Navarro added a home run and seven total bases. Eleven to nothing, as one-sided as any game Sacramento has played this season.

September 9th went to the eighth inning tied before Nakazawa's two-run double off Jeff Dombrowski broke it open. Danny Rodine had thrown seven and one-third shutout innings for Seattle before the bullpen unraveled. Five to three, Sacramento, with Musselman picking up the win.

vs. Portland, September 10-12 (3-0)

September 10th: Navarro went three for four with a home run and two RBI, Nakazawa homered early, and Jang won his fourteenth game despite a shaky finish. Eight to four.

September 11th was the day everything changed. Sacramento won seven to five behind a strong offensive effort — Lozano went three for five, Van Ham drove in two — but the headline was Shinohara exiting in the fourth inning after being hit by a pitch. He would not return, and the iliopsoas tendinitis diagnosis arrived in the days that followed.

September 12th: Andretti continued his remarkable second-half turnaround with seven innings of three-run ball for his twelfth win, and Van Ham's two-run homer in the fifth provided the decisive runs. Six to three, Sacramento's fifth straight win, Portland's sixth straight loss.

______________________________

WHAT SHINOHARA'S ABSENCE MEANS

Thirty-one home runs. One hundred and three RBI. A .292 average, forty stolen bases, and the best all-around season any Sacramento position player has produced in recent memory — all of it now paused for five to six weeks at the exact moment the stretch run begins. The lineup will not collapse without him; this roster has demonstrated all season that it can absorb significant losses and keep winning. But there is a difference between absorbing injuries to complementary pieces and losing the single most dangerous bat in the order. Whoever fills the gap in the outfield — Durango, Van Ham, some combination of both — is replacing a level of production that cannot be fully recreated. The honest framing is this: Sacramento's margin for error just shrank considerably, even as its actual division lead grew.

______________________________

ALVAREZ AND LOPEZ — THE OTHER INJURY NEWS

Alvarez's shoulder labral tear, suffered in the September 4th collision at St. Louis, is expected to keep him out approximately three weeks — a recovery window that, optimistically, returns him in time for the postseason but not for the remainder of the regular season's meaningful stretch. He was hitting .259 with nineteen home runs and seventy-eight RBI, the clear second power threat behind Shinohara, and his absence compounds the lineup question the team now faces.

Lopez's situation is more frustrating than serious. He returned from his back strain on September 6th and delivered a home run, only to be hurt running the bases again on September 8th — back stiffness this time, day-to-day with a one-to-two-week recovery window. The recurring nature of his back issues this season is a pattern worth watching even as none of the individual injuries has been catastrophic.

______________________________

WHO'S HOT, WHO'S COLD

Who's Hot: Alejandro Navarro, who is hitting .571 with three home runs over his last six games and has emerged as Sacramento's most complete everyday player not named Shinohara — a .306 average, fifteen home runs, and seventy-one RBI from the shortstop position. Nakazawa has been nearly as good, hitting .478 with three home runs over his last seven games, finally producing the power the organization projected from him entering the season. With Shinohara and Alvarez both sidelined, these two will need to sustain this level of production for the lineup to hold its current shape.

Who's Cold: Javier Gutierrez has a 9.60 ERA over his last twelve appearances, a significant decline from the pitcher who was nearly automatic in middle relief through the first half of the season. The bullpen behind Benson has carried real weight all year; Gutierrez's recent struggles are the most concerning development in relief since Espenoza's midsummer slump.

______________________________

AROUND THE LEAGUE

San Jose has already clinched a wildcard berth, securing their place in October regardless of how the division race finishes — a reminder that even if Sacramento's lead were to evaporate entirely, both AL West contenders are now ticketed for the postseason. Long Beach has clinched the NL Pacific. Detroit and Charlotte remain separated by two and a half games in the AL Central with the season's final stretch approaching. Alex Aguilar of Phoenix has fifty-three home runs and one hundred forty-six RBI — a season for the record books regardless of what division anyone plays in.

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Vardan Mkrtchyan of Sacramento's Midtown neighborhood, a pharmacist, who asks: "Shinohara is out five to six weeks. How worried should fans be heading into the postseason?"

The timeline is the relevant detail here. Five to six weeks from September 11th puts a realistic return somewhere in mid-to-late October — which, depending on how deep Sacramento goes, could mean he misses the division series entirely and returns for a later round, or it could mean he is fully healthy for whatever October has in store. Iliopsoas tendinitis is a recoverable injury that does not carry the long-term concern of a structural tear, which is the more encouraging read. The honest worry is not about his long-term health — it is about whether this lineup can sustain its production for a month without him while also navigating Alvarez's absence. That is a real test. It is not, by itself, a reason to panic about October.

From Ngozi Chukwu of Sacramento's Downtown neighborhood, a firefighter, who asks: "Navarro has been incredible the last week. Is he capable of being the primary offensive threat with Shinohara out?"

He has already shown signs of it. A .306 season average with fifteen home runs from the shortstop position is excellent production in its own right, and his recent stretch — three home runs in six games — suggests a player capable of carrying additional offensive weight when called upon. Whether he can sustain that specific level of production for five or six weeks is a different question; no player maintains a .571 average for a month. But the broader case for optimism is real: Navarro has gotten progressively better as the season has gone on, not worse, which is the opposite of fatigue and the kind of trajectory that suggests he can handle a larger role without his performance collapsing.

From Camila Espinoza of Sacramento's South Sacramento neighborhood, a real estate agent, who asks: "The magic number is down to eight with Shinohara and Alvarez both hurt. How quickly can Sacramento actually clinch?"

Mathematically, very quickly — eight combined Sacramento wins and San Jose losses would do it, and given Sacramento's pace over the last ten days, that could happen within the next week and a half even accounting for some inevitable adjustment to the lineup changes. The more important question isn't the clinching date, which is now close enough not to be in serious doubt, but what condition the team is in when it happens. Clinching early with a diminished lineup and then using the remaining games to get healthy and find rhythm before October would be the ideal outcome. Sacramento has the housing built. The next two weeks are about who they are when they move into it.

______________________________

Ninety-seven and fifty. Eight games up. Magic number eight. Shinohara out five to six weeks. Alvarez out three. Navarro and Nakazawa will need to carry more than anyone expected. Houston on the road, then Columbus, with the clinch coming soon.

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

liberty-ca · 06-21-2026, 09:26 AM

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

By Claude Playball | Baseball Insider & Analyst | Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast

______________________________

September 14 – 23, 2001 | One Hundred Three and Fifty-Three | Sacramento Clinches 30th Division Title | Shinohara and Alvarez Both Progressing Toward October

______________________________

THE SACRAMENTO PRAYERS CLINCHED THE AMERICAN LEAGUE WEST DIVISION

There is something fitting about how this one arrived — not with a walk-off swing or a closer's strikeout, but quietly, on an off day, the product of weeks of accumulated winning finally crossing the finish line while the team rested. Sacramento sat at one hundred and one wins and fifty-two losses when the math turned final. Thirty division titles is a number that places this organization among the sport's most consistently excellent franchises, and the 2001 group secured it despite losing Soshu Shinohara to injury just nine days earlier and despite missing Victor Alvarez for nearly three weeks.

What got them here in the final stretch deserves its own recognition: Daniel Lozano, hitting .476 with three home runs over his last five games, has been the single biggest reason the lineup hasn't missed a beat. Jung-keun Jang reached sixteen wins. And the encouraging medical news arrived alongside the clinch — both Shinohara and Alvarez have shortened timelines, with real hope that both return for whatever October brings.

______________________________

DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

@ Houston, September 14-16 (2-1)

Barry Rudinski turned the opener on its head in the third inning, golfing a three-run homer off Jeon that held up as the difference. Xavier Guzman went seven and one-third innings for Houston, and Sacramento's late push fell one run short, four to three.

The response arrived fast the very next day. Jang was nearly untouchable — one run on one hit over six and two-thirds innings — and Choi's home run did the rest of the heavy lifting in a six-to-one win that pushed Jang to fifteen victories on the season.

Sunday game came down to a two-out at-bat in the seventh, when Chavarria singled home the go-ahead run off a Houston bullpen that had kept the score level all afternoon. Espenoza picked up the win in relief of Cruz, who battled through traffic for three and two-thirds innings, and Benson closed it out for his thirty-seventh save. Four to three, Sacramento, series won.

@ Columbus, September 17-19 (2-1)

Cody Zeiders made this one look easy for eight innings, and Sacramento needed extra frames to finally crack him. Chavarria's bases-loaded walk in the tenth pushed across the winning run, four to two, with Medina earning the victory after the Columbus bullpen finally cracked.

Columbus answered the next night with its own late-inning theater. Roberto Lopez went deep and drove in a run, and Dan Diaz delivered the walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth that ended it, seven to six — the kind of loss that stings more for how close Sacramento came to escaping with the win.

Jeon found his best form in weeks to close the set: six innings, one earned run, seven strikeouts, and a two-run double from England in the fifth that put the game away early. Six to two, series taken, two games to one.

vs. San Jose, September 21-23 (2-1)

Daniel Lozano put on a show against the team chasing Sacramento in the standings — two home runs, three RBI, the best individual performance of the homestand. Jang matched him with five shutout innings for his sixteenth win, and Sacramento sent a message with an eleven-to-two rout that had San Jose's manager openly conceding the day belonged to Sacramento.

Jose Adams answered with two home runs of his own the following afternoon, but it wasn't enough — Cruz limited San Jose to two runs over six innings, and a third-inning homer from Van Ham proved decisive in a four-to-three win.

San Jose closed the set with the response Sacramento couldn't match. Jesus Mendez was dominant, six and one-third shutout innings, and a bases-loaded single from Jayden Patrick in the second was all the offense his team needed. Five to nothing, San Jose, a clean shutout to end the homestand on a quiet note.

______________________________

THIRTY DIVISION TITLES

The number itself tells a story about sustained organizational excellence that spans generations of players, managers, and front offices. This year's version arrived with its own particular character — a team that survived injuries to Rubalcava in October of last year, to Lopez for most of this season, and now to Shinohara and Alvarez in its final stretch, and kept winning anyway. Manager Jimmy Aces, asked about reports of clubhouse friction, deflected plainly: any team deals with its share of internal issues, and what matters in the end is what happens on the field. Navarro put it more directly — a roster of players who came together for the same cause. Whatever exists beneath the surface of a one-hundred-win season, the surface result speaks for itself.

______________________________

LOZANO FILLING THE VOID

Since Shinohara went down, Lozano has been the lineup's most dangerous bat — .476 with three home runs over his last five games, capped by a two-homer, three-RBI performance against San Jose on September 21st that may be the best single game any Sacramento hitter has had all season. He finished the year recovering from a midseason shoulder injury that cost him five weeks; what he has produced since returning suggests no diminished capacity whatsoever. With Shinohara sidelined and Alvarez only now approaching a return, Lozano's production has been the difference between a lineup that merely survives and one that has continued to win series against the league's best competition.

______________________________

THE INJURY LEDGER — ENCOURAGING SIGNS

Both major injuries have trended in the right direction. Shinohara's iliopsoas tendinitis timeline has shortened to four weeks remaining, down from the original five-to-six-week projection — a real possibility now exists that he returns in the postseason if Sacramento's run extends. Alvarez's shoulder labral tear has just one week remaining on its recovery clock, which puts his return squarely within the final week of the regular season. Travis McCartney, a recent addition to the outfield mix, suffered a sprained thumb running the bases on September 21st and will be out five to six weeks — a frustrating setback for a player who had only just arrived, though not one that threatens the team's larger plans.

______________________________

WHO'S HOT, WHO'S COLD

Who's Hot: Jang has a 0.77 ERA over his last two starts. Nakazawa is hitting .373 with four home runs over his last fifteen games, a stretch that has quietly turned him into one of the lineup's most reliable contributors down the stretch. Musselman has a 1.02 ERA over his last eleven appearances, continuing to be one of the bullpen's most underappreciated arms.

Who's Cold: Javier Gutierrez's ERA over his last fourteen appearances sits at 8.68 — a prolonged stretch of struggle that has now lasted well over a month. With October approaching, his role in any postseason bullpen plan is the single biggest open question on the pitching staff.

______________________________

AROUND THE LEAGUE

Long Beach has clinched the NL Pacific. Brooklyn and Charlotte have both clinched AL wildcard berths, joining San Jose, meaning four American League teams have now secured October baseball with Detroit still chasing the AL Central title against Charlotte by four games and a magic number of three. Milwaukee and Fort Worth have clinched NL wildcard spots of their own. The October field is rapidly taking shape across both leagues, and Sacramento — for the second consecutive year — enters it as a division champion with real momentum, regardless of the bumps along the way.

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Lilit Hakobyan of Sacramento's Natomas Crossing neighborhood, a winemaker, who asks: "Thirty division titles is an incredible number. What does this one mean compared to past championships?"

Every title carries its own character, and this one's defining trait is resilience under attrition. The 2000 championship team dealt with Rubalcava's postseason injury and still won it all. This year's division title arrived after absorbing Lopez's season-long recovery saga, DeVore's season-ending injury, Garcia's midseason departure, and now Shinohara and Alvarez both sidelined in the final stretch. Numerically it's the thirtieth division crown, which places it alongside decades of sustained excellence. Contextually, it might be remembered as the year this particular roster proved its depth mattered as much as its star power — because the star power kept getting hurt, and the team kept winning anyway.

From Thandiwe Mokoena of Sacramento's Freeport neighborhood, an athletic trainer, who asks: "With Shinohara at four weeks and Alvarez at one week, what's the realistic outlook for both being healthy for the postseason?"

Alvarez looks like a near-certainty to be ready — a one-week timeline as of late September puts him back in the lineup before the regular season even concludes, giving him a handful of games to shake off rust before anything that matters in October begins. Shinohara is the more uncertain case. Four weeks from late September puts his return somewhere in late October, which depending on how deep Sacramento advances could mean he's back for a Championship Series or a World Series but unavailable for an opening-round series. Iliopsoas injuries can also be unpredictable in their final recovery stages — sometimes resolving faster than projected, sometimes requiring the full window. The organization's medical staff will be conservative given what's at stake. The realistic outlook: Alvarez very likely plays in October. Shinohara is a meaningful question mark that won't resolve itself for a few more weeks.

From Renato Salazar of Sacramento's North Natomas neighborhood, a city council aide, who asks: "Lozano has been incredible since Shinohara went down. Does this change how the team should be built going into next season?"

It's an interesting question to ask before this season has even finished, but it speaks to something real: Lozano's performance over these last weeks confirms he's a legitimate middle-of-the-order bat when healthy, not merely a complementary piece. That matters for roster planning regardless of what happens with Shinohara's long-term outlook, because it means the organization has more frontline offensive talent under contract than the early-season injury narrative might have suggested. Whether that changes specific offseason moves is something the front office will work through once the season actually ends. For now, the more relevant point is that Lozano has made this stretch run considerably less stressful than it could have been, and that performance carries weight beyond just 2001.

______________________________

One hundred three and fifty-three. AL West champions for the thirtieth time in franchise history. Alvarez back within a week. Shinohara within a month. Six games remain on the regular-season schedule, and then October starts in earnest. Seattle on the road to close it out.

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

liberty-ca · 06-21-2026, 11:18 PM

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

By Claude Playball | Baseball Insider & Analyst | Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast

______________________________

September 24 – 30, 2001 | One Hundred Five and Fifty-Seven | The Regular Season Is Over | The Playoff Bracket Is Set

______________________________

TEAM THAT EARNED A BYE LOOKING LIKE A TEAM ALREADY ON VACATION

There is a particular rhythm to a season's final week once the division has been clinched and the only remaining stakes are health and rest. Sacramento lost four of its last six, got blown out by Seattle, got walked off twice by sub-.500 Portland, and somewhere in the middle of it all produced a seventeen-to-one demolition that looked like a different team entirely. None of it changed anything that matters. The Prayers finish at one hundred and five and fifty-seven, the best record in the American League, and they have earned the bye that sends them directly into the next round while six other teams fight through wildcard to advance.

The bigger news arrived in the injury report rather than the box scores. Victor Alvarez no longer appears on it — he is healthy, full stop, after missing most of the season's final month. Shinohara's recovery window has shortened to three weeks, putting a return inside the postseason window squarely in play. Sacramento enters October as healthy as it has been at any point since July.

______________________________

DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

@ Seattle, September 24-26 (1-2)

Devon Goodson turned the opener into a personal showcase, going three for three with four RBI as Seattle piled on eleven runs against a Sacramento pitching staff that had little left in the tank for a game that no longer carried postseason stakes. Eleven to two, a lopsided finish to a series that began with the division long since wrapped up.

The lineup found its rhythm the next night. Nakazawa's three-run homer in the third inning broke the game open, Mollohan drove in three of his own, and Sacramento cruised to a ten-to-four win that looked far more like the team that had spent September running away with the West.

The finale was the one that stung. Jang was nearly perfect — six and two-thirds innings, no runs, eight strikeouts — and got nothing to show for it when Chris Rosenberg's two-run double in the bottom of the twelfth ended a marathon that ran past three and a half hours. Four to three, Seattle, in a game where the better pitching performance simply didn't matter.

@ Portland, September 28-30 (1-2)

Alex Bonilla delivered the dagger in the series opener, a three-run walk-off homer off Benson in the bottom of the ninth that turned what should have been a Sacramento win into a six-to-five Portland celebration. Cruz had allowed three runs over five and one-third innings, and the bullpen couldn't hold the lead late.

Then came the explosion. Gil Cruz hit a three-run homer in the fourth, Mollohan went three for three with two RBI, and Sacramento scored seventeen runs against a Portland pitching staff that had no answers anywhere in its bullpen. Seventeen to one, the kind of final score that belongs more to batting practice than to a major league box score.

The regular season's final game went quietly to Portland. Ricky Serrano allowed one run over six and two-thirds innings, and Sacramento's offense — playing out the string with reserves mixed throughout the lineup — never found traction. Three to one, Portland, and the 2001 regular season closed with a whimper that had no bearing on anything that comes next.

______________________________

CLOSING THE BOOK ON ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE WINS

The full-season numbers, now final, tell the story of a team built on remarkable depth absorbing remarkable attrition and still producing the best record in its league. Shinohara's season ended early but his numbers stand on their own: .292, thirty-one home runs, one hundred and three RBI, a 5.3 WAR in only one hundred twenty-seven games — production that, had he stayed healthy the full season, would have entered serious MVP conversation. Jang finished at sixteen and six with a 3.17 ERA, good for fifth in the league and a legitimate dark-horse Cy Young case. Choi, who didn't appear in a game until June, hit .279 with twenty-eight home runs and a 3.6 WAR in just one hundred and six games — arguably the most efficient offensive season on the roster on a per-game basis. Navarro quietly put together the best all-around year of his career: .302, fifteen home runs, seventy-seven RBI, twenty-two stolen bases. Mollohan's .290 average and 3.3 WAR made him one of the most underappreciated everyday players in the league.

Adam Bandy of Philadelphia won the AL batting title at .353, and Hector Martinez of Albuquerque took the National League crown. Neither distinction belongs to Sacramento. What belongs to Sacramento is a roster deep enough that losing its best player for the season's final month barely registered in the standings.

______________________________

THE BYE AND THE BRACKET

The postseason field is set. Sacramento and Long Beach, the two best records in baseball, have earned byes directly into the next round. Around them, six wildcard series will play out: Charlotte against San Jose, Nashville against Brooklyn, and Columbus against Detroit in the American League; Fort Worth against Milwaukee, Phoenix against El Paso, and Los Angeles against Cleveland in the National League. Sacramento will face the winner of one of those American League series once the wildcard round concludes — a wait that allows the roster additional time to heal before the games that matter most actually begin.

There is a strange symmetry in the possibility that San Jose, the team Sacramento spent all season fending off, could be eliminated before ever reaching Sacramento again. Whether that happens is out of Sacramento's hands entirely. For now, the bye is a gift: rest, health, and time.

______________________________

THE INJURY LEDGER — GOOD NEWS ACROSS THE BOARD

Alvarez is healthy and off the injury report entirely. Shinohara's iliopsoas tendinitis has three weeks remaining — a timeline that, depending on how long the wildcard round runs, could have him back in the lineup for Sacramento's first game of the next round or shortly after. Mollohan's hip soreness is minor, day-to-day, expected to resolve within forty-eight hours. McCartney remains four to five weeks out with his thumb. The deeper injuries — Rubalcava, Delgado, DeVore — remain unchanged but are no longer relevant to anything Sacramento needs this October.

______________________________

WHO'S HOT, WHO'S COLD

Who's Hot: Jang closed the season with a 0.00 ERA over his last two starts, the exclamation point on a fifth-place finish in the league ERA race. Medina's 1.00 ERA over his final fourteen appearances confirms he remains the bullpen's most trusted arm heading into October.

Who's Cold: Gutierrez finishes the year with a 7.94 ERA over his last fourteen appearances — a stretch that has now persisted long enough that his role in the postseason bullpen is a genuine open question. Whether he factors into October plans at all may depend on how the next several weeks of evaluation go.

______________________________

AROUND THE LEAGUE

Detroit finished the season as AL Central champions, clinching with room to spare over Charlotte. Cleveland claimed the NL Central, and Long Beach took the NL Pacific outright. Alex Aguilar of Phoenix closed his season with fifty-six home runs and one hundred sixty-four RBI — numbers that will be discussed for years regardless of how far his team advances. Marco Corral of Vancouver finished with two hundred fifty-nine strikeouts, the league's most dominant pitching season by that measure, on a team that did not qualify for October.

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Anahit Gasparyan of Sacramento's Glen Elder neighborhood, a sommelier, who asks: "One hundred five wins despite losing Shinohara for the final month. How does this team's depth compare to the 2000 championship roster?"

It compares favorably, and in some ways the comparison flatters this year's group. The 2000 team lost Rubalcava in October, during the postseason itself, and still won it all on the strength of contributions from players who weren't expected to carry that load. This year's team absorbed Lopez's recurring back issues all season, DeVore's season-ending injury, Garcia's midseason departure, and then Shinohara and Alvarez both going down in September — and still won one hundred and five games, the highest total in franchise memory for a non-strike-shortened season. Depth was always going to be this roster's defining trait. The final two months simply provided the most rigorous possible test of that depth, and it passed every time.

From Folake Adeyinka of Sacramento's Vintage Park neighborhood, a data analyst, who asks: "With the bye locked in, how should the front office be using these extra days before the next round starts?"

Health management is the obvious priority — getting Shinohara as close to game-ready as the three-week timeline allows, making sure Alvarez's timing returns after weeks away, and using the gap to settle the bullpen questions that lingered through September, particularly around Gutierrez's role. Beyond the physical side, there's value in simulated game work for starters who may go an extended stretch without real competitive innings while the wildcard round plays out. The bye is an advantage, but only if the team uses the time productively rather than simply resting on the accomplishment of getting it.

From Esperanza Cordero of Sacramento's North Highlands neighborhood, a youth soccer coach, who asks: "Looking at the full-season numbers, who was Sacramento's most valuable player this year?"

By WAR, Shinohara's 5.3 in just one hundred twenty-seven games is the highest mark on the roster despite missing the final month — a remarkable rate of production that would have challenged for the league lead in a full healthy season. But value is also about availability, and by that measure a case exists for Jang, who started thirty-six games, threw nearly two hundred innings, and finished fifth in the league in ERA while anchoring a rotation that needed a true ace. My answer: Shinohara was the best player. Jang was the most valuable, in the sense that his full-season durability and production never wavered while almost everyone else on the roster missed time at some point. Both answers are defensible. Neither answer changes what matters now, which is what both of them — and everyone else — do in October.

______________________________

One hundred five and fifty-seven. AL West champions. Best record in the American League. A bye into the next round. Shinohara three weeks out. Alvarez ready now. The wildcard round starts today — Sacramento watches and waits.

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

liberty-ca · 06-22-2026, 11:48 AM

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

By Claude Playball | Baseball Insider & Analyst | Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast

______________________________

October 2001 | The Wildcard Round Is Done | Division Series Preview

______________________________

TEAM THAT SPENT ALL SEASON CHASING SACRAMENTO IS GONE

The wildcard round delivered its most significant result not in the winners but in the losers. San Jose, ninety-six wins, second-best record in the American League, the team that spent six months making Sacramento earn every game of its nine-game cushion — eliminated in three games by Charlotte, the Monks winning the clincher seven to four. Sacramento spent all summer watching its back for San Jose, but doesn't have to face them in October. Charlotte did that work for them.

Now Charlotte is the opponent, and the instinct to underestimate a ninety-two-win team that just knocked off a ninety-six-win team would be exactly the wrong instinct to act on. Luis Guerra is a genuine top-of-the-rotation pitcher. Josh Thomas is the hottest hitter in the American League right now. And Luis Martinez, the series MVP against San Jose, is a thirty-one-home-run threat who just demonstrated he performs when everything is on the line. Sacramento is the better team. The gap is real. It is not, however, as wide as the seedings make it appear.

______________________________

THE WILDCARD ROUND — WHAT HAPPENED AROUND THE LEAGUE

Charlotte's series win over San Jose was the result that will reshape postseason narratives. Eliminating the team with the best record among wildcard participants, in three games, with Martinez going .455 with four RBI — that is a team playing its best baseball at the right moment. Sacramento takes notice.

In the other AL series, Nashville edged Brooklyn in three games with Itay Vazquez earning MVP honors, while Columbus pulled off perhaps the biggest upset of the round, eliminating Detroit in three games despite the Preachers finishing the season at one hundred wins. Giacomo Benoldi went .417 with a home run and three RBI for Columbus. Nashville and Columbus now meet in the other division series.

On the National League side, Cleveland swept Los Angeles behind a dominant series from Ernesto Gil, Fort Worth handled Milwaukee in two games with Carlos Torro leading the way, and Phoenix edged El Paso in three to set up a Cleveland-Phoenix series that should be compelling. Fort Worth earned the right to face Long Beach, the other bye team, in an NL Division Series matchup.

______________________________

THE MATCHUP: SACRAMENTO vs. CHARLOTTE

This series comes down to a straightforward tension: Charlotte can score runs off anyone, and Sacramento can prevent anyone from scoring. Something has to give.

Charlotte led the American League in slugging percentage at .457 and extra-base hits at five hundred ninety-four. Chitoji Kitagawa drove in one hundred twenty-five runs this season. Martinez has thirty-one home runs. Josh Thomas is hitting .373 with six home runs over his last fourteen games — a man who has found another gear at exactly the wrong time for Sacramento. These are not numbers you dismiss because your opponent has a good ERA.

What Sacramento has in response is the best pitching staff in the American League by every meaningful measure — league-best ERA at 3.65, best starters' ERA at 3.81, best bullpen ERA at 3.41, best opponents' average, best BABIP against. In a five-game series, the rotation can line up Jang, Cruz, and Andretti for three starts before anyone has to consider a fourth option. Charlotte's starting pitching is led by Guerra at 3.25 ERA, which is a genuine ace-level performance, and then falls off considerably — Raya at 4.80, Lee at 4.39. The back end of their staff has been the most reliable. Their bullpen, though, has been the Achilles heel all season, posting a 4.65 ERA that ranks tenth in the American League.

Sacramento's baserunning — two hundred and seven stolen bases this season, first in the league — combined with a lineup built on patience and contact is precisely the profile that punishes bad relief pitching. Once Sacramento gets into Charlotte's bullpen, the stolen base threat and walk rate become multipliers.

The Monks' one-run record of twenty-seven and twenty-one against Sacramento's twenty and twenty-five is worth flagging. Charlotte has demonstrated all year that they know how to win close games. Sacramento's one-run record is actually the weaker side of their profile. If this series tightens up into late-game leverage situations night after night, the historical split favors Charlotte in a way that shouldn't be ignored.

______________________________

THE GUERRA QUESTION

Luis Guerra is the central pitching challenge of this series. Seventeen wins, a 3.25 ERA, one hundred sixty-one strikeouts, and trending in the right direction — a 1.38 ERA over his last two starts entering the postseason. If Sacramento's lineup cannot solve Guerra in Game One, the series dynamics shift immediately. Charlotte's bullpen being vulnerable means Sacramento wants to see Guerra for as many pitches as possible, force deep counts, and get into the relief corps as early as they can — but if Guerra is dealing, that strategy runs into the reality of what a good pitcher does when you're trying to run up his count: he gets strikeouts and keeps you from making contact at all. Sacramento's approach will need to be disciplined enough to work counts without expanding the strike zone, which is a particular challenge given Charlotte's pitching is built around attacking the zone rather than around it.

______________________________

THE INJURY PICTURE ENTERING OCTOBER

Alvarez is healthy, fully cleared, and brings nineteen home runs and a .259 average back into a lineup that missed his presence considerably over the final weeks of the season. His return alone restores the lineup's middle-of-the-order structure that carried Sacramento through most of the year. Mollohan's hip soreness was minor and should be a non-issue.

Shinohara remains three weeks away from a return. The arithmetic of the postseason matters here: a five-game division series that runs its full length ends approximately a week and a half from now, and a seven-game league championship series could extend into the third week of October. If Sacramento advances deep enough, Shinohara could return. That possibility is worth holding onto, but it cannot be the plan. The plan has to be winning this division series without him.

______________________________

AROUND THE LEAGUE

The NL bracket is set with Cleveland against Phoenix and Fort Worth against Long Beach. Long Beach at one hundred and three wins and Fort Worth at eighty-eight represents a significant talent gap on paper, though Fort Worth's eight-game winning streak to close the season suggests a team that has found its October form. Cleveland eliminating Los Angeles in two games was as emphatic an opening-round statement as anyone made anywhere.

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Nneka Obiora of Sacramento's Carmichael neighborhood, a civil engineer, who asks: "Charlotte just eliminated San Jose in three games. Should Sacramento be more worried about them than the seedings suggest?"

Yes, and I think any Sacramento fan or analyst who isn't at least somewhat recalibrating their expectations after watching what Charlotte did to San Jose is letting comfort cloud their judgment. Ninety-two wins is indicative of a legitimate postseason team, Guerra is as good as any starter Sacramento will face all October, and Martinez just proved under pressure that his regular-season numbers translate. Sure, Sacramento is the better team. That does not mean this matchup is a formality. The Monks are playing with genuine confidence right now, and confidence in October is worth more than the standings say it should be.

From Takuya Shimizu of Sacramento's East Sacramento neighborhood, a high school history teacher, who asks: "How does Sacramento's rotation line up for this series, and is that an advantage?"

It is the biggest structural advantage Sacramento has entering this series. Jang opens Game One — the league's fifth-best ERA, sixteen wins, and coming off a zero-run outing in his final start. Cruz takes Game Two. When the series extends to Game Three and possibly beyond, Andretti and Jeon are both legitimate playoff-quality starters. Charlotte counters with Guerra in Game One, and then the quality drops. Sacramento's depth in the rotation means that even if Charlotte's lineup solves one starter, the next one presents a completely different problem. That is how dominant pitching staffs win postseason series — not by being perfect, but by never giving the opponent anything predictable to prepare for.

From Inês Barbosa of Sacramento's River Park neighborhood, a physical therapist, who asks: "With Shinohara still out, who carries the most pressure in this lineup going into October?"

Lozano, without hesitation. What he did in September — filling Shinohara's slot in the order, hitting .476 over a five-game stretch, delivering the two-homer game against San Jose — established him as the lineup's most dangerous presence over the season's final weeks. If he sustains that level of production into October, Sacramento doesn't miss Shinohara as much as the numbers on paper suggest they should. Navarro has been the other name to watch, carrying a .302 average and an ascending finish to the year. And Alvarez's return adds genuine middle-of-the-order protection that the lineup genuinely lacked after his injury. The honest answer is that no one player carries more pressure than any other on a roster this deep — but if Sacramento wins this series, Lozano's name will be the one attached to why.

______________________________

One hundred five and fifty-seven. San Jose is gone — Charlotte eliminated them and is now Sacramento's opponent. Guerra is the challenge. The bullpen is the opening. Alvarez is ready. Shinohara is waiting. October starts now.

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

liberty-ca · 06-22-2026, 07:51 PM

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

By Claude Playball | Baseball Insider & Analyst | Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast

______________________________

October 7 – 10, 2001 | Sacramento Advances to the ALCS | Columbus Await

______________________________

SACRAMENTO PRAYERS SWEEP THE CHARLOTTE MONKS

Sacramento is in the American League Championship Series for the second consecutive year, and the result should not obscure either how well they played through most of the division series or how close the final game came to extending into something uncomfortable. Lozano hit a three-run homer in the first inning of Game One and the Monks never really recovered from the momentum shift. Gil Cruz, the quietest superstar on a team full of them, hit two home runs and drove in four across three games. Navarro was the series MVP, scoring six runs and hitting .462 while playing his cleanest defensive series of the year.

But Game Three in Charlotte went eleven innings, went to Benson and then Ke to close it out, and featured Mario Espenoza blowing the save in the seventh before the bullpen steadied itself. The Monks outhit Sacramento twelve to thirteen in that game and had their best pitching performance of the series. Sacramento won because Navarro homered, because Cruz homered, because Lozano doubled twice in the extra frames when the pressure was highest. It was not comfortable, and it should not be remembered as comfortable.

The bigger news may not even be the result. Shinohara's injury designation, which read three weeks entering the division series, now reads simply unknown. That is worth watching very carefully.

______________________________

DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY

vs. Charlotte, Games 1-3 (3-0)

Charlotte made the mistake of opening with Victor Hernandez — who entered October having posted a 9.35 ERA over his last four appearances — against a Sacramento lineup that had spent a week resting and scouting. The result was predictable: Lozano's three-run homer in the first inning put Sacramento ahead after the Monks had scored twice, Chavarria added a solo shot in the third, and Hernandez was pulled before recording his ninth out. Jeon worked five innings allowing two earned runs, scattered six hits against a Monks lineup that left eleven on base, and the bullpen handled the rest in a nine-to-four win that felt even more one-sided than the score suggested.

Game Two was the one everyone expected Game One to be — Sacramento pounding Charlotte's best pitcher. Guerra lasted four and two-thirds innings, allowing seven earned runs. Choi delivered the killing blow: a bases-clearing triple in the fifth that stretched a two-run Sacramento lead into a five-run cushion. Cruz doubled and later homered. Nakazawa went two for four and scored twice. Eleven to five, and the Monks were facing elimination after forty-eight hours.

Game Three did not cooperate with the sweep narrative until the eleventh inning finally forced a conclusion. Cruz started and gave Charlotte's lineup more trouble than the Monks had seen at any point in the series — six innings of three-run ball. But Espenoza's bullpen appearance in the seventh came unraveled quickly, Charlotte tying the game and extending it, and what had appeared to be a tidy clinch became a test of the bullpen's nerve. Benson steadied things over two innings, Ke closed it out, and Lozano's double in the tenth provided the winning run. Eight to seven, Sacramento. Castanon hit two triples for Charlotte in that game, tying the AL playoff record, and it was not enough. Navarro was named series MVP in the aftermath, and the designation was earned.

______________________________

THE SHINOHARA SITUATION

Three weeks entering the division series. Unknown entering the ALCS. That progression from a defined timeline to no timeline at all is the kind of change that deserves more than a footnote. Iliopsoas tendinitis is a notoriously unpredictable injury in its later recovery stages — sometimes resolving cleanly, sometimes lingering in ways that extend well beyond initial projections. The organization has not offered additional detail, and in the absence of detail, the conservative interpretation is that his return is genuinely uncertain rather than simply delayed. Sacramento won the ALDS without him and can win the ALCS without him. Whether that continues to be true deeper into October is the question no one can answer with confidence right now.

______________________________

THE ALCS OPPONENT: COLUMBUS HEAVEN

Seventy-eight wins and eighty-four losses. Eleventh in the American League in ERA. Tenth in slugging, tenth in OPS, twelfth in stolen bases. Those are the numbers that describe Columbus Heaven's regular season, and they are the numbers that would tell you this team has no business being in the American League Championship Series.

Except Columbus beat Detroit — one hundred wins, AL Central champions — in three wildcard games. Then they beat Nashville in five. Jesse Coltharp was the ALDS MVP at .312 with four RBI. Cody Zeiders has been their best pitcher across the postseason, posting a 1.84 ERA over his last three starts. Giacomo Benoldi drove in one hundred twenty-two runs during the regular season. Marcus Hernandez hit thirty-two home runs.

This is a team that cannot be dismissed because it won seventy-eight games in April through September. What it has demonstrated in October is the capacity to win when games are decided by lineup depth and bullpen reliability — and in those departments, Sacramento holds the advantage across every meaningful measure. Sacramento's pitching staff ERA was 3.65 to Columbus's 4.78. Sacramento's bullpen ERA was 3.41 to Columbus's 4.76. Sacramento scored nearly two hundred runs more than Columbus allowed.

What Columbus has is momentum, heat in exactly the right moment, and nothing to lose. The rotation beyond Zeiders is unreliable — Ralevic finished the regular season at 6.11 ERA, Ramirez at 5.34. Sacramento's lineup will punish that depth. But Sacramento was supposed to beat Charlotte easily, too, and Game Three in Charlotte went eleven innings. The lesson of this postseason so far is that projected dominance and actual October performance are not the same thing.

______________________________

WHO'S HOT, WHO'S COLD

Who's Hot: Jang has a 0.79 ERA over his last four appearances and will start Game Two of the ALCS. Navarro, fresh off series MVP honors, is playing the most complete baseball of his career at the moment the stakes are highest. G. Cruz, who hit two home runs in the ALDS, has quietly elevated his postseason game in a way that the regular season numbers — .239 average, ten home runs — did not fully predict.

Who is Cold: Gutierrez's 8.20 ERA over his last fifteen appearances is the one persistent concern in an otherwise dominant pitching staff. The win he picked up in Game Two of the ALDS came in circumstances that required more luck than command. His role in a seven-game ALCS — if it extends that long — remains the most uncertain variable on the pitching staff.

______________________________

AROUND THE LEAGUE

The National League bracket resolved itself dramatically. Fort Worth — eighty-eight wins, a team with no particular claim to October — swept into the NLCS by eliminating Long Beach, the NL's best regular-season team, three games to one. Jayson Crumsey was the NLDS MVP, going .462 with four RBI for the Spirits. Cleveland, the NL Central champions, dispatched Phoenix in four games behind Jose Jimenez's remarkable .615 series average. The NLCS will pit Cleveland against Fort Worth — a battle between the NL's best record and its hottest team. Sound familiar?

Also worth noting: Sacramento will retire the number 62 in honor of Luis Prieto, who recently announced his retirement after a career that produced two hundred ninety-eight saves. Three hundred saves has become the modern benchmark for a Hall of Fame closer, and Prieto fell just two saves short of it — a career that deserved a number on the wall regardless of the round number. The retirement is a fitting gesture for a player whose contributions to this franchise extended beyond any single statistic.

______________________________

THE INBOX

From Yetunde Adegoke of Sacramento's Elk Grove neighborhood, a nurse, who asks: "Columbus beat Detroit and Nashville to get here. How seriously should we take them as a threat?"

Seriously enough that no one in the Sacramento clubhouse should be scheduling their World Series travel yet. The pattern Columbus has established in this postseason — eliminating a hundred-win team and an eighty-win team in back-to-back series — tells you something real about their ability to execute under pressure, even if their regular-season record tells you something different about their general quality. The honest assessment is that Sacramento is substantially the better team by almost every measure. The equally honest assessment is that substantially better teams have lost seven-game series before, particularly when the opponent's lineup is capable of a three-home-run night against the wrong starter. Zeiders is genuinely dangerous. Benoldi and Hernandez are legitimate middle-of-the-order threats. Sacramento should win this series. That is not the same thing as saying they will.

From Søren Larsen of Sacramento's Arden Acres neighborhood, an architect, who asks: "Navarro was the ALDS MVP and the best player on the field across three games. What does that say about this roster's depth without Shinohara?"

It says exactly what this team has demonstrated all season: the depth is real. Navarro's regular-season numbers — a .302 average, fifteen home runs, seventy-seven RBI — were strong without being spectacular. What the postseason has revealed is a player whose performance elevates precisely when the opponent is preparing for everyone around him. Lozano filling Shinohara's slot, Cruz contributing two home runs from the second base position, Chavarria homering in Game One — the roster has multiple players capable of seizing the spotlight when the team needs it. That is what championship-caliber depth looks like, and the ALDS provided a clean three-game demonstration of it.

From Preethi Venkataraman of Sacramento's South Natomas neighborhood, a software developer, who asks: "Shinohara's timeline is now unknown. What's the realistic scenario where he plays in the ALCS?"

The realistic scenario is that he is evaluated on a daily basis and returns when the medical staff clears him — not on a predetermined schedule. The shift from a defined timeline to an open one suggests his recovery is not following the projected trajectory, which could mean anything from a minor setback that resolves within days to a situation where his postseason is effectively over. The best case: he returns for Games Five through Seven of a long ALCS and makes an impact when the series is on the line. The worst case: the unknown timeline resolves to no timeline at all, and Sacramento finishes October without its best regular-season player. What I know is that this organization does not make its plans around players who are unavailable — it makes them around the players who are. And right now, those players are more than capable of winning a championship without waiting.

______________________________

The sweep is done, Charlotte is eliminated. Columbus, eighty-four losses in the regular season and two October upsets to their name, stands between Sacramento and a World Series. The ALCS starts Monday. Shinohara's timeline is unknown. Navarro is the hottest player on the roster. Jeon goes in Game One.

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

06-22-2026, 07:51 PM	#400
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 548	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *October 7 – 10, 2001 \| Sacramento Advances to the ALCS \| Columbus Await* ______________________________ SACRAMENTO PRAYERS SWEEP THE CHARLOTTE MONKS Sacramento is in the American League Championship Series for the second consecutive year, and the result should not obscure either how well they played through most of the division series or how close the final game came to extending into something uncomfortable. Lozano hit a three-run homer in the first inning of Game One and the Monks never really recovered from the momentum shift. Gil Cruz, the quietest superstar on a team full of them, hit two home runs and drove in four across three games. Navarro was the series MVP, scoring six runs and hitting .462 while playing his cleanest defensive series of the year. But Game Three in Charlotte went eleven innings, went to Benson and then Ke to close it out, and featured Mario Espenoza blowing the save in the seventh before the bullpen steadied itself. The Monks outhit Sacramento twelve to thirteen in that game and had their best pitching performance of the series. Sacramento won because Navarro homered, because Cruz homered, because Lozano doubled twice in the extra frames when the pressure was highest. It was not comfortable, and it should not be remembered as comfortable. The bigger news may not even be the result. Shinohara's injury designation, which read three weeks entering the division series, now reads simply unknown. That is worth watching very carefully. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY vs. Charlotte, Games 1-3 (3-0) Charlotte made the mistake of opening with Victor Hernandez — who entered October having posted a 9.35 ERA over his last four appearances — against a Sacramento lineup that had spent a week resting and scouting. The result was predictable: Lozano's three-run homer in the first inning put Sacramento ahead after the Monks had scored twice, Chavarria added a solo shot in the third, and Hernandez was pulled before recording his ninth out. Jeon worked five innings allowing two earned runs, scattered six hits against a Monks lineup that left eleven on base, and the bullpen handled the rest in a nine-to-four win that felt even more one-sided than the score suggested. Game Two was the one everyone expected Game One to be — Sacramento pounding Charlotte's best pitcher. Guerra lasted four and two-thirds innings, allowing seven earned runs. Choi delivered the killing blow: a bases-clearing triple in the fifth that stretched a two-run Sacramento lead into a five-run cushion. Cruz doubled and later homered. Nakazawa went two for four and scored twice. Eleven to five, and the Monks were facing elimination after forty-eight hours. Game Three did not cooperate with the sweep narrative until the eleventh inning finally forced a conclusion. Cruz started and gave Charlotte's lineup more trouble than the Monks had seen at any point in the series — six innings of three-run ball. But Espenoza's bullpen appearance in the seventh came unraveled quickly, Charlotte tying the game and extending it, and what had appeared to be a tidy clinch became a test of the bullpen's nerve. Benson steadied things over two innings, Ke closed it out, and Lozano's double in the tenth provided the winning run. Eight to seven, Sacramento. Castanon hit two triples for Charlotte in that game, tying the AL playoff record, and it was not enough. Navarro was named series MVP in the aftermath, and the designation was earned. ______________________________ THE SHINOHARA SITUATION Three weeks entering the division series. Unknown entering the ALCS. That progression from a defined timeline to no timeline at all is the kind of change that deserves more than a footnote. Iliopsoas tendinitis is a notoriously unpredictable injury in its later recovery stages — sometimes resolving cleanly, sometimes lingering in ways that extend well beyond initial projections. The organization has not offered additional detail, and in the absence of detail, the conservative interpretation is that his return is genuinely uncertain rather than simply delayed. Sacramento won the ALDS without him and can win the ALCS without him. Whether that continues to be true deeper into October is the question no one can answer with confidence right now. ______________________________ THE ALCS OPPONENT: COLUMBUS HEAVEN Seventy-eight wins and eighty-four losses. Eleventh in the American League in ERA. Tenth in slugging, tenth in OPS, twelfth in stolen bases. Those are the numbers that describe Columbus Heaven's regular season, and they are the numbers that would tell you this team has no business being in the American League Championship Series. Except Columbus beat Detroit — one hundred wins, AL Central champions — in three wildcard games. Then they beat Nashville in five. Jesse Coltharp was the ALDS MVP at .312 with four RBI. Cody Zeiders has been their best pitcher across the postseason, posting a 1.84 ERA over his last three starts. Giacomo Benoldi drove in one hundred twenty-two runs during the regular season. Marcus Hernandez hit thirty-two home runs. This is a team that cannot be dismissed because it won seventy-eight games in April through September. What it has demonstrated in October is the capacity to win when games are decided by lineup depth and bullpen reliability — and in those departments, Sacramento holds the advantage across every meaningful measure. Sacramento's pitching staff ERA was 3.65 to Columbus's 4.78. Sacramento's bullpen ERA was 3.41 to Columbus's 4.76. Sacramento scored nearly two hundred runs more than Columbus allowed. What Columbus has is momentum, heat in exactly the right moment, and nothing to lose. The rotation beyond Zeiders is unreliable — Ralevic finished the regular season at 6.11 ERA, Ramirez at 5.34. Sacramento's lineup will punish that depth. But Sacramento was supposed to beat Charlotte easily, too, and Game Three in Charlotte went eleven innings. The lesson of this postseason so far is that projected dominance and actual October performance are not the same thing. ______________________________ WHO'S HOT, WHO'S COLD Who's Hot: Jang has a 0.79 ERA over his last four appearances and will start Game Two of the ALCS. Navarro, fresh off series MVP honors, is playing the most complete baseball of his career at the moment the stakes are highest. G. Cruz, who hit two home runs in the ALDS, has quietly elevated his postseason game in a way that the regular season numbers — .239 average, ten home runs — did not fully predict. Who is Cold: Gutierrez's 8.20 ERA over his last fifteen appearances is the one persistent concern in an otherwise dominant pitching staff. The win he picked up in Game Two of the ALDS came in circumstances that required more luck than command. His role in a seven-game ALCS — if it extends that long — remains the most uncertain variable on the pitching staff. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE The National League bracket resolved itself dramatically. Fort Worth — eighty-eight wins, a team with no particular claim to October — swept into the NLCS by eliminating Long Beach, the NL's best regular-season team, three games to one. Jayson Crumsey was the NLDS MVP, going .462 with four RBI for the Spirits. Cleveland, the NL Central champions, dispatched Phoenix in four games behind Jose Jimenez's remarkable .615 series average. The NLCS will pit Cleveland against Fort Worth — a battle between the NL's best record and its hottest team. Sound familiar? Also worth noting: Sacramento will retire the number 62 in honor of Luis Prieto, who recently announced his retirement after a career that produced two hundred ninety-eight saves. Three hundred saves has become the modern benchmark for a Hall of Fame closer, and Prieto fell just two saves short of it — a career that deserved a number on the wall regardless of the round number. The retirement is a fitting gesture for a player whose contributions to this franchise extended beyond any single statistic. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Yetunde Adegoke of Sacramento's Elk Grove neighborhood, a nurse, who asks: "Columbus beat Detroit and Nashville to get here. How seriously should we take them as a threat?" Seriously enough that no one in the Sacramento clubhouse should be scheduling their World Series travel yet. The pattern Columbus has established in this postseason — eliminating a hundred-win team and an eighty-win team in back-to-back series — tells you something real about their ability to execute under pressure, even if their regular-season record tells you something different about their general quality. The honest assessment is that Sacramento is substantially the better team by almost every measure. The equally honest assessment is that substantially better teams have lost seven-game series before, particularly when the opponent's lineup is capable of a three-home-run night against the wrong starter. Zeiders is genuinely dangerous. Benoldi and Hernandez are legitimate middle-of-the-order threats. Sacramento should win this series. That is not the same thing as saying they will. From Søren Larsen of Sacramento's Arden Acres neighborhood, an architect, who asks: "Navarro was the ALDS MVP and the best player on the field across three games. What does that say about this roster's depth without Shinohara?" It says exactly what this team has demonstrated all season: the depth is real. Navarro's regular-season numbers — a .302 average, fifteen home runs, seventy-seven RBI — were strong without being spectacular. What the postseason has revealed is a player whose performance elevates precisely when the opponent is preparing for everyone around him. Lozano filling Shinohara's slot, Cruz contributing two home runs from the second base position, Chavarria homering in Game One — the roster has multiple players capable of seizing the spotlight when the team needs it. That is what championship-caliber depth looks like, and the ALDS provided a clean three-game demonstration of it. From Preethi Venkataraman of Sacramento's South Natomas neighborhood, a software developer, who asks: "Shinohara's timeline is now unknown. What's the realistic scenario where he plays in the ALCS?" The realistic scenario is that he is evaluated on a daily basis and returns when the medical staff clears him — not on a predetermined schedule. The shift from a defined timeline to an open one suggests his recovery is not following the projected trajectory, which could mean anything from a minor setback that resolves within days to a situation where his postseason is effectively over. The best case: he returns for Games Five through Seven of a long ALCS and makes an impact when the series is on the line. The worst case: the unknown timeline resolves to no timeline at all, and Sacramento finishes October without its best regular-season player. What I know is that this organization does not make its plans around players who are unavailable — it makes them around the players who are. And right now, those players are more than capable of winning a championship without waiting. ______________________________ The sweep is done, Charlotte is eliminated. Columbus, eighty-four losses in the regular season and two October upsets to their name, stands between Sacramento and a World Series. The ALCS starts Monday. Shinohara's timeline is unknown. Navarro is the hottest player on the roster. Jeon goes in Game One. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California. Attached Images

06-12-2026, 08:27 AM	#381
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 548	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *Winter 2001 \| Gunn Signed, Rodriguez Traded \| Hall of Fame Voting Produces No Inductees \| 2001 Season Starts Monday* ______________________________ THE DEFENDING CHAMPIONS ARE PREDICTED TO FINISH SECOND IN THEIR OWN DIVISION BY SIXTEEN GAMES Preseason projections, made by the selective pool of FBL analytic experts, have been released on the eve of new 2001 baseball season: San Jose 109-53, Sacramento 93-69. Sixteen games of separation in the same division. The defending World Series champions predicted to lose nineteen more games than they did in 2000 while their first-round playoff opponents from that very October are projected to be historically dominant. Personally, I find it difficult thing to believe. Nobody who makes these projections has seen Jeon throw a bases-empty shutout in the cold at Nat Bailey Stadium. Nobody who makes these projections has watched Navarro in October. The projections are made from what the numbers say about the players, not from what those players have proven they can do when the games actually matter. That said: the projections are not wrong to flag concerns. Lopez is still healing. Rubalcava is still seven to eight months away. Lozano has an oblique strain entering the week of Opening Day, and Cruz has a sprained knee. The defending champions are banged up in the first week of April, which is not where you want to be. They have been here before. The 2000 season was built on improvisation, adaptability, and the refusal to accept that injury lists are destiny. There is no reason to stop now. ______________________________ THE OFFSEASON TRANSACTIONS Jose Rodriguez was traded in late January. After spending all of 2000 on the injured list with a broken elbow, Sacramento sent Rodriguez, minor league pitcher Albin Tornatore, a first-round draft pick, and an eighth-round pick to Las Vegas, receiving thirty-eight-year-old reliever Javier Gutierrez and a first-round pick in return. The organization is giving Sacramento a veteran relief arm it can use in the short term and freeing the roster of a shortstop whose health has been a question for two years. The net cost in picks essentially cancels out. What it formalizes is what the 2000 season already made obvious: Alejandro Navarro is the shortstop here for as long as he wants to be. Chris Blevins was traded to Portland in late February along with minor league outfielder Chase Burrows and three draft picks, receiving twenty-six-year-old reliever Mike Luna, two picks, and $450,000 in cash. Blevins was a fourth outfielder with limited upside. Luna gives the bullpen a younger arm with projection. It is the kind of depth-for-depth exchange that winning organizations make efficiently in the offseason. John Gunn was signed in late January. Four years, $1.824 million, for a twenty-five-year-old right-hander with a 52-39 career record and a 4.23 ERA. The preseason projections — which are skeptical of Sacramento in general — have him going 15-9 with a 3.06 ERA for 2001. If the model is right, Gunn is the second-best pitcher in the rotation and the most efficient offseason signing Sacramento has made in years. ______________________________ TEIICHI KASHIWABARA Sacramento's left-field prospect is the sixth-best prospect in professional baseball according to the preseason rankings. Sixth overall. Not sixth in the AL, not sixth at his position — sixth among every player in every organization in the FBL. He is nineteen years old. The organization has very quietly built a pipeline that now has two starting pitchers signed as free agents specifically because the current roster needs depth, and a left-field prospect who is one year younger than Victor Alvarez and ranked higher on the league's prospect list than any Sacramento player has been in recent memory. Kashiwabara doesn't appear in the 2001 opening day roster. He is in the system, developing, which is where a nineteen-year-old should be. But his ranking tells you something about the organization's future that the current roster's age profile also suggests: Sacramento is not in a rebuilding phase, but the next generation is already arriving beneath the surface of a team still competitive enough to defend a championship. ______________________________ WHERE SACRAMENTO STANDS — A POSITIONAL SURVEY The preseason positional rankings tell a layered story about who this team is entering 2001. At shortstop, Navarro is ranked fourth in the league — which is extraordinary for a twenty-three-year-old in only his second full season as a starter. He is ahead of every shortstop in the AL except Crotwell in Milwaukee, Colson in Detroit, and Rastelli in Vancouver. At right field, Shinohara is second in the league, his Gold Glove year apparently translating into the ranking his talent has deserved for several seasons. At starting pitching, Jang ranks fourth — Sacramento's new signing immediately projects as one of the better starters in the AL. The relief corps with Medina ranks first in the league, which speaks to the depth of the bullpen even after a year when Medina's availability was inconsistent. Where Sacramento ranks below expectation: first base (18th in Alvarez, who is twenty-one and improving), center field (14th with Choi, whose defensive metrics don't match his offensive production in the rankings), and left field (13th with Mollohan, who is a professional hitter but not a positional star). These rankings represent the team's floor. Alvarez at twenty-one has years of development ahead. Choi's bat doesn't disappear because the rankings question his center-field defense. ______________________________ THE INJURY SITUATION Lopez is listed at two months remaining on his ACL recovery. If the timeline holds, he returns sometime in June. His return won't be quiet — seventy-three stolen bases and twenty home runs from the leadoff spot created an offensive profile that Sacramento has genuinely missed since October, and two months into the season the team will have been playing without him for eight consecutive months. Whether he comes back as the same player immediately or requires a re-acclimation period is impossible to predict. ACL recoveries are individual, and Lopez's athleticism should favor full recovery. The June target is worth watching. Rubalcava is seven to eight months from returning. That puts him in the range of November 2001 at the earliest — which means his 2001 season, for practical purposes, is over before it begins. Sacramento will not see Rubalcava throw a competitive pitch this year. The rotation will function without him. It has been functioning without him since the wildcard game last October. Lozano's oblique and Cruz's knee are both short-term. Both are expected back within days. The season doesn't need to wait for either of them. ______________________________ THE WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC AND NAVARRO ON THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE The United States won the World Baseball Classic in March. Seong-soo Kang of South Korea won MVP. The tournament's top vote-getter among position players not named Kang was, essentially, a collection of familiar names from the FBL's upper tier — Crotwell, Washburn, Davis, Robitaille. Sacramento's own Alejandro Navarro represented Mexico and finished with forty-nine MVP points. He did not win the award. He received no first-place votes, but what is really remarkable, is him playing in his first World Baseball Classic and competing in the same tournament as players who have been international representatives for five or six years at tender age of twenty-three years old. Forty-nine points means voters across twenty participating nations looked at his tournament performance and found it worth acknowledging. The player who hit .476 in the ALDS and won two games of the ALCS with late-inning home runs is now registering on a global stage. This will not be his last World Baseball Classic appearance. ______________________________ THE HALL OF FAME BALLOT — NO INDUCTEES Scott Hunt received 72.2 percent of votes in his seventh year on the ballot and fell short of the 75 percent threshold. Forrest Marrs at 66.3 percent. Eli Murguia and Brian Pullum both first-year candidates with significant vote totals, suggesting the ballot logjam will continue. No Sacramento connections in the top tier of the ballot other than Eli Murguia, which is a curiosity given how many former Prayers have retired over the last decade. Fernando Salazar is already inducted. Strickler won't be eligible for five years. The institution will have to wait for the next generation to present its arguments. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE — WHAT THE PROJECTIONS SAY San Jose is predicted at 109-53. Suzuki is projected at 22-6 with a 2.82 ERA. Haddix at 17-7 with a 3.33. If those numbers materialize, Sacramento's division is essentially decided before the calendar turns to August. The Demons return Montemayor, who hit seven home runs against Sacramento's pitching in the ALCS alone, and a lineup that ranked eighth in AL scoring last year with room to improve. In the NL, Milwaukee is predicted to win the Central at 103-59. Long Beach and Vancouver project as the Pacific leaders. The NL looks like a two-horse race between Milwaukee and whoever emerges from the Pacific, with Vancouver's staff — Corral, Gauthier, Trillo — potentially the best rotation in the NL if health cooperates. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Linnea Bergström of Sacramento's Curtis Park neighborhood, a pediatric nurse, who asks: "The projections show Sacramento finishing sixteen games behind San Jose. Should the front office be more concerned than they appear?" The projections are based on what the models know: player aging curves, regression to the mean, the departure of Strickler and the injury to Rubalcava, and the assumption that San Jose's young roster matures at the rate its talent suggests. What the models do not know is that Sacramento went 18-23 in one-run games last year and still won 103 games. They do not know what Navarro looks like entering his age-twenty-three season with a full October of winning behind him. They do not know how Jeon performs with a healthy back and ankle and a full complement of October experience. The front office, to my read, is not unconcerned — the Gunn signing and the bullpen depth additions suggest they take the gap seriously — but they are not panicking, which is the correct response to a computer's preseason estimate. Sixteen games is a number in a regular season. Postseason October is a different beast. The 2000 Sacramento Prayers were predicted to win about ninety-five games. They won a hundred and three and a World Series. The models are useful starting points, not verdicts. From Obinna Uzoma of Sacramento's Rancho Cordova neighborhood, an accountant, who asks: "The salary sheet shows the entire roster at $11.7 million in 2001. How does Sacramento compete with teams spending more than that?" By drafting, developing, and signing players before they reach their market value. The franchise has three players signed through arbitration years at below-market rates in Navarro, Alvarez, and Jeon — three of the most important contributors to last October's championship run. Lozano signed a five-year extension right after the World Series for six hundred thousand dollars per year, which is, to be direct, an extraordinary bargain for a player with five postseason home runs who just won a Gold Glove. Cruz is similarly locked in. Shinohara's five-year deal scales up toward fair market over time but is manageable. Sacramento competes on the margins of the salary structure by finding value before the market finds it, which is what the development pipeline and the scouting staff exist to do. The Kashiwabara ranking at sixth overall in the prospect list is evidence that the pipeline is working. The eleven-point-seven-million-dollar roster that just won the World Series is evidence that it has been working for several years. From Marta Vidaković of Sacramento's Land Park neighborhood, a high school teacher, who asks: "Opening Day is Monday. Sacramento's rotation has Gunn, Cruz, Espenoza, Andretti, and Jeon. Last year's rotation had the same uncertainty entering the year. Should we expect a similar journey?" Expect a different journey to a possibly similar destination. Last year's uncertainty was injury-driven — Jeon's back and ankle, Rubalcava's wildcard exit. This year's uncertainty is talent-driven — Gunn is an unknown quantity in Sacramento's system, Andretti is forty-one years old, and the back-end of the rotation is still unsettled. The good news is that Espenoza, who was arguably the best starter on the staff in the second half of 2000 and threw eight and one-third innings in a deciding ALCS game, is a legitimate front-of-rotation arm entering his age-thirty-seven season. The concerning news is that thirty-seven is thirty-seven, and the innings Espenoza threw in October will eventually register somewhere in his arm. The most useful prediction I can offer is the one supported by evidence: this organization, when challenged, finds ways to win. The rotation will have a bad month. The bullpen will cover it. The offense will carry stretches where the pitching cannot. Navarro will do something in September that makes everyone forget the bad April starts. That is what defending champions who are built correctly look like in the regular season. The journey this year will have its own shape. It has earned the right to surprise us again. ______________________________ Ninety-three wins predicted. One hundred and three delivered last year. The Seattle Lucifers arrive Monday at Sutter Health Park for Opening Day. Jung-keun Jang takes the ball to pitch for the first time in the Prayers uniform. Alejandro Lopez is two months from coming back. The 2001 Sacramento Prayers begin the defense of their championship with a sprained knee, an oblique strain, and a six-foot-one right-hander from South Korea who the computer thinks will win fifteen games. See you at the ballpark. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.

06-13-2026, 09:10 AM	#382
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 548	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *April 2 – 12, 2001 \| Shinohara Has Five Home Runs in Six Games \| Jang Looks Like the Real Thing* ______________________________ SACRAMENTO IS FIVE AND FIVE, SAN JOSE IS EIGHT AND ONE There was a hope entering 2001 that the injuries were behind us. That hope lasted eight days. On April 3rd, in his first appearance of the season, Ji-hoon Jeon left the mound having thrown sixty-nine pitches with a finger blister. On April 11th, Ha-joon Choi was hit by a pitch in the forearm or hand — the exact location was not specified, his diagnosis is still pending, which is the kind of medical ambiguity that keeps you awake at two in the morning. He appeared briefly the following day as a pinch runner before being removed, which suggests the injury is not catastrophic. What it is, exactly, remains unknown. The defending champions are five and five. Two walk-off wins in ten games, one of them in ten innings and one in eleven. Two blown starts from Andretti and Flores respectively. One Gunn debut of considerable promise. One Jang start that suggested everything the projections implied about his value was accurate. And the constant, reliable, infuriating background noise of the injury report telling you that the 2001 Sacramento Prayers intend to continue exactly where the 2000 version left off in terms of medical drama. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY vs. Seattle, April 2-4 (2-1) Opening Day: Jang pitched seven and one-third innings against Santiago Gomez and lost zero to two. Both numbers are accurate and incompatible-seeming. Jang's game score was sixty-seven on a hundred and three pitches. He allowed four hits, walked nobody, struck out five. Gomez allowed five hits, walked nobody, struck out five. The difference was two runs in the sixth inning off a Jang fastball that Romo put into the outfield and a Najera single that followed. Sacramento put runners on base and left them there in every meaningful inning. A quality start on Opening Day that produced zero runs and a loss is exactly the kind of result that the first game of the year generates more than it should. Jeon started April 3rd and lasted three and two-thirds innings. He was injured while pitching — the finger blister revealed itself sometime between the forty-fourth and sixty-ninth pitch — and Espenoza came in and threw two and one-third innings in a winning cause. Nakazawa hit a three-run homer in the fifth off Baca to flip a two-nothing deficit into a three-two lead, and the bullpen held. Four to two, Sacramento's first win in 2001. April 4th was ten innings and Choi's two-run walk-off homer off Glahn. Andretti threw six and one-third innings, allowed three earned runs, and left with the bases loaded for Ke, who let one of those inherited runners to cross the home plate. Multiple blown leads, multiple Seattle comebacks. Chavarria and Choi and Shinohara all contributing. Sacramento won five to three on a ball that Choi put into the seats in the bottom of the tenth, and the crowd finally exhaled. @ San Jose, April 6-8 (1-2) Valadez held Sacramento to one run over eight innings on April 6th. Cruz pitched well — six and two-thirds, one earned run — but Luna came in for the eighth, threw twenty-six pitches, two of which were of wild variety, and gave up a Pratly two-run double that decided the game. Three to one, San Jose. Demon's Suzuki on April 7th: eight innings, no runs, ten strikeouts, one hundred and twenty-two pitches. That is what the number-two starter for the projected hundred-and-nine-win team looks like. Sacramento scored one run in the ninth when Alvarez doubled with two men on and two out. One to two, San Jose's walk-off on Vasquez single, Sacramento at two and three. April 8th was different. Gunn started his first career game at Sacramento and went six innings of two-hit shutout baseball against a San Jose lineup that had just run Suzuki out there the night before. He threw a hundred and eight pitches with control and movement and made the Demons look ordinary. Lozano — returning from the oblique strain that kept him out of Opening Day — hit a grand slam in the fifth off Haddix to put the game away eight to nothing at that point. Sacramento scored nine runs total. Gunn was game's player of the game in his first career appearance as Sacramento's starter. Nine to five, Sacramento. @ Portland, April 9-12 (2-2) Andretti allowed six runs in three and two-thirds innings on April 9th. He is forty-one years old and his ERA entering this week stands at 8.10, which is an early April number that will either come down as he settles into his mechanics or will signal that what he did in the World Series was the final successful thing his body could produce in October before the bills came due in April. That determination cannot be made in two starts. But two starts with an 8.10 ERA are two starts with an 8.10 ERA, and the organization should be mildly concerned at the moment. Shinohara hit two home runs and had three RBI, but that still wasn't enough. April 10th in eleven innings was exactly the kind of game Sacramento needs to win if it is going to survive the injury attrition of this early schedule. Vic Cruz started and left after four and two-thirds with Portland already scoring at will through the middle innings. Multiple bullpen arms allowed inherited runners to score. Benson blew a save. Sacramento trailed twice and came back twice and then Shinohara hit his fourth homer of the season in the tenth inning to tie it and Nakazawa doubled home the winning run in the eleventh. Ten to eight final, eleven innings, five pitchers for Sacramento, chaos from the third inning through the last. Jang won April 11th. Six innings, five hits, three runs, nine strikeouts. A hundred and seven pitches. His ERA is 2.14 after two starts and the ground-ball tendency that the organization bought is already manifesting — thirteen ground-outs in eleven innings pitched. Sacramento scored eight runs off three Portland pitchers. Four home runs across the lineup. Everything that was supposed to work, worked this time. Flores, called up from the minors on an emergency basis to plug the hole in the starting rotation, caused by Ji-hoon Jeon's injury, started April 12th and lasted four and two-thirds innings, allowing six runs on nine hits, including a Garcia three-run homer that turned a manageable game into a rout. Portland won nine to two. The fifth starter question, which was the rotation's biggest uncertainty entering the season, has produced exactly the answer nobody wanted to hear the very first time it had been asked... ______________________________ SHINOHARA'S START Five home runs in six games. A .391 batting average over that stretch. The Gold Glove winner from 2000 has been the most productive offensive player on the roster through the first week and a half of the season, and he has done it while Lopez heals, while Lozano was working his way back from the oblique, while Choi's health status is uncertain. Shinohara is not typically the player who carries a lineup — his value has always resided in his consistency, his ability to hit in the middle innings for doubles and run-scoring singles, his arm that prevents runners from taking extra bases. What he is doing in April 2001 is something different: he is the force around which the offense is currently organized, and he is doing it without apparent mechanical change or visible explanation. ______________________________ JANG AND THE ROTATION QUESTION Two starts. Two quality outings. Thirteen innings, fourteen hits, five earned runs, eighteen strikeouts, an ERA of 2.14. The $1.824 million rotation investment is currently performing like a half-price Cy Young candidate, which is either an early April mirage or a signal that Sacramento found genuine value in a pitcher the market underestimated. The ground-ball rate is real. The control is real. Whether it sustains over thirty-five starts is the only question that matters, and two starts cannot answer it. What two starts can do is make the question worth asking with optimism rather than anxiety. The fifth starter situation is less encouraging. Flores's 11.57 ERA after one outing tells you he is not ready for this role. Jeon has a finger blister. Andretti is struggling. The depth that held Sacramento together during the 2000 October run is being tested before May, which was not the plan. ______________________________ SAN JOSE IS EIGHT AND ONE The preseason projections said San Jose would win a hundred and nine games. Entering April 13th, they have an eight-and-one record and a run differential that looks exactly like a team capable of winning a hundred and nine games. Suzuki, who the projections put at twenty-two wins with a 2.82 ERA, is already at one win and a game score of eighty-three. Haddix is one and one but allowed eight runs to Sacramento in four and two-thirds innings in a game Sacramento's offense overwhelmed. The Demons are going to lose games. But the early evidence supports the projections in ways that are uncomfortable to acknowledge when you are three and a half games behind them in your own division on April 12th. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Pham Thi Lan of Sacramento's Elk Grove neighborhood, a pharmacist, who asks: "Jeon has a finger blister twelve days into the season. Is there a version of 2001 where his body simply lets him pitch?" There has to be, because the alternatives are too grim to accept as permanent. A finger blister is among the less severe of the various afflictions Jeon has accumulated over his career — it is not a structural issue, not ligament or bone, not the kind of thing that recurs mechanically the way back injuries or ankle problems do. It is genuinely bad luck of the sort that happens to pitchers who throw hard and grip the ball the way their mechanics require. The concern with Jeon is not the blister in isolation but the cumulative pattern: back, ankle, blister, and underneath all of it a zero-and-four regular season record that distorts what he has actually shown when healthy. His October performances are the argument for patience. His injury timeline is the argument for managing expectations. The most honest thing I can say entering his return from the twelve-day timeline is: Jeon pitching healthy is a legitimate major-league starter, and Jeon pitching is a weekly negotiation between talent and fragility. The franchise knew this when they signed the automatic renewal. They have chosen to bet on the talent. The blister doesn't change the bet. From Tigran Sargsyan of Sacramento's Arden-Arcade neighborhood, a civil engineer, who asks: "Andretti is 8.10 ERA through two starts. Is he done?" Two starts in April for a forty-one-year-old pitcher coming off a World Series clinching performance is the smallest sample size you can construct while still calling it data. His Game Six in October was not a fluke — the mechanics, the ground-ball approach, the ability to work deep into games without over-relying on velocity, all of that was real. What happened in the first two starts is likely a combination of spring rustiness, early-season cold weather (games in the forties in Portland do not favor any pitcher over forty years old, frankly), and the natural difficulty of repeating October form across a full spring. The more useful question is not whether Andretti is done but whether he can give Sacramento quality innings in starts three through fifteen. If the answer is yes, the 8.10 ERA is a forgettable artifact. If it is still climbing in June, the organization will face a harder conversation. I am not ready to have that conversation on April 12th. From Rosario Fuentes of Sacramento's Oak Park neighborhood, a teacher's aide, who asks: "Sacramento is three and a half games behind San Jose eleven days into the season. How does this team catch a hundred-and-nine-win team?" The honest answer is that it may not need to. The wild card exists, Sacramento is tied for the first wild card spot right now, and winning the World Series last October did not require winning the AL West. What catching San Jose specifically would require is the combination of Sacramento playing at their ceiling — Lopez returning in June and providing the offensive dimension his presence creates, the rotation stabilizing around Jang and Cruz and eventually Jeon, the bullpen returning to its 2000 form — while San Jose plays at something below their own ceiling for a sustained stretch. That combination is possible, not probable. More practically: every team in baseball has a bad month. San Jose will have one too. The question is whether Sacramento is in a position to capitalize when that month arrives. Right now, five and five and competing in a genuinely difficult early schedule, they are capable of being that team. The gap is not insurmountable. It is also not going to close itself. ______________________________ Five and five. Boston on the road for three games starting Friday. Then San Jose comes to Sacramento. Lopez is eight weeks away. Choi's diagnosis hopefully arrives sometime before Monday. The season is only eleven days old. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.

06-13-2026, 08:50 PM	#383
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 548	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *April 13 – 22, 2001 \| Thirteen and Six \| Andretti Throws Eight Shutout Innings at Seattle \| The Puga Trade* ______________________________ TIM VAN HAM HITS TWO GRAND SLAMS IN ONE AFTERNOON The most surprising thing was Bernardo Andretti. Eight innings of two-hit baseball against Seattle on April 20th, with nothing allowed, 584 games into a career that everyone — including, probably, Andretti — briefly worried might be running out of answers after those first two shaky starts of this season. The pitcher who posted an 8.10 ERA through his first two outings of 2001 walked off the mound at T-Mobile Park with a hundred pitches thrown and zero earned runs behind him, and whatever April doubt had accumulated in two weeks of poor results was substantially resolved in one evening. Sacramento's five and five record had become thirteen and six. Eight wins in nine games. The Boston series went three-for-three. San Jose came to Sacramento and left having lost three straight. The AL West lead is two and a half games and the calendar hasn't turned to May. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY @ Boston, April 13-15 (3-0) Gunn went six and two-thirds innings on April 13th, allowed one run on three hits and walked nobody. His ERA dropped to 0.71 after two starts as a Prayer. Three home runs in the fifth inning — Shinohara, Cruz, and Chavarria all went deep against Schlageter — gave Sacramento six runs total. Benson closed it. Six to three. April 14th was Tim Van Ham's afternoon. Five to two over Boston going into the fifth inning, Sacramento already leading after a first-inning rally. Van Ham came to the plate with the bases loaded and hit a grand slam off Onodera. Then in the ninth inning, bases loaded again, he hit another one off Ito. Two grand slams in a single game, eight RBI total, tying the Sacramento regular season record. He finished two for four with both home runs and eight runs batted in while Andretti pitched six innings against a lineup that hit him for three runs — a serviceable start that the offense made irrelevant before the fifth inning was over. Thirteen to three, and the Van Ham name is in the franchise record book. The April 15th series finale was Cruz's. Seven and two-thirds innings of shutout baseball, six hits, two walks, five strikeouts. Boston had opportunities and squandered every one of them. Van Ham's run-scoring double in the fourth and Mollohan's two-out RBI in the fifth were all Sacramento needed. Two to nothing, and Cruz's ERA fell to 1.42. vs. San Jose, April 16-18 (3-0) Jang started April 16th against the Demons and was torched in the fourth inning — Montemayor solo homer, Vasquez two-run shot, five runs allowed in three and two-thirds innings. Sacramento trailed six to three heading into the seventh and somehow won. Gutierrez threw two and one-third scoreless innings to stabilize the bullpen situation. Navarro drove in three runs including a sac fly that tied the game in the fifth. Chavarria doubled twice and scored twice. Schmitt came off the bench in the ninth inning and hit a two-run walk-off homer off Minghetti. Eight to six in ten innings, Sacramento's fourth walk-off of the young season. April 17th: Espenoza threw six innings and allowed two runs in a grinding performance that kept Sacramento close enough for Florez's eighth-inning two-run homer to decide it. Ke got the win. Four to two, Sacramento. April 18th: Sacramento scored five runs off Suzuki in the first three innings — Alvarez homered, Van Ham homered, Cruz homered, Chavarria hit a two-run shot — and then surrendered five runs in turn as Ogle hit two home runs and Montemayor added another. Gunn allowed five runs in four and one-third innings, first rough start after his strong Boston outing, and in the end the game became a seven to six Sacramento win on Shinohara's ninth-inning sac fly. Three walks-off in three games against San Jose. The Demons left Sacramento at nine and six. @ Seattle, April 20-22 (2-1) Andretti on April 20th: eight innings, two hits, zero runs, five strikeouts, a hundred pitches. The complete reversal of his Portland outings. The Seattle lineup — which is six and twelve and deeply unimpressive — hit him as poorly as a major-league lineup can be expected to hit a pitcher who is locating his ball and working his ground-ball tendencies. Sacramento scored ten runs. Shinohara homered for the eighth time. Mollohan hit his third. The final was ten to one and Andretti's ERA dropped from 6.75 to 4.50 in one start. Jang threw five innings of no-run ball on April 21st and lost two to one when Luna's one inning of relief allowed two runs on a Welsh double and a Bay sac fly in the seventh. Sacramento had two hits total. The bullpen erased Jang's quality work in one inning, which is becoming a recurring theme for this team. Cruz won a two-to-one pitcher's duel on April 22nd, going five innings in cold and rainy conditions with four walks but only one run allowed. Gutierrez, Gonzalez, Medina, and Benson all contributed to the hold, and Shinohara's two-out double in the sixth was the winning run. Two to one, series won by Sacramento. ______________________________ THE ROTATION IN CONTEXT Cruz is fourth in the AL in ERA at 1.50 and as of late, he has been the most reliable starter in the rotation. His control, which produced six walks in his Seattle outing but only two in Boston, is the one variable that swings his starts between dominant and merely good. When he throws strikes he generates ground balls and keeps the lineup in order; when he walks batters the game turns chaotic fast. The 1.50 ERA reflects the dominant version appearing regularly enough to outweigh the other. Jang is 3.03 ERA across six starts and has not yet had a game where he was simply removed for ineffectiveness — his April 16th San Jose start was bad, but even there he recorded seventeen outs before Aces pulled him. The strikeout rate is real. The ground-ball tendencies are real. He is what Sacramento paid for. Andretti's eight-inning Seattle performance was beautiful. Whether it represents a settled mechanical groove or simply an ideal matchup against a bad lineup remains to be seen over his next three starts. The 4.50 ERA entering May is not a crisis. It is a caution flag that turned amber on April 20th and has not yet gone green. Gunn's April has been uneven — excellent against Boston in his two outings there, roughed up by San Jose in his most recent start. His ERA after four starts as a Prayer is 3.18, which is still respectable. He is twenty-five years old and has never thrown the kind of April he is experiencing at the major-league level in this environment. Some of the variance is expected. ______________________________ SHINOHARA IS CARRYING THIS OFFENSE Eight home runs in thirteen games. A .373 average over that stretch. Tied for third in the AL in home runs. The Gold Glove right fielder who was supposed to be Sacramento's consistent middle-of-the-order presence has instead become something closer to its offensive engine, filling the role that Lopez would normally occupy at the top and Choi at the heart of the lineup. When both of those players return — Lopez in approximately six to seven weeks, Choi in one week — the offensive picture becomes considerably deeper. What Shinohara has done in April is establish that Sacramento can score runs without its two most important lineup contributors, which is a discovery that should make the rest of April and most of May feel manageable rather than desperate. ______________________________ THE PUGA TRADE On April 23rd, Sacramento traded catcher Jon Horn, second baseman Rey Puga, right-handed pitcher Nick Coulson, a first-round pick, a second-round pick, and a fifth-round pick to the St. Louis Faith. In return: a first-round pick, a third-round pick, and $250,000 in cash. The picks roughly cancel. The cash is modest. What the transaction actually accomplishes is clearing roster space and salary by moving three players the organization had determined would not be part of the long-term picture. Puga, at thirty years old and batting .043 through his limited appearances in 2001, was not going to contribute at the major-league level this year. Horn was a catching prospect behind Nakazawa on the depth chart with no clear path forward. Coulson was a minor-league arm without an obvious lane to Sacramento's rotation. Trading present depth for draft capital is the kind of move that produces value in three years rather than this October. Sacramento's position at thirteen and six gives them the luxury of making this trade without it feeling like panic. The organization believes in what it has on the field. This is housekeeping. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE Cleveland leads the NL Central at fourteen and four, which is the best record in the league. Detroit and Sacramento share the best record in the AL at thirteen and six. Charlotte is twelve and six, Houston eleven and seven. The AL is genuinely competitive from top to bottom, which makes Sacramento's current position — leading the West while the projected winner of the division sits two and a half games back — more meaningful than a random mid-April snapshot would normally suggest. Charlotte reliever, Casey Ford, filed for bankruptcy this morning in a Charlotte court. According to the Chapter 7 filing, Mr. Ford's restaurant chain lost $5.5 million last year. Among his assets, the reliever listed over 2 million in Rolex watches. Casey has been quoted as saying, "What can I tell you? Those timepieces are the epitome of class. I can't say anything about my financial situation. Go through my lawyer." ______________________________ THE INBOX From Margherita Conti of Sacramento's Midtown neighborhood, a restaurant manager, who asks: "Tim Van Ham hit two grand slams in one game, eight RBI, tied the franchise record. Who is Tim Van Ham?" The honest answer is that Tim Van Ham is the player most franchises have but rarely acknowledge: a perfectly functional major-league outfielder who does not have the ceiling of a star but has enough skill and professionalism to contribute meaningfully when called upon. He entered 2001 as the team's fourth outfielder, filling in for Lopez while the ACL heals and for Choi while the quadriceps recovers. His career numbers have never suggested what he did on April 14th was coming, which is part of what makes the record so striking. There is no analytical framework that predicted Van Ham as the answer to the question of who would tie Sacramento's single-game RBI record. He just came to the plate with the bases loaded twice and hit the ball as hard as he could hit it. That's baseball, and that's Tim Van Ham, and on one afternoon at Fenway Park in April it was exactly sufficient. From Seun Adesanya of Sacramento's South Sacramento neighborhood, a logistics coordinator, who asks: "Andretti was 8.10 ERA through two starts, then went eight shutout innings against Seattle. Which version is real?" Both versions exist, and the question is which one appears more often over the remaining twenty-five or so starts. What the April 20th Seattle start showed is that the mechanics and the game plan that produced a World Series-winning performance in October are still available to him — they did not disappear, they were simply inaccessible in two cold April outings against teams that were swinging at his pitches rather than his approach. The Seattle lineup, which is among the weakest in the AL, provided an ideal environment for Andretti to re-establish his rhythm and remind himself of what his arm can still do. The real version of Andretti in 2001 is probably somewhere between the 8.10 ERA and the shutout — a starter who gives Sacramento six innings and two or three earned runs often enough to remain a functional part of the rotation without being the dominant presence he was in his prime years. If those eight innings proved to himself that he still belongs at this level, they have served their most important purpose. From Hana Procházková of Sacramento's Curtis Park neighborhood, a librarian, who asks: "Sacramento swept San Jose at home in walk-off fashion all three games. Is this what the AL West race looks like all season?" It might be. The three-game sweep was built on Sacramento's bullpen advantage and its offensive depth more than its rotation superiority — Jang had a poor start in the series opener, Gunn allowed five runs in four and one-third in the finale, and Sacramento still won all three games. That tells you something important about the relative strengths of these two teams: Sacramento's offense and bullpen can absorb a weak starting performance and still find ways to win, while San Jose's rotation advantage — Suzuki and Haddix are clearly the better top-two starters — does not automatically translate into wins when the offense can't protect the lead. San Jose is ten and eight. They will not stay ten and eight. They will almost certainly finish with more wins than Sacramento's preseason number of ninety-three. Whether they close the current gap depends on which version of each team's rotation shows up most consistently from May through September. The AL West race will look like this — close, competitive, determined by individual series rather than sustained runs of dominance — right through the end of summer. ______________________________ Thirteen and six. Two and a half games up on San Jose. Phoenix is next for two games on the road, then Long Beach and Philadelphia come to Sacramento. Choi is a week away. Lopez is six to seven weeks away. The rotation has found a shape. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.

06-14-2026, 10:12 AM	#384
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 548	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *April 23 – May 2, 2001 \| Twenty-One and Eight \| Sacramento Leads the AL West by Four and a Half* ______________________________ SOSHU SHINOHARA NAMED THE AMERICAN LEAGUE'S BATTER OF THE MONTH FOR APRIL There is a version of this team that exists only on paper — the one missing Lopez, the one that started the year worried about its fifth starter, the one that lost Navarro for at least a few days to a rib cage injury suffered in a base-running collision on April 28th. And then there is the version that has actually taken the field for the last ten games, which has gone eight and two, scored runs in bunches, found its forty-first home run of the season before the calendar reached May, and built a division lead that nobody projected in March. Twenty-one and eight — best record in the American League. Four and a half games up on San Jose, who are themselves sixteen and twelve and would be leading most divisions in baseball. Sacramento has built enough cushion that individual injuries — even significant ones — no longer threaten to derail the season. They simply become subplots. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY @ Phoenix, April 23-24 (1-1) April 23rd was Shinohara's signature month-closer in miniature: four for six, a grand slam in the first inning, a double, two more singles, three runs scored, five RBI. The grand slam off Donegan was his ninth home run of the season and turned a scoreless game into a four-nothing laugher before Phoenix had recorded an out in the bottom of the first. Florez added a two-run homer of his own in the same inning. Gunn improved to three and oh. Thirteen to five — the final score in Prayers favor, and Donegan's start — one and two-thirds innings, ten hits, seven runs — was as bad an outing as any Sacramento opponent has produced all season. April 24th reversed course completely. Rendon threw eight innings of three-hit shutout baseball for Phoenix, striking out eight, and Espenoza's six and one-third innings of two-run ball were wasted entirely. Sacramento was shut out, five to nothing, in a game where the Crucifixes' Ryan Scott hit two home runs off Espenoza and Musselman. All in all, that was a stark reminder that even the best teams get shut down occasionally by a starter throwing the game of his life. vs. Long Beach, April 25-26 (1-1) Long Beach is twenty-two and six, the best record in the National League, and they came to Sutter Health Park and took the first game on the strength of Aaron Boemer going five for five — a double in the first, a single in the fourth, an RBI double in the sixth, and singles in the eighth and ninth, tying the Long Beach regular season game record for hits. Andretti pitched well enough — six and two-thirds innings, two earned runs — but the bullpen surrendered the lead in the eighth and Benson took the loss. Six to five, Long Beach. April 26th belonged to Victor Alvarez. A grand slam off Kim in the third inning put Sacramento up four to nothing, part of a four for thirteen day at the plate that ended with Alvarez at one for four with the slam, two runs scored, and four RBI. Jang threw six and two-thirds innings of two-run ball for the win, and Musselman picked up his first save of the season in the ninth. Nine to two, the series split against the league's hottest team. vs. Philadelphia, April 27-29 (3-0) Philadelphia arrived at seven and seventeen, already drawing public frustration from manager Alex Garcia, who used a press conference on April 24th to criticize media coverage of his team's slow start. The Padres' bats showed up against Sacramento's pitching anyway — Cruz allowed five runs in three innings on April 27th, and the Padres led for much of the game before Sacramento scored seven runs in the third inning alone, behind home runs from Chavarria and Lozano. Florez's two-run double off six-time All-Star Mike Young in the bottom of the ninth was the walk-off that won it for Sacramento, nine to eight. April 28th: Gunn improved to four and oh, throwing five and two-thirds innings of two-run ball, and Sacramento scored ten runs on nineteen hits, with Shinohara going three for five with a home run and a double. Ten to three. April 29th was Choi's return from the quadriceps contusion that had sidelined him since mid-April. He went two for three with a home run, two walks, and two runs scored — an immediate, uncomplicated return to form. Sacramento scored thirteen runs, including home runs from Choi, Fernando Garcia, and Chavarria, and Espenoza picked up the win despite allowing four runs in six and two-thirds innings. Thirteen to four. Philadelphia left Sacramento at seven and nineteen, and the sweep was complete. @ Washington, April 30 - May 2 (3-0) April 30th: Andretti threw seven and two-thirds innings and allowed only one run — his third straight strong outing, continuing the turnaround that began in Seattle. Chavarria, pinch-hitting in the ninth inning, hit a solo home run off Brooks to break a one-one tie. Benson closed it. Two to one, Prayers. May 1st: Jang went five and two-thirds innings, allowed three runs on only two hits while issuing four walks, and improved to three and one. Chavarria's go-ahead single in the seventh put Sacramento up for good. Five to three. May 2nd marked Jeon's return from the stubborn finger blister that had cost him most of April. Six innings, eleven hits, four runs, but only two earned — Jeon committed an error of his own, and Gutierrez and Medina combined for three scoreless innings to seal it. Nakazawa hit two home runs, including a two-run shot in the eighth that provided the final margin. Seven to four. Sacramento finished the road trip three and oh and the homestand-plus-road-trip stretch at eight and two. ______________________________ SHINOHARA, AL BATTER OF THE MONTH The numbers for April: a .351 average, ten home runs, twenty-six RBI, twenty-six runs scored. Tied for first in the AL in home runs with eleven entering May, third in the league in RBI behind only Aguilar of Phoenix and Duran of Nashville — both of whom play for teams currently under .500. Shinohara's recognition as the American League's Batter of the Month is the first major individual honor of the 2001 season for Sacramento, and it arrives for a player who, twelve months ago, was known primarily for his glove. What makes the month remarkable beyond the raw totals is the context in which it happened. Lopez has not played an inning this year. Choi missed two weeks. The middle of the lineup has been in constant flux due to injuries and roster shuffling. Through all of it, Shinohara has been the one constant — every single game, every series, producing at a level that would be the best month of most players' careers and is, for him, simply April. ______________________________ NAVARRO, CHOI, AND THE DEPTH QUESTION Navarro was injured in a collision at a base during the April 28th game and has been diagnosed with a strained rib cage muscle — day-to-day, with no firm timeline. Cruz has shifted to shortstop in his absence, a position he played at points during this stretch, while Fernando Garcia has taken over at second base and has hit well enough — over .300 in his appearances — that the temporary alignment has not cost Sacramento anything offensively. Choi's return on April 29th was as clean as a return from injury can be. One home run, two walks, immediate offensive impact in his first game back. Between Choi's return and the inevitable eventual return of Navarro from what appears to be a minor injury, Sacramento's lineup depth — already among the best in the league — becomes deeper still. The lineup that produced forty-four home runs in April, first in the AL, did so without two regular contributors for stretches of the month. What happens when everyone is healthy at once is a question Sacramento has not yet had to answer in 2001, and the answer may be frightening for the rest of the league. ______________________________ THE GONZALEZ TRADE AND THE ESPARZA SETBACK Jeon's return from IL to the starting rotation required the Prayers to make roster decisions. The obvious choice was to send Rafael Gonzalez down to the minors, however the veteran pitcher refused demotion, which forced the management to seek an alternative solution. On April 29th, Sacramento traded right-handed reliever Rafael Gonzalez and minor-league right-hander Ryan McDonald to Columbus for minor-league center fielder Yukinari Sakamoto and $300,000 in cash. A league analyst called it a fairly even transaction, which is as unremarkable an assessment as exists in baseball. Gonzalez, thirty-four, had been a fringe bullpen piece; Sakamoto, twenty-six, adds organizational outfield depth. Nothing about this trade changes Sacramento's 2001 outlook in any direction. More consequential, unfortunately, is the news that arrived on April 30th regarding Sergio Esparza. The reliever, who has been on the injured list since spring with bone chips in his elbow, suffered a setback in his recovery and will now need at least eight additional weeks before he's ready to return. Combined with Rubalcava's six-to-seven-month timeline and Delgado's seven-month timeline, the bullpen depth chart below the active roster continues to thin. None of this has mattered yet — Benson, Medina, Gutierrez, Ke, and the rest have combined for the second-best bullpen ERA in the league. But injury attrition compounds, and eight more weeks for Esparza is eight more weeks Sacramento needs its current relief corps to hold. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE Long Beach is twenty-two and six, the best record in either league, and their Sacramento series even split was their only blemish in an otherwise dominant stretch. Cleveland is twenty-one and seven in the NL Central. El Paso is twenty and eight in the NL Desert. The early-season parity that defined the first two weeks of April has given way to genuine separation at the top of both leagues — and Sacramento, at twenty-one and eight, belongs in that conversation as much as anyone. Philadelphia's struggles continue to be a story in themselves. Manager Alex Garcia's media outburst on April 24th — accusing reporters of focusing only on the negative — came during a stretch in which his team would go on to lose six of its next seven, including the three-game sweep at Sacramento's hands. The Padres are seven and twenty-two, the worst record in the American League, and the tension between the front office's public messaging and the team's results on the field appears to be intensifying rather than easing. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Aram Khachaturian of Sacramento's Pocket neighborhood, a high school basketball coach, who asks: "Shinohara won AL Batter of the Month. How does an organization keep a player like that grounded when the attention starts coming?" The honest answer is that the organization doesn't really need to do much, because the player generally does it himself, and Shinohara's track record suggests he's exactly that kind of person. He's been a consistently excellent, low-drama contributor for four seasons — a Gold Glove winner who was never the headline name even when his performance warranted it. The attention that comes with a league-wide monthly award is, frankly, overdue rather than premature, and players who have spent years being underrated tend not to get carried away when the recognition finally arrives. What the organization can do — and from what I've observed, has done — is continue treating him exactly as they did when he was the quietly excellent right fielder rather than the league's hottest hitter. Consistency from the franchise reinforces consistency from the player. Shinohara doesn't need micromanagement; he needs the room to keep doing what he's doing, and Sacramento has given him exactly that. From Wioletta Nowakowska of Sacramento's East Sacramento neighborhood, a violinist, who asks: "Navarro is hurt, Lopez hasn't played yet this season, and Sacramento still has the best record in the AL. Is this roster simply deeper than anyone realized?" Yes, and I think the depth is the actual story of April, more than any individual performance — though Shinohara's award makes for a better headline. Consider what's been absent for stretches of this month: the starting shortstop, the starting center fielder for two weeks, the leadoff hitter and stolen-base threat for the entire month. And consider what's filled in: Fernando Garcia hitting .300 at second base, Cruz capably moving to shortstop, Chavarria providing pinch-hit production and outfield depth, Schmitt delivering a walk-off home run from the bench. This is not a roster built around four or five stars surrounded by replacement-level filler. It's a roster where the eighth and ninth players in the lineup can change a game. That kind of depth doesn't show up in preseason projections — the algorithms that predicted ninety-three wins for Sacramento couldn't have known that Fernando Garcia would hit .300 in extended playing time, because nobody could have known that in March. It's the kind of depth that gets built through years of development and shows its value exactly in months like this one. From Dimitrios Papageorgiou of Sacramento's Carmichael neighborhood, a barista, who asks: "Sacramento leads the AL West by four and a half games over San Jose, who were projected to win a hundred and nine. What changed?" Two things, roughly equally important. First, Sacramento has played better than its preseason projection by a significant margin — twenty-one and eight against a projected pace closer to fifteen and fourteen at this point in the season. Second, San Jose has played to roughly their projected level, sixteen and twelve, which is good but not the historic pace the preseason numbers suggested. The gap has opened not because San Jose collapsed but because Sacramento's floor turned out to be much higher than anyone modeled — driven by a healthy April from the rotation's top three, an offense getting career-best months from multiple players simultaneously, and a bullpen that has been the second-best in the league. Four and a half games in early May is not a permanent state. San Jose has a hundred and thirty-some games left to play at their true level, and if that true level is anywhere near a hundred wins, this gap closes. But Sacramento has given itself the cushion to absorb a bad stretch — Navarro's injury, Esparza's setback, the inevitable regression of some hot streaks — without losing the division lead. That cushion is the real accomplishment of April. ______________________________ Twenty-one and eight. Nashville on the road for three games, then trip to Portland. Navarro day-to-day, Choi back in the lineup, Lopez five weeks away. The best record in the American League belongs to the defending World Series champions, and it isn't close. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.

06-14-2026, 09:02 PM	#385
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 548	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *May 4 – 15, 2001 \| Twenty-Seven and Thirteen \| Lozano Is Having a Career Year \| Cleveland Leads All of Baseball* ______________________________ SACRAMENTO WINS SIX, THEN DROPS FOUR STRAIGHT There is a tale of mid-May that looks triumphant — six wins in a row, Jeon's return from injury producing the best start of anyone's season, Lozano quietly compiling a .295 average with seven home runs and twenty-seven RBI in thirty-two games, a four-game lead that briefly felt like breathing room. And there is the version that actually closed out this stretch: four straight losses, two of them to San Jose at home, two of them in Cleveland against a team that is now thirty and nine and looks, frankly, unbeatable. Twenty-seven and thirteen. Still the best record in the American League at the start of this stretch. Now 1.5 games ahead of San Jose, who went nine and one over the same period. The margin that felt comfortable ten days ago is suddenly very thin, and Sacramento finishes this stretch having just been outplayed, decisively, by the two best teams it has faced all year. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY @ Nashville, May 4-6 (2-1) Gunn lost his first decision of the season on May 4th, allowing four earned runs in four innings as Nashville's Malik Albury threw eight strong innings. Five to one, Sacramento's only loss of this opening stretch. Andretti rebounded with six and one-third innings of one-run ball on May 5th, his third strong outing in his last four starts. Navarro drove in three runs including a two-run single in the first inning and a solo homer in the ninth — his first home run of the season. Eight to five, Sacramento. May 6th belonged to Mollohan, who went three for three with a home run, a double, and a walk, driving in three. Jang threw five innings for the win despite committing a fielding error. Choi and Mollohan both homered in the seventh to put the game away. Six to two. Special note: Navarro was injured while throwing the ball during this game — a separate issue from the rib cage strain, though the severity wasn't immediately clear. @ Portland, May 8-10 (3-0) Jeon's return from the finger blister that cost him most of April was worth the wait. Seven and one-third innings, three hits, one run, eight strikeouts — his ERA dropped to 2.12 and his record improved to two and oh. Cruz drove in a run and was injured while throwing the ball in this game, though he stayed in and finished the contest. Sacramento scored seven, Choi homered, and the Apocalypse managed only one run off Jeon and Espenoza combined. Seven to one. Gunn followed with six and two-thirds innings of shutout ball on May 9th, improving to five and one. Van Ham tripled in the second inning to open the scoring and added two more singles. Alvarez and Lozano both homered. Five to nothing, and Sacramento's lead over San Jose stood at four games. May 10th was an offensive carnival. Lozano hit two home runs, Alvarez hit two home runs, Choi and Fernando Garcia each added one — five Sacramento home runs total — while Portland's Ryoji Hirayama went five for five, including an RBI triple, tying the Portland regular season hit record. Eleven to eight, Sacramento, in a game that resembled batting practice for both sides. Andretti's three and two-thirds innings of five earned runs were the rough edge in an otherwise dominant week, but the offense buried the problem. vs. San Jose, May 11-13 (1-2) May 11th was vintage Shinohara — three hits, a grand slam off Haddix in the seventh inning for his twelfth home run of the season, five RBI total. Jang threw five scoreless innings for the win, improving to five and one. Seven to one, and the win streak reached six. Then San Jose won the next two. May 12th: Cruz allowed four earned runs in four and one-third innings, and despite a Lozano solo homer, Sacramento lost four to two. May 13th: Jeon, coming off his dominant Portland start, allowed three runs in six innings and took the loss as San Jose's Efrain Flores went seven and one-third scattering only two runs. Three to two, San Jose, and the Demons left Sacramento having won the series and cut the lead to 2.5 games. @ Cleveland, May 14-15 (0-2) Cleveland is thirty and nine, and Sacramento got a firsthand look at why. May 14th: Gunn pitched well — six innings, one earned run — but Benson blew a save in the ninth and Cleveland's Jose Salcevo delivered a walk-off single. Six to five, Cleveland. May 15th was worse. Andretti allowed seven runs in three and two-thirds innings, including a three-run homer to Jason Makin in the first inning. Cleveland led six to nothing before Sacramento recorded an out in the second inning. Ten to three, final, and Sacramento's losing streak reached four — its longest of the season. ______________________________ LOZANO'S QUIET SEASON While Shinohara collects the league-wide attention — thirteen home runs, thirty-eight RBI, a .315 average, tied for second in the AL in total bases — Lozano has assembled a season that would be the headline for almost any other team. Seven home runs, twenty-seven RBI, a .295 average, two home runs in a single game on May 10th. He is doing this while also playing through a hit-by-pitch injury from late April that merited a special note in the box score and apparently required no time off. His defensive numbers — the Gold Glove from 2000 — remain elite. Lozano is twenty-three years old and quietly putting together the best all-around season of his career, in the shadow of a teammate's historic April. That's not a complaint. It's simply what depth looks like. ______________________________ THE NAVARRO SITUATION Navarro's hot home run on May 5th — his first of the season — and three RBI suggested the rib cage strain was behind him. Then came the May 6th note that he was injured while throwing the ball, and his numbers over his last seven games at the time of this report stood at .043 with zero home runs, a precipitous drop for a player hitting .330 a week earlier. He remains day-to-day, not on the injured list, but the throwing-arm issue layered on top of the rib cage strain is the kind of compounding injury situation that deserves monitoring. Cruz has filled in capably at shortstop when needed, and Fernando Garcia continues to provide value at second base. The depth exists. What's needed now is for Navarro's body to cooperate long enough for him to return to the form he showed in April. ______________________________ CLEVELAND, AND WHAT A 1.5-GAME LEAD MEANS NOW Cleveland's thirty and nine record is the best in either league by a wide margin, and the two games Sacramento just played against them were not competitive in either direction — a one-run walk-off loss followed by a blowout. Jason Makin is on pace for over forty home runs. The Cardinals' pitching, anchored by Jordan Sepulveda's seven shutout innings on May 15th, looked every bit as dominant as the record suggests. Meanwhile, San Jose went nine and one over this same stretch and is now 1.5 games behind Sacramento in the AL West — a margin that, two weeks ago, stood at 4.5 games. The division race that seemed settled in early May is, suddenly, a race again. Sacramento's record remains the best in the American League. But "best in the league" and "comfortable" are not the same thing, and this stretch made that distinction clear. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Adaeze Nwosu of Sacramento's Natomas neighborhood, a nurse, who asks: "Sacramento's lead over San Jose shrank from 4.5 games to 1.5 in less than two weeks. Is this a concerning trend or just baseball being baseball?" It's mostly the latter, though "mostly" is doing some work in that sentence. Over a hundred-and-sixty-two-game season, every team experiences stretches where they play below their level and stretches where an opponent plays above theirs — San Jose going nine and one is the kind of streak that happens to good teams periodically, and it happened to coincide with Sacramento running into the best team in baseball for two games. The combination compressed what looked like a comfortable cushion into a one-game series swing. What would be genuinely concerning is if this represented a sustained pattern — if Sacramento's pitching depth, particularly Andretti's recent struggles and the bullpen's recent late-inning issues against Cleveland and San Jose, started showing up consistently rather than in isolated bad stretches. One four-game losing streak in mid-May, against a thirty-and-nine team and a divisional rival playing its best baseball of the season, is not a crisis. It's a reminder that the margin in the AL West is real, and Sacramento needs to keep playing at the level that built the cushion in the first place. From Conor Fitzgerald of Sacramento's Rosemont neighborhood, an auto mechanic, who asks: "Lozano is having a great season but Shinohara gets all the attention. Does that bother the clubhouse at all?" From everything I've observed about this roster's culture over the past two seasons, no — and I'd point to the way Lozano himself talks about the team as evidence. This is a player who, after a World Series in which he hit five home runs, spent the entire offseason signing a below-market extension because he wanted to stay. Players who operate that way generally aren't keeping score on attention. Shinohara's April was historic — a league-wide monthly award doesn't happen often, and the coverage it generates is proportional and earned. Lozano's season, while less publicized, is being noticed by the people who matter most: his manager, who continues to bat him in a key spot in the lineup, and his teammates, who know exactly what a .295 average with seven home runs from the three-hole means to a lineup's structure. The clubhouse dynamic on a team this deep tends to reward the players who produce quietly and consistently just as much as the ones who produce loudly — sometimes more, because the quiet productivity is what makes the loud productivity sustainable. From Lilit Hovhannisyan of Sacramento's Fair Oaks neighborhood, an accountant, who asks: "After getting swept by Cleveland, how does Sacramento's pitching staff compare to a team that's thirty and nine?" Not favorably, at least not in these two specific games — but the comparison is worth being precise about. Cleveland's thirty and nine record reflects sustained excellence across their rotation and lineup over six weeks. Sacramento's twenty-seven and thirteen reflects a roster that has dealt with injuries to Lopez, Choi, Navarro, Esparza, and Rubalcava simultaneously and still produced the best record in the American League. The two games against Cleveland exposed real issues — Andretti's three and two-thirds innings of seven runs on May 15th was his worst start since the early-April Portland disasters, and the bullpen's ninth-inning failure on May 14th continues a pattern of late-inning fragility that has cropped up periodically all season. Those are legitimate concerns. But comparing any team's worst two-game stretch to the league's best team's overall record isn't a fair measure of the gap. The more useful comparison is head-to-head over a full season, and Sacramento and Cleveland play in different leagues — they won't meet again unless October arranges it. If it does, these two games will be worth revisiting. For now, they're a data point, not a verdict. ______________________________ Twenty-seven and thirteen. A four-game losing streak to snap with Fort Worth coming to Sacramento, then a trip to Detroit. Navarro status unclear. Lopez still three weeks away. San Jose is breathing down Sacramento's neck for the first time all season. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.

06-15-2026, 11:01 AM	#386
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 548	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *May 16 – 27, 2001 \| Thirty-One and Twenty \| San Jose Takes the Lead in AL \| Choi Fractures a Finger* ______________________________ DEMONS WIN SIX IN A ROW, ALEJANDRO LOPEZ STARTS REHAB NEXT WEEK Eleven days ago, Sacramento's lead over San Jose stood at 1.5 games and felt fragile. It is no longer fragile, because it no longer exists. San Jose went nine and one over the span this article and the last one cover combined, capped by a six-game win streak that has them at thirty-six and fifteen — five games clear of Sacramento, who went four and seven over the same eleven days and dropped from first place to second for the first time all season. The low point arrived this past weekend, when Baltimore — twenty-one and thirty-one, the worst record in the American League — won two of three at Sutter Health Park. Sacramento lost series to Detroit, to Brooklyn, and to Baltimore in succession. The injury report has a new entry: Choi fractured a finger and will miss four to five weeks. And yet, buried in the same injury report, is the best news Sacramento has had in months — Lopez is one week from returning. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY vs. Fort Worth, May 16-17 (1-1) Jang threw five and one-third scoreless innings on May 16th, and Mollohan's two-run single in the eighth provided the margin in a three to one win. May 17th reversed it completely. Cruz allowed seven runs in six and two-thirds innings as Fort Worth's Terrell Miller, Jaylen Bernal, and Jayson Crumsey all homered. Eight to four, Fort Worth, and the series split. @ Detroit, May 18-20 (1-2) Jeon allowed five runs in four and two-thirds innings on May 18th, including a bases-clearing triple by Andy Alfonso that turned a two-one Sacramento lead into a four-two Detroit advantage. Eight to two, final, Detroit's largest margin of victory against Sacramento all season. May 19th: Gunn allowed five runs in three and two-thirds, Jimmy Rosen's three-run homer in the fourth was the difference, and Sacramento lost five to four. Detroit's third straight win; Sacramento's third straight loss. May 20th salvaged the series. Andretti threw six and one-third innings of two-run ball — his second strong outing in three starts — and the game went to extra innings tied at two. Fernando Garcia's run-scoring double in the top of the tenth put Sacramento ahead for good, and Musselman picked up his first win of the season in relief. Four to two, Sacramento, in ten innings. @ Brooklyn, May 21-23 (1-2) Brooklyn is thirty-five and fifteen, the best record in the American League, and they extended a winning streak to eight games at Sacramento's expense across the first two games of this series. May 21st: Jang threw six innings of two-run ball — a quality start — but Brooklyn's bullpen shut the door and Sacramento lost two to three, with Randy Gill's eighth-inning RBI groundout breaking the tie. May 22nd: Cruz allowed three runs in six innings, Mollohan hit a home run, but Brooklyn's Luis Vasquez threw seven strong innings and the Priests won five to three, extending their streak to eight. May 23rd: Chavarria. Two for five with two home runs, including a two-run shot off Tejeda in the top of the tenth inning that broke a four-four tie and ended Brooklyn's eight-game streak. Jeon allowed three runs in five innings, the bullpen held on through extra innings, and Sacramento won six to five. After two frustrating losses against the league's hottest team, Sacramento found a way to take the finale. vs. Baltimore, May 25-27 (1-2) Baltimore arrived having lost four in a row and left having won two of three. May 25th: Alvarez hit two home runs and drove in four, Shinohara added a solo shot, and Gunn threw seven innings of three-run ball. Five to three, Sacramento, the high point of the homestand. May 26th: Jang allowed seven runs — six earned — in four and two-thirds innings, his worst start since the early-season struggles. David Ryals hit a bases-clearing double and a home run, finishing three for five with six RBI. Eleven to four, Baltimore. May 27th: Cruz allowed five runs in six and one-third innings, his fourth straight start without a win. Tony Villalobos hit a home run and drove in two. Six to two, Baltimore, completing a series loss to the worst team in the league. ______________________________ LOPEZ: ONE WEEK The injury report listed Lopez's ACL recovery at one week remaining as of May 27th — down from three weeks just two weeks ago, down from eight weeks the week before that. The timeline is accelerating, which is the best possible sign for a recovery of this kind. When Lopez returns, Sacramento gets back its leadoff hitter, its center fielder, and the player who stole seventy-three bases and hit twenty home runs in 2000. He has not played a single game in 2001. The lineup that has carried this team through April and most of May — built around Shinohara's historic production, Lozano's quiet excellence, and contributions up and down from Mollohan, Alvarez, Chavarria, and Van Ham — is about to get considerably deeper, at almost the exact moment it needs it most. ______________________________ CHOI'S FRACTURE AND THE OUTFIELD SITUATION Choi fractured a finger and will be out four to five weeks — a frustrating setback for a player who had returned from the quadriceps contusion just a month ago and was hitting well in his time back. The timing is awkward: Choi's absence and Lopez's impending return overlap almost exactly, meaning the outfield picture in early June will be in transition regardless. Van Ham, Durango, and Chavarria have all filled outfield innings capably this season and will continue to do so. The good news is that Sacramento's outfield depth has been tested all year and has not yet failed to produce. ______________________________ THE ROTATION'S ROUGH PATCH Every starter not named Andretti had a rough outing somewhere in this stretch. Jang, who carried a sub-3.00 ERA into mid-May, allowed thirteen runs combined in his last two starts against Baltimore — the same team that was the worst in the American League entering the series. Cruz's struggles have now extended across four winless starts, with his ERA climbing to 4.83. Jeon's two starts produced eight runs in nine and two-thirds innings combined. Gunn was the exception, his Baltimore start a model of efficiency. None of these are individually alarming — every pitcher has bad stretches — but the cumulative effect, arriving at the same time as a four-and-seven overall record, is what turned a comfortable lead into a five-game deficit. The rotation needs to find its May form again, and soon, because San Jose's six-game win streak suggests they have no intention of slowing down. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE San Jose's surge to thirty-six and fifteen — a six-game win streak that coincided almost exactly with Sacramento's worst stretch of the season — has flipped the AL West standings completely. Sacramento now sits five games back in the division but holds a comfortable 4.5-game lead in the wild card race, which remains a meaningful safety net. Brooklyn's eight-game win streak, snapped by Sacramento on May 23rd, leaves them at thirty-five and fifteen, tied with San Jose for the best record in the American League. Cleveland remains the NL's best at thirty-four and sixteen. The top of both leagues continues to separate from the pack, and Sacramento — currently 31-20 — needs to decide which group it belongs in. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Priya Chandrasekaran of Sacramento's Land Park neighborhood, a software engineer, who asks: "Sacramento just lost a series to the worst team in the AL. How worried should fans be at this point in the season?" Worried is probably the wrong word, but attentive is the right one. Losing a series to a twenty-one-and-thirty-one team is never a good look, and the way it happened — Jang and Cruz both getting hit hard in consecutive games — is the part that deserves scrutiny more than the result itself. Baltimore has talented individual hitters even on a bad team, and Ryals's six-RBI day on May 26th was simply a great individual performance rather than evidence of some systemic Baltimore strength. What matters more is whether Jang and Cruz's recent struggles represent fatigue, mechanical issues, or simple variance. Both pitchers carried excellent numbers for the first two months of the season; both had rough two-start stretches in late May. If those rough patches extend into June, that's when concern becomes warranted. Right now, it's the kind of stretch that happens over a hundred-and-sixty-two-game season, magnified by the fact that it coincided with San Jose's best stretch of the year. From Marcus Delacroix of Sacramento's Tahoe Park neighborhood, a postal worker, who asks: "Lopez comes back in about a week. What does that actually change for this team?" It changes the top of the lineup and the bottom of the defensive alignment simultaneously, which is rare for a single player's return. Offensively, Lopez gives Sacramento a true leadoff hitter — someone who gets on base and creates pressure with his legs in a way nobody currently in the lineup quite replicates. Seventy-three stolen bases last year is not a typo, and even accounting for some natural decline in his first weeks back from an ACL tear, the speed element alone changes how opposing pitchers approach the top of the order. Defensively, Lopez in center field allows Choi — when he returns from his finger fracture — to shift to a corner, and gives the outfield its best defensive alignment of the season. The timing, with Choi out and Lopez in, means there won't be a moment where Sacramento has both at full strength immediately. But by late June, if both are healthy, this lineup and defense look meaningfully different — and better — than anything Sacramento has fielded in 2001 so far. From Anezka Novotna of Sacramento's Greenhaven neighborhood, a dental hygienist, who asks: "Chavarria's walk-off-style home run in the tenth inning snapped Brooklyn's eight-game win streak. How significant was that game in the context of this rough stretch?" More significant than its place in the standings suggests. Sacramento had just lost two straight to the best team in the American League, on the road, with a rotation that was starting to show cracks. A third straight loss in that series — extending Brooklyn's streak to nine — would have compounded a difficult week into something approaching a crisis narrative heading into the Baltimore series. Instead, Chavarria's two-homer game, capped by the go-ahead shot in extra innings, gave Sacramento a tangible response: yes, we can still beat the best team in the league, even on the road, even after losing the first two. That the very next series against Baltimore went poorly anyway tells you the Chavarria game didn't fix everything — but it prevented a bad week from becoming something worse, and it's the kind of performance that, in retrospect, often marks the bottom of a stretch like this one rather than the middle of it. We'll know more in the next ten days. ______________________________ Thirty-one and twenty. Five games behind San Jose, 4.5 up in the wild card race. Portland pays visit to Sacramento, homestand then continues with three-game series against Seattle. The defending champions need to find their May form again, fast. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.

06-15-2026, 09:33 PM	#387
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 548	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *May 29 – June 7, 2001 \| Ten Wins in Ten Games\| Cruz Throws Consecutive Shutout-Quality Starts \| Jeon One-Hits Seattle* ______________________________ FROM FIVE GAMES BEHIND TO SHARED LEAD IN ELLEVEN DAYS The math is simple and the implication enormous. On May 27th, Sacramento trailed San Jose by five games in the AL West. On June 7th, both teams are forty-one and twenty, the identical record, sharing first place in the division. Sacramento won ten consecutive games. San Jose went five and five. The gap that opened during Sacramento's late-May stumble was erased in eleven days by the kind of sustained excellence this organization has produced repeatedly this season when the moment demanded it. The defense of the championship is no longer a subplot. Friday night in San Jose, with both teams at forty-one and twenty, the game will matter as much as any regular-season game has mattered this year. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY vs. Portland, May 29-31 (3-0) The first game of the win streak nearly ended before it began. Jeon allowed four home runs in four and one-third innings — Gorum, Garcia, Burrows, and Ruiz all went deep — and Sacramento trailed five to one going into the sixth. The offense clawed back: Mollohan drove in two, Lozano homered in the seventh, Nakazawa doubled in the ninth to tie it, and then Chavarria's double moved runners up before Durango drew a walk-off walk from Gorham. Six to five. A win that required heroics from multiple hitters, was followed the next day by a performance that made things look easy. May 30th: Gunn threw seven and one-third innings, Van Ham's two-run single in the eighth turned a three-all tie into a six-four lead, and Sacramento won. May 31st: Alvarez hit two home runs off Sandoval, Mollohan added another, and Sacramento swept the Portland series with a seven-five win despite Luna blowing a save and Blevins — the Portland right fielder who was in Sacramento's organization earlier this year — hitting a three-run homer off him in the sixth. vs. Seattle, June 1-3 (3-0) June 1st was the clearest signal yet that Vic Cruz had rediscovered himself. Six and one-third innings of one-hit shutout baseball against Seattle, four strikeouts, two walks, ninety pitches. Van Ham hit two home runs. Lozano hit another. Six to one, and Cruz improved to three and four with an ERA that had fallen to 4.29 and would fall further. June 2nd: Andretti threw five innings and allowed one run. Shinohara hit his sixteenth home run. Mollohan hit his seventh. Sacramento scored five in the first inning and won seven to one. June 3rd was Jeon. One hit in six innings. Zero walks, ten strikeouts on ninety-three pitches, the economy of an ace who located every pitch and made hitters look helpless. The final was two to one, decided by Mollohan's RBI single in the seventh and preserved by Ke, Medina, and Benson combining for two scoreless innings after Jeon exited. Seattle went ten in a row on the losing side, Sacramento had won six straight. @ Tucson, June 4-5 (2-0) June 4th game in the desert required patience. Marco Cervantes threw eight and one-third innings of two-run ball for Tucson, and Sacramento sat at one to one through eight until Navarro doubled home the go-ahead run in the top of the ninth, Benson closed it, and the win streak reached seven. June 5th was less restrained. Jang threw five scoreless innings. Fernando Garcia hit two home runs, driving in four. Shinohara hit his seventeenth. Van Ham hit his ninth. Sacramento scored eleven and the sweep was complete. vs. Albuquerque, June 6-7 (2-0) Cruz's second shutout-quality start in eight days: seven innings against Albuquerque on June 6th, three hits, eight strikeouts, no runs. Sacramento scored in six of eight innings and reached fourteen runs total — the bullpen allowed eight in the ninth to make the final less comfortable than the game itself, but the result was never in doubt. Alvarez homered for the twelfth time. Garcia was hit by a pitch and walked twice on top of the offensive contributions he'd made the night before. The win streak reached nine. Ten: On June 7th Andretti allowed four runs in five and two-thirds innings but Sacramento doing enough to win anyway. Van Ham hit his tenth homer, Chavarria homered his tenth as well, and Florez delivered the decisive RBI single in the seventh with two out and a runner in scoring position. Benson's sixteenth save. Five to four, and the ten-game streak was complete. ______________________________ VIC CRUZ'S TURNAROUND His ERA was 4.83 at the end of May. It stands at 3.82 entering this weekend. The Seattle game — six and one-third innings of one-hit baseball — and the Albuquerque start — seven innings of three-hit shutout work — represent the best consecutive starts Cruz has had all season. The mechanical questions that surfaced during the Baltimore series, where he allowed five runs in six and one-third innings and absorbed the loss, appear to have resolved themselves. What caused the rough patch is less important than what has followed it: two starts in which the ground-ball tendencies that made him effective in the Boston series returned in full, and the strike zone expanded to include all corners rather than just the ones the hitter expects. He is now three and four in 2001. The record understates what his best looks like, which is among the better things a manager can say about a starting pitcher heading into a three-game series against the division co-leader. ______________________________ JEON'S ONE-HITTER Six innings, one hit, ten strikeouts, zero walks against Seattle on June 3rd. That is not just a quality start — it is a statement, coming from a pitcher whose ERA entering the game was 4.19 and whose health has been a recurring concern all season. The Seattle lineup, which has been one of the worst in the American League, did not make the performance meaningless; Jeon's stuff was demonstrably better than anything he had produced since his Portland start in May, and the ten-strikeout, zero-walk combination suggests command and velocity working simultaneously rather than the usual situation where one compensates for the other. Whether this was the beginning of a sustained run of good health and good mechanics is the question that frames the rest of his season. The answer requires more starts. ______________________________ VICTOR ALVAREZ IS HITTING Twelve home runs, thirty-nine RBI, a .248 average. Three home runs in four days against Portland and Albuquerque. The twenty-one-year-old first baseman who entered the season at the bottom of the lineup's expected power contributors has become, unambiguously, one of Sacramento's most important offensive players. He is currently fourth in the AL in home runs. His RBI total trails only Shinohara on the roster. The June version of Victor Alvarez looks almost nothing like the April version who was batting .120 through twelve games, which is either evidence that an extended April adjustment period finally resolved itself into production, or evidence that this team has enough depth that even a struggling first baseman could get the at-bats needed to find his swing. Both explanations are probably partially true. The result is that Sacramento now has four players — Shinohara, Alvarez, Van Ham, and Chavarria — with at least nine home runs each, and the team leads the AL in home runs. That kind of offensive depth, distributed across the lineup, makes the team extremely difficult to neutralize with any single pitching strategy. ______________________________ LOPEZ AND THE INJURY REPORT Alejandro Lopez no longer appears on the injury list. He was expected to return around this week or at the beginning of the next after brief rehab stint in Oxnard, where he appeared as a pinch hitter in three games with six at-bat appearances, and his absence from the IL means he has been officially activated. When he does step into the lineup — likely in the coming days, possibly in San Jose — Sacramento will have its leadoff hitter and starting center fielder back for the first time since October. The offensive lineup that produced those ten wins will immediately become deeper. Choi remains out with the fractured finger — minimum three weeks away from coming back — and Esparza's elbow surgery recovery expectation stands at two weeks. The deep problems, Rubalcava and Delgado with their torn rotator cuffs, are still months away. But the overall injury picture is meaningfully better than it has been at any point in 2001. ______________________________ MEDINA'S STREAK This is something that absolutely deserves its own paragraph: Edwin Medina has not allowed a run in twenty-two consecutive appearances. That is not a typo. Twenty-two games, zero earned runs, against lineups ranging from Portland to Albuquerque to the best teams Sacramento has faced. He is listed at an ERA of 0.46 for the season. The bullpen reliever who was the subject of legitimate concern as recently as April has become arguably the most reliable arm in the Sacramento bullpen, used in the middle innings of close games and emerging without damage every time. Twenty-two appearances. Nothing across. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE Cleveland stands at thirty-nine and twenty-one in the NL Central — still the best record in baseball — and Jorge Jaime of Baltimore has been placed on the injured list with a strained thoracic spine, two weeks out at a time when he was hitting .304 with nineteen home runs and forty RBI. The injury is significant for Baltimore's already-slim playoff chances but changes nothing about anyone else's October calculus. Long Beach at forty-one and twenty in the NL Pacific is running neck-and-neck with both Sacramento and San Jose for the best record in professional baseball. Three teams at the same winning percentage at the quarter-pole of the season is an unusual alignment, and it speaks to the depth of quality across both leagues this year. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Benedikt Auer of Sacramento's Elmhurst neighborhood, a pastry chef, who asks: "Sacramento went ten and zero and is now tied with San Jose. You wrote last month that this team needed to find its May form again. Has it?" It has found something even better than its May form. May was when Sacramento first built its lead — the April offensive explosion, the strong rotation work from Jang and Cruz and Gunn, the win streak that pushed the lead to four and a half games. What happened in late May was a regression to something closer to the team's true floor. What has happened in this ten-game stretch is a combination of the May offense — the home runs, the relentless middle-of-the-lineup production — and improved starting pitching, particularly from Cruz. The rotation's ERA over these ten games is significantly better than it was over the four-and-seven stretch that preceded them. What I can say with confidence entering this San Jose series is that Sacramento has found a version of itself that can compete with anyone. Whether it has found a version that can sustain ten wins in ten games over the rest of the season is a different and longer question. From Chiamaka Okorie of Sacramento's Del Paso Heights neighborhood, a warehouse supervisor, who asks: "Van Ham has ten home runs and thirty-one RBI from the bench and in spot starts. How is that possible from a player nobody expected to contribute at this level?" Tim Van Ham is the kind of player organizations discover when circumstances force them to find hidden gems in difficult circumstances. Before this season, he had never been asked to carry lineup responsibility. He came into 2001 as the fourth outfielder, filling in for Lopez and Choi as needed and providing the team insurance coverage against injury. What has happened instead is that the injuries created a runway long enough for Van Ham to establish himself as a legitimate lineup contributor, not a placeholder. His swing is compact and his approach to left-handed pitching is particularly effective. He is not the player Shinohara is, not the player Alvarez has become, not the power threat Lozano is. But he is a professional hitter who, given consistent at-bats, has produced at a level that would have ranked among the top five on most teams' expected offensive contributions at the start of the year. When Lopez returns fully and Choi comes back from the fractured finger, Van Ham's role will diminish. What he has done while in that role will not be forgotten. From Soo-jin Park of Sacramento's Fruitridge neighborhood, a physical therapist, who asks: "Friday's game in San Jose is arguably the biggest regular-season game of the year so far. What are the stakes?" The standings stakes are obvious: whoever wins the series will certainly move to first place outright. The momentum stakes are equally significant — Sacramento arrives on a ten-game win streak against mostly weaker opposition; San Jose arrives having gone five and five over the same period, including a loss on June 7th. The psychological stakes are perhaps the most interesting. This is the same team Sacramento lost two of three to at home in mid-May, with Suzuki and Haddix and Flores at the top of their rotation. Sacramento's lineup, particularly with Alvarez hitting, Cruz finding his form, and Lopez likely to appear in some capacity, looks different than it did in May. Whether that difference is enough to take two of three at Excite Ballpark — where San Jose is twenty-two and eight this season — is the most important question in the American League this week. ______________________________ Forty-one and twenty on the season and tied with San Jose. Lopez activated. Friday night showdown looms big at Excite Ballpark, with first place in the AL West on the line for the first time since the first week of the season. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.

06-16-2026, 10:34 AM	#388
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 548	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *June 8 – 17, 2001 \| Forty-Seven and Twenty-Three \| Demon's Haddix Out Three Months \| Medina's Streak Reaches Twenty-Seven Games* ______________________________ LOPEZ COMES OFF THE BENCH IN EXTRA INNING TO COMPLETE THE SWEEP He entered the June 10th game in the tenth inning, replacing Shinohara in center field. He drew a walk in his first plate appearance back. In the twelfth, with Sacramento tied at seven and Lozano on third base with nobody out, Alejandro Lopez hit a sacrifice fly off Danny St. Clair, the Prayers took an eight-to-seven lead, Musselman got the final out, and Sacramento had swept three games at Excite Ballpark from a San Jose team that entered the series four games over .500 and left it having lost four straight. There are moments in a season that arrive with more meaning than their statistical weight suggests. Lopez has one walk and one sacrifice fly in his 2001 line. What those two plate appearances actually represent is eight months of rehabilitation, a postseason that was ripped away from him in the third game of the ALDS, and a return timed so precisely to a meaningful moment that it would read as convenient fiction if it were invented. It was not invented. He walked to the plate in the twelfth inning of a tied game, seven hours into a baseball trip to San Jose, and produced the run that won the sweep. That is the story. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY @ San Jose, June 8-10 (3-0) Jeon threw five and one-third innings on June 8th, allowed one run, struck out seven, and left with a lead the bullpen protected comfortably. Shinohara's two-run homer in the first set the tone. Van Ham added a two-run shot in the second. Chavarria hit his eleventh home run in the seventh. Six to one, Sacramento, and first place was theirs outright. June 9th was Navarro's afternoon. Two for four with a double and a home run, five RBI. Lozano hit his tenth homer. Van Ham his twelfth. Durango, stepping into a lineup that had shuffled considerably, hit his first home run of the season. Gunn went five and one-third innings and the offense scored eleven runs against a San Jose rotation that was showing early signs of the vulnerability that would become apparent by the end of the week. Eleven to two, and Sacramento led the division by two. June 10th went twelve innings. Jang was excellent through six, allowing one run, then the bullpen unraveled in the late innings: Benson allowed San Jose to tie in the ninth, Ke allowed Montemayor's two-run homer in the tenth to give San Jose the lead, Sacramento answered with Garcia's two-run homer in the eleventh to retake it, then San Jose tied it again on Vasquez's shot off Ke in the same inning. Eight pitchers and a thousand heartbeats later, Lopez walked in his first trip to the plate, advanced to third during the inning's action, and hit a sacrifice fly in the twelfth that stood as the winning run. Luna picked up the win. Musselman closed. Eight to seven, Sacramento, and the sweep was done. @ Charlotte, June 12-14 (1-2) The Charlotte series opened in extra innings on June 12th, Cruz allowing four earned runs in four and one-third innings before the bullpen bridged to the tenth. With Charlotte leading five to four and one out, Alvarez singled home the tying run, then Garcia's double pushed the go-ahead run across. Gutierrez got the final out, Benson closed the tenth for the save, and Sacramento won seven to five. In the fifth inning of that game, Lopez pinch hit for Mollohan and singled home a run. He is now hitting .333. June 13th was the inverse. Jeon allowed six runs in six and one-third innings, though only three were earned — Charlotte's errors and Sacramento's errors combined to make the game messy in both directions. The decisive moment was a Cifuentes three-run homer in the fourth. Sacramento scored five runs in the fifth, including Lopez's three-run double off Guerra with the bases loaded that temporarily tied the game, but Charlotte rallied and won in eleven innings on a Galindo sacrifice fly off Benson. Eight to seven, Charlotte. June 14th: Steve James threw seven and one-third shutout innings, Rosario hit a two-run homer off Gunn in the fifth, and Sacramento managed four hits total. Three to nothing, Charlotte, the series disappointing loss complete. vs. Houston, June 15-17 (2-1) Jang dominated on June 15th — five and one-third innings, zero runs, eight strikeouts, a 2.90 ERA entering the weekend. Cruz hit a two-run homer off Guzman in the second inning, and Sacramento won five to one in a game that was never remotely competitive after the second inning. Cruz's fourth home run of the season from the shortstop position added to a day that felt like the whole roster was performing correctly at once. June 16th game lasted twelve innings and ended in a loss, which is the kind of result that requires a full accounting. Andretti went six and one-third innings of two-run ball — a quality start. Then Luna blew a save in the seventh, Houston tied it in the seventh, Sacramento led again in the fourth through the ninth, and when Benitez — Houston's closer — allowed a Durango two-run double in the tenth to put Sacramento ahead, the game finally seemed settled. It was not. Medina allowed a McSherry double in the eleventh to tie it again. In the twelfth, with Ke on the mound, Brady hit a sacrifice fly. Houston eight, Sacramento seven, after four hours and twenty-two minutes and enough bullpen arms for two ordinary games. Cruz redeemed the series on June 17th. Six and two-thirds innings, one run, seven strikeouts — his third quality start in four outings. Navarro hit two home runs, including a three-run shot in the second, and drove in five. Five runs in the first two innings and the game was functionally over. Eight to one. ______________________________ ALEJANDRO LOPEZ, SEVEN GAMES IN Nineteen at-bats, six hits, a .316 average, seven RBI, zero home runs, and the game-winning sacrifice fly at San Jose. Those are the numbers. What they do not capture is the quality of contact — Lopez is hitting the ball to the gaps, not undercutting it or pulling off in the way hitters often do when returning from long injury absences. His first week back suggests a player who spent his rehabilitation time working on his mechanics rather than simply waiting for the healing to finish. Whether the power returns to the level of his 2000 season — twenty home runs and seventy-three stolen bases — is a longer question. What is evident already is that he can play at this level, and that his presence in the lineup changes how opposing pitchers approach the top of the order. Choi is one week from returning. When both are healthy simultaneously, the outfield and the offensive structure around Shinohara become considerably more dangerous. ______________________________ HADDIX AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR SAN JOSE The news arrived June 19th: George Haddix has ulnar nerve entrapment and expects to miss three months. He was six and eight on the season with a 4.55 ERA — not the dominant pitcher San Jose projected him to be — but he was still a rotation innings-eater and a name opposing lineups had to prepare for. His absence removes the third arm from a rotation that now relies on Suzuki, Flores, and whoever fills in. San Jose was already on a five-game losing streak entering the week. They are now four and a half games back in the division with their third starter gone until September. This does not mean the division race is over. San Jose is forty-three and twenty-eight and will not stay on a losing streak indefinitely. Suzuki's ERA is 2.55 and he is one of the best pitchers in either league. The Demons are a better team than their recent results suggest. But a three-month absence for Haddix, layered on top of the losses to Sacramento last weekend, makes the path back to the division lead meaningfully harder than it looked on June 7th when both teams were tied. ______________________________ THE HOT STREAKS THAT AREN'T GETTING ENOUGH ATTENTION Jang is seven and two with a 2.90 ERA — the best among Sacramento starters and among the AL's best overall. His last three starts produced a 0.55 ERA. He is doing this while walking fewer than three batters per nine innings and generating ground-ball outs at a rate that keeps his pitch counts manageable. The organization paid $1.27 million per year for this, and by mid-June it looks like a bargain in the same way Lozano's extension looked like a bargain in November. Cruz is three and zero with a 1.85 ERA over his last four starts — a complete reversal of the rough patch that produced two losses in late May. The June version of Cruz works quickly, changes speeds effectively, and trusts his ground-ball rate to generate early-count outs. When he is pitching like this, Sacramento's rotation depth looks very different than it did during the Charlotte series opener. Medina has not allowed an earned run in twenty-seven consecutive appearances. He is being asked to bridge between the starters and Benson in the seventh and eighth innings of close games, and he has delivered every time. His ERA is 0.75 for the season. His WHIP is 1.17. He has become the most reliable arm in the bullpen. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE San Jose's five-game losing streak — all losses to Sacramento, Charlotte, and Detroit — dropped them from a half-game back of Sacramento on June 7th to four and a half games back by June 17th. The most dramatic ten-day swing in the AL West standings this season. Whether they recover depends largely on whether the rotation can absorb Haddix's absence. Suzuki and Flores are capable. The back of the rotation is now a question. Long Beach at forty-six and twenty-five remains the NL's standard. Brooklyn at forty-five and twenty-four is running them close in the East. Cleveland at forty-four and twenty-five continues to make the NL Central look like its personal property. The October landscape is beginning to take shape, and Sacramento's forty-seven and twenty-three record places them firmly among the teams that look like October participants. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Vahan Gevorgyan of Sacramento's Hagginwood neighborhood, a school bus driver, who asks: "Lopez came back and immediately hit a walk-off sacrifice fly in twelve innings at San Jose. Was that the moment of the season so far?" It competes seriously for that title. The list of comparable moments includes Van Ham's two-grand-slam afternoon at Boston, Navarro's five-RBI game in the June 9th series opener here, the ten-game win streak that erased the five-game deficit in May. But there is something particular about the Lopez sac fly that the others cannot quite replicate: it was the first meaningful at-bat of his return, it came in the highest-leverage situation in the highest-stakes series of the year, and it came against the team Sacramento needs to beat to win the division. Eight months of recovery work, arriving precisely on schedule, in the twelfth inning of a game that produced the sweep. Baseball has a taste for the dramatic. Sometimes it actually delivers. From Beatriz Almeida of Sacramento's Meadowview neighborhood, a registered nurse, who asks: "Benson has seven blown saves. Is that a problem heading into the second half?" It is a data point worth watching but not yet a crisis. Benson is seven and three with seventeen saves and a 3.27 ERA. The blown saves have arrived in clusters — June 10th at San Jose, June 13th at Charlotte, June 16th against Houston — but they have also been followed, in most cases, by wins that absorbed the damage. What the blown save total tells you is that Benson's command in very high-leverage situations — tie game or one-run lead in the ninth — has been inconsistent, which is the one thing a closer cannot afford to be consistently. His underlying numbers are good: he's striking out more than a batter per inning, his walk rate is manageable, and the home run rate is low. This does not look like a closer who has lost his ability. It looks like a closer who has had some bad nights in the wrong games. Whether that pattern continues in the second half is the relevant question, and the honest answer is that nobody knows. I will say this: if Sacramento reaches October with a division title or a playoff spot, the blown saves will be a footnote. If they cost the team a series, they will be the story. Right now they are neither. From Kwame Osei of Sacramento's North Sacramento neighborhood, a restaurant owner, who asks: "Sacramento is 47-23 and San Jose just lost Haddix for three months. Is the division race effectively over?" It is not, and I say that with confidence based on evidence rather than false optimism. Forty-seven and twenty-three is an excellent record. Four and a half games is a meaningful lead. A hundred and one games remain on the schedule. San Jose is still forty-three and twenty-eight, which would be the best record in the AL Central as of today. Suzuki is still one of the best pitchers in professional baseball. The Demons' offense, which produces runs at one of the highest rates in the AL, does not become less dangerous because Haddix is pitching from a couch for three months. What the Haddix injury changes is the probability distribution — it tilts the odds meaningfully in Sacramento's favor, it makes the kind of ten-game losing streak that erased a five-game lead less likely to recur. But it does not end the race. The race ends in September. Sacramento needs to play at its current level for the next three months and maintain the lead. That is the task. A four-and-a-half-game lead with a hundred-and-one games left is a cushion, not a guarantee. ______________________________ Forty-seven and twenty-three. Four and a half up on San Jose, who have lost five straight. Lopez is hitting .316, Choi is a week away. Esparza is four days away, but will require some serious rehab in the minors. Prayers travel to Seattle for three games beginning Tuesday, then return home to host Portland. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.

06-16-2026, 11:04 PM	#389
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 548	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *June 19 – 28, 2001 \| Fifty-Four and Twenty-Six \| Medina's Streak Ends in Seattle \| The Lead Is Seven Games* ______________________________ THE INFIELD IS FALLING APART — LOZANO, GARCIA, AND DEVORE ALL HURT Lozano has shoulder tendinitis and went on the injured list after being hurt throwing in the June 27th game. Fernando Garcia has a sore elbow and has been out since June 24th. Cody DeVore developed knee tendinitis and is listed as day-to-day. Three of Sacramento's infielders are unavailable simultaneously, which on most rosters would constitute a genuine crisis. On this roster, it has produced: Vic Cruz going three and zero with a 2.29 ERA over three starts, Jang going three and zero with a 2.45 ERA over five starts, Andretti posting a 2.21 ERA over three starts, and Espenoza allowing zero runs in his last eight appearances. Four Sacramento pitchers on simultaneous hot streaks, during a week when the infield behind them was being rebuilt with utility players and, please forgive me unintentional pun, daily prayers. Sometimes the only way a pitching staff can protect a shaky defense is to not need it. These four have found a way. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY @ Seattle, June 19-21 (1-2) Jeon allowed seven runs in five innings on June 19th. Seattle's Garza tripled and doubled. Welsh tripled. The last-place Lucifers won seven to one in a performance that belongs in the category of things that happen to defending champions who have been playing very good baseball for a long time and are due for a difficult evening. One bad start is one bad start. June 20th ended Medina's streak. After twenty-seven consecutive scoreless appearances, he entered with Sacramento trailing three to two in the eighth inning and allowed five runs in two-thirds of an inning — a Matthews two-run double, a Matney two-run double — and the game was over. His ERA, which had been sitting at 0.75, jumped to 2.55. Every streak ends. The way Medina's ended, in an inherited-runner situation in Seattle, while his starter had already left him nothing to protect, is the least catastrophic way of how a twenty-seven-game scoreless run concludes, and I am sure he will be fine. Lopez hit his first home run of the season in this game — a leadoff shot in the first inning — which was the one positive note in a seven-to-three loss. Gunn rebounded on June 21st with five innings of two-hit shutout ball through a rain delay that lasted nearly an hour. When play resumed, Sacramento scored five runs in the seventh on a bases-clearing double from Gil Cruz. Seven to nothing, a clean series split that would have been a cleaner road trip if Jeon had been better in the opener. vs. Portland, June 22-24 (3-0) Cruz on June 22nd: six and one-third innings, six hits, one run, nine strikeouts, zero walks. His ERA sits at 3.67 and falling. When Vic Cruz is working with that kind of control — ninety pitches and not a single walk issued — he is as difficult to score against as anyone in the rotation. Navarro had a two-run single in the third to stake him the early lead and the bullpen held it. Four to one. June 23rd was eleven innings of something approaching controlled chaos. Andretti threw six and one-third fine innings before Musselman allowed an inherited run and Medina surrendered a Deveney two-run homer in the eighth to give Portland a three-to-two lead. In the bottom of the ninth Sacramento tied it, the game extended to the eleventh, and in the end Chavarria was hit by a Sullivan pitch with the bases loaded to force in the winning run. Four to three. The win went to Benson, who threw two scoreless innings — his record now is eight and three in 2001. Jeon won June 24th start with six and one-third innings of two-run ball. Shinohara's double in the eighth scored the decisive run. Gutierrez and Medina closed it out. Garcia was injured while throwing the ball during this game; the elbow issue that has sidelined him for the foreseeable future. @ Los Angeles, June 25-26 (1-1) June 25th was Florez's day. Three for four, four runs scored, two RBI, a home run in the second inning, and energy from the bottom of the lineup that Sacramento needed after Garcia's injury forced another roster shuffle. Jang allowed four earned runs in five innings but Sacramento scored twelve. Navarro homered. Alvarez hit his thirteenth. Mollohan was hurt in a base collision during this game — a day-to-day minor issue that he shook off quickly enough to play two days later. On June 26th Gunn allowed five runs in five innings — his third start in the last six where he has surrendered four or more earned runs — and the offense couldn't overcome it. A Schoff pinch-hit single in the sixth scored the go-ahead run off Luna and Sacramento lost five to four. Gunn's ERA climbed to 3.77 and the question of whether his occasional roughness represents a pattern worth monitoring has returned. vs. Salt Lake City, June 27-28 (2-0) Cruz pitched six and two-thirds innings on June 27th and Sacramento scored eleven times. Lozano was hurt in the fourth inning throwing the ball and left — DeVore came in at third base and contributed a two-RBI double in the sixth. The win was straightforward and the injury was not. Andretti turned in seven and two-thirds innings on June 28th. Zero walks. Inning after inning of absolute command through a lineup that had no answer for his sequencing and location. His ERA dropped to 4.03. The offense provided eight runs. Eight to two. ______________________________ THE INFIELD SITUATION Lozano, Garcia, and DeVore are all unavailable, all with different timelines. Lozano with a shoulder tendinitis will be sidelined for a minimum of seven weeks — a timeline that doesn't align well with the kind of early-July schedule Sacramento can manage with depth. Garcia's sore elbow, as the early indication from training personnel suggests, will require about a month to heel. What replaces them in the interim: DeVore's knee has taken him off the field, Gil Cruz has been moving between second base and shortstop amid his own recurring hip strain that keeps surfacing whenever he runs hard, and Schmitt and Navarro are absorbing the bulk of the third-base innings. The good news is that Sacramento built a roster with this kind of redundancy specifically because the 2000 season demonstrated how quickly an injury list can compound. The less-good news is that compounding is exactly what has happened in the past ten days. ______________________________ THE ROTATION IN JUNE Four Sacramento starters have simultaneous hot streak going. Jang is three and zero over his last five starts with a 2.45 ERA. Cruz is three and zero over three starts with a 2.29 ERA. Andretti is one and zero over three starts with a 2.21 ERA. Espenoza has zero runs allowed in his last eight relief appearances. This does not happen often. When it does, it tends to carry a team through periods where the offense and defense are not performing at their ceilings, which is exactly the function it is serving right now. Cruz and Jang have been the most consistent. Cruz's evolution from late-May struggles — where his ERA briefly climbed toward five — back to the pitcher who threw seven shutout innings at Seattle in early June represents the rotation's most significant individual improvement. Andretti continues to provide the old-professional quality start four out of every five times he takes the ball. Jeon remains the one rotation variable: capable of one-hit performances like the June 3rd Seattle game and seven-run disasters like the June 19th Seattle game, sometimes in consecutive starts against similar competition. ______________________________ THE SEVEN-GAME LEAD Sacramento leads the AL West by seven games with about eighty games remaining. San Jose is forty-seven and thirty-three — a record that would lead the AL Central by three games over Detroit and Charlotte right now. They are a good team losing ground to a better one. The Haddix injury, the five-game losing streak in late May and early June, and the inability to gain ground during Sacramento's two-game Seattle stumble have combined to put Sacramento in a position where the division race — not yet over — is beginning to look like a formality. Seven games with eighty to play is the kind of lead that requires a specific kind of catastrophic month to overcome, and so far Sacramento has shown no inclination to have that month. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE Charlotte and Detroit are tied atop the AL Central at forty-six and thirty-four, which makes the Central the most competitive division race in the league. The NL is shaping up around Long Beach, El Paso, and Cleveland — all above fifty wins, all looking like October participants. Marco Corral of Vancouver leads the league in strikeouts at a hundred and thirty-two, which is the kind of number that makes the fact that he was on the mound against Sacramento in the World Series last October feel recent and relevant. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Roksana Wiśniewska of Sacramento's Woodlake neighborhood, a kindergarten teacher, who asks: "Medina's twenty-seven-game scoreless streak finally ended. Was the streak sustainable at all, or was the end inevitable?" All streaks are eventually inevitable to end — the question is always when and how. What made Medina's run remarkable was the consistency of the circumstances in which he was deployed: inherited runners, high-leverage middle innings, against lineups that were actively trying to score. He was not stringing together scoreless outings against weak opponents in blowout games. He was holding leads when the starters left the game with problems unresolved. The Seattle ending — five runs in two-thirds of an inning with two inherited runners already on base — was rough, but the losses those runs produced were already structural before he threw a pitch. His ERA over the season remains 2.55. He has been one of the two or three most important bullpen arms in the American League in 2001. A bad inning in Seattle does not change what he has built, and the two subsequent appearances in which he allowed nothing suggest the rust shook off quickly. From Sébastien Mbeki of Sacramento's Colonial Heights neighborhood, a software developer, who asks: "Lozano, Garcia, and DeVore are all hurt. Can this roster actually absorb three infield injuries at once?" The evidence from this ten-game stretch suggests yes — barely and inelegantly, but yes. Gil Cruz has played through a recurring hip strain. Navarro has absorbed some third-base innings while also managing his own earlier rib-cage soreness. Schmitt, who has been the first utility infielder off the bench all season, has accumulated seven home runs in limited playing time and shown he can handle more than pinch-hit appearances. DeVore, before his knee issue arrived on June 28th, delivered a four-RBI double in what turned out to be his final healthy at-bat of the stretch. The infield depth is thinner than the pitching depth — but when Lozano and Garcia return, the depth picture will look considerably better again. The organization planned for two concurrent injuries. Three at once is the kind of thing that tests planning beyond its design limits. Sacramento is at the edge of that threshold but not past it. From Kenji Watanabe of Sacramento's Arden Acres neighborhood, an accountant, who asks: "With a seven-game lead and the rotation pitching like this, is it time to start preparing for October planning?" It is not time to prepare for October, because July and August still exist on the calendar and baseball tends to punish teams that declare victory before September. What the seven-game lead does allow is a shift in risk tolerance — Sacramento can absorb a rough week or even a rough series without it constituting a genuine threat to the division. It can afford to manage Andretti's innings more carefully. It can afford to bring Lozano and Garcia back from their respective injuries at a pace that prioritizes their long-term health rather than their short-term availability. Those are real advantages produced by a real lead. They are not, however, a championship. The team that won the 2000 World Series trailed in every playoff series at some point and found ways to win anyway. The 2001 team leading by seven games in late June needs to maintain its focus as much as any version of this franchise ever has, because seven games feels large right now and will feel different if October arrives with a rotation that has been mismanaged or a third baseman who has been pushed back too quickly from a shoulder injury. The October planning begins when the division is clinched. Until then, there are games to play. ______________________________ Fifty-four and twenty-six. Seven games up. The Prayers will face Columbus and Washington at home this week. The rotation is the best it has been all season and the infield is being rebuilt underneath it. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.

06-17-2026, 07:44 PM	#390
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 548	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *June 29 – July 8, 2001 \| Fifty-Eight and Thirty-One \| Van Ham Signs Five-Year Extension \| Columbus Sweeps Sacramento at Home* ______________________________ NEWS ON THE INJURY FRONT TELL EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS STRETCH When Jang walked off the mound in the third inning at Philadelphia, the rotation math started assembling itself in a very unpleasant direction in the minds of everyone watching. Eight and two, best ERA in the rotation, and then — a trainer, a slow limping walk, an early exit. The diagnosis arrived in hours: mild hamstring strain, around five days for recovery. We dodged the bullet, folks — Jang started warming up again before most people had finished catastrophizing. The rotation stayed intact. The genuine bad news belongs to Cody DeVore, whose broken kneecap confirmed officially as a season-ending injury this week, and to Daniel Lozano, who is five weeks away from possibly returning from shoulder tendinitis. Those losses are real and the roster has been managing around them with functional improvisation. But they are not the rotation, and the rotation is fine. Vic Cruz just won the AL Pitcher of the Month award for June. Tim Van Ham won Player of the Week and then signed a five-year extension before the ink on the award was dry. Sacramento enters the All-Star break tied with Long Beach for the best record in professional baseball. ______________________________ VIC CRUZ — AL PITCHER OF THE MONTH The June numbers: five starts, five wins, a 2.17 ERA, thirty-seven and one-third innings, thirty-nine strikeouts, opponents hitting .199 against him. The baseball writers noticed what the box scores had been reporting since the first week of the month — that the pitcher who struggled in late May had found something, corrected something, and become one of the most difficult starters to score against in the American League. The Pitcher of the Month award is recognition of what anyone watching already knew. What Cruz found in June was location. His secondary pitches — the changeup and the two-seam fastball — stopped arriving middle-out and started arriving down and away, which is the difference between pitches hitters attack and pitches hitters beat into the dirt. His ground-ball rate in June was the highest it has been all season. Hitters were not getting the ball in the air. When hitters cannot get the ball in the air against Vic Cruz, they cannot score against Vic Cruz. That is the equation, and he executed it for five consecutive starts. On the year he stands at eight and four with a 3.95 ERA — the last number slightly inflated by a rough July 7th outing against Philadelphia. The June version is the pitcher the Prayers paid for. ______________________________ TIM VAN HAM — PLAYER OF THE WEEK AND FIVE-YEAR EXTENSION The week that produced the Player of the Week recognition: ten for sixteen, .625 batting average, four home runs, eleven RBI. Those are not numbers that require explanation. A triple and a homer against Philadelphia, four hits and four RBI in the July 2nd Washington blowout including a three-run shot in the seventh. The American League voters made the obvious selection. The front office responded with something more consequential than a minor award: a five-year extension at $337,200 per year, keeping Van Ham in Sacramento through 2006. He entered 2001 as the fourth outfielder, the depth chart player whose name appeared in the lineup when Lopez tore his ACL and Choi fractured a finger and the other options ran thin. What he has become since then — seventeen home runs, a .262 average, a sustained contributor rather than a temporary solution — is the kind of player franchises retain precisely because he is difficult to replace at his cost. The extension is the organization making a decision that should have been obvious by May: Van Ham is more then a hot-streaking hitter. He is a really valuable player, and Sacramento wants him for the next five years of what looks increasingly like a genuine championship window. Lets now talk about how things were unfolding for the Prayers over last stretch heading in to All-Star break one game at a time. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY vs. Columbus, June 29 - July 1 (0-3) Jeon pitched seven solid innings on June 29th and received nothing for it. Benson gave up a Gil single in the tenth that scored the go-ahead run. Three to four — Sacramento lost a game it controlled for most of nine innings. Jang gave up five runs in five innings on June 30th — a Palacios two-run homer, a Strait solo shot — and the offense could not overcome the deficit. Shinohara hit his nineteenth home run. Four to five, Columbus again. July 1st was Gunn's roughest outing since May: five innings, ten hits, four earned runs against a Columbus lineup that had no business being this difficult against home team. Gil, the Heaven's catcher who had been a nonfactor for most of the series, went three for four and hit a three-run homer in the seventh to break a game Sacramento was still close enough to win. Seven to five, final. Sacramento had been swept at home by a team that entered the series below .500. The division lead fell from seven games to five and a half in three days. vs. Washington, July 2-4 (2-1) Cruz won July 2nd with five and two-thirds innings of one-run ball, and the offense did everything else. Van Ham had four hits and four RBI, including a three-run homer in the seventh. Alvarez hit a three-run homer. Schmitt added a two-run shot. Fifteen to seven, Sacramento, and the series was off in the right direction — though Gil Cruz was hurt in a base collision during the game and is a week away from returning with back tightness. July 3rd was Choi's first game back from the fractured finger. He went three for three with a home run, two singles, and two walks. Game started with a bang, as Chavarria and Washington's Montalvo were ejected in the first inning for their respective roles in a bench-clearing brawl. Then DeVore hit a solo homer — his first of the season, and as it turned out, his last — he was hurt later in a base collision and was forced to leave the game. The broken kneecap diagnosis was made public shortly thereafter. Sacramento won the game seven to three, with England — the second baseman acquired from Nashville in a minor transaction to address an emergency situation with Sacramento's infield — contributing a double in his second game in a Prayers uniform. Great win, terrible development with yet another injury to a roster player. July 4th: Jeon threw seven fine innings and absorbed the loss despite strong showing — Ke surrendered a Taylor triple in the eighth that broke a tie. Three to four, Washington, on a holiday that for the home side ended without celebration. @ Philadelphia, July 6-8 (2-1) The July 6th win required ten innings and produced the Jang scare. He left after three and one-third innings, but the bullpen thankfully held on, and Shinohara's bases-loaded sac fly in the tenth off Young won it six to five. Medina got the win, Benson recorded his nineteenth save, and the Jang's postgame diagnosis — mild hamstring strain, five days — arrived to general relief. July 7th was Cruz's worst start in two months: four and two-thirds innings, six earned runs, followed by a Ke appearance that featured a Gonzalez grand slam in the fifth. Philadelphia won eleven to seven, which is the kind of result that appears occasionally on every team's schedule and is best processed quickly and forgotten entirely. The July 8th gamer was a true statement, in my opinion. Lopez went three for four with a home run, two singles, two walks, three runs scored, and three RBI. Van Ham hit his seventeenth homer. Navarro had three hits and two RBI. Gunn threw six innings and won his eighth game. Sixteen to six against a last-place team, which is the appropriate response to any preceding ugliness. ______________________________ DEVORE AND THE INFIELD It pains me to say this, but Cody DeVore is done. The broken kneecap ended a season that had already been unusual — he came to Sacramento as a depth piece, was thrust into regular action by Lozano and Garcia's injuries, homered in his final at-bat, and then broke his knee on the same play. He is twenty-three years old. The organization loses the infield depth it had assembled, which was already operating near its limits with Lozano five weeks away on his shoulder tendinitis. What fills the gap in the interim is the same patchwork that has been operating since late June: Schmitt at third, Navarro and Gil Cruz sharing the middle infield workload when both are healthy, England adding depth at second base, and the hope that Lozano's return in mid-August comes on schedule. It has worked well enough to stay two and a half games ahead of where Sacramento stood when Lozano first went down. That is the most accurate measure of how the team has managed a situation that would have been plainly unworkable for most rosters. ______________________________ THE ALL-STAR BREAK IN CONTEXT Shinohara was named to the American League All-Star roster: .297 batting average, nineteen home runs, twenty-six stolen bases, a 141 wRC+ and 4.0 WAR. The selection was not debated. Gutierrez also made it — five wins, no losses, a 2.32 ERA, fifty-one innings of relief work that represents some of the most consistent middle-inning production in the league from any arm. Two Sacramento players on the AL roster is appropriate recognition for a franchise currently tied for the best record in baseball. The American League won the All-Star Game ten to four. Nashville's Jose Morales was the day's featured performer. The result has no bearing on October but serves as a useful reminder of where the league's best currently sit, and Sacramento's two representatives were not embarrassed in the company they kept. The midseason prospect update delivered two pieces of news worth tracking. Zamora holds the ninth overall ranking with twenty-four saves for Oxnard at Triple-A level and a 3.63 ERA — a legitimate prospect timeline that suggests a potential call-up option if the bullpen situation deteriorates. Kashiwabara, who opened the season ranked sixth overall, dropped off the top ten after hitting .177 at Triple-A. The ceiling that generated the preseason ranking has not lowered. The gap between that ceiling and his current performance has simply become visible. He is still a prospect. He is simply not a near-term solution. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE Detroit has won nine straight and sits at fifty-five and thirty-four, the best record in the AL Central by four and a half games over Charlotte. The Preachers are the most dangerous team in the league not named Sacramento or San Jose. Long Beach at fifty-eight and thirty-one shares the best record in professional baseball with Sacramento — two franchises from the western half of the continent, neither of whom has shown meaningful vulnerability for the better part of two months. Cleveland at fifty-eight and thirty leads the NL Central and is the third team in the conversation for best record in the sport. October is taking shape in the standings. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Nnamdi Eze of Sacramento's College Greens neighborhood, a paramedic, who asks: "Cruz wins Pitcher of the Month, then goes out and gets roughed up in Philadelphia. How do you read the rotation going into the second half?" The July 7th Philadelphia game is noise, not signal. Cruz pitched badly for four and two-thirds innings against a below-.500 lineup on a warm night in a ballpark that plays small. Every pitcher in the American League has a game like that somewhere in his season. What matters is the surrounding context: dominant starts on either side of that performance, an ERA that has come down thirty points since the end of May, and a command profile that is demonstrably better than anything he showed in April. The rotation entering the second half is Jeon, Jang, Cruz, Gunn and Andretti — five starters who each have quality-start stretches on their resume and each have rough games as well. It is not the 1927 Yankees, and it is not what Jang and Cruz would have been at full health in a perfect world. But it is a rotation that can win a division and survive a playoff round. I would not trade it for what San Jose is currently assembling. From Astrid Magnusdóttir of Sacramento's Arden Park neighborhood, a piano teacher, who asks: "The Van Ham extension locks him up through 2006. Is the franchise making a long-term bet on him, or is this primarily about the current window?" Both, and the two are not in conflict. The current window — the one built around Shinohara, Navarro, Alvarez, Cruz, Lozano — runs through at least 2004 based on existing contracts. Van Ham's five-year extension ensures he is present for the entirety of that window and beyond. What makes this more than a short-term convenience move is that Van Ham is twenty-four years old and has not yet been asked to carry lineup responsibility in a full healthy season. His power has developed ahead of schedule. His on-base skills — a .357 OBP entering the break — suggest a hitter who does more than swing hard at elevated fastballs. The franchise is betting that what they are seeing now is not the ceiling of what he becomes. Based on the trajectory, that is a defensible bet at $337,200 per year. From Andriy Kotick of Sacramento's Boulevard Park neighborhood, a structural engineer, who asks: "Sacramento was swept at home by Columbus, a team that was below .500. The lead dropped from seven to four. Should Prayers fans be worried?" No. And here is the simplest way I can explain why: Columbus won three games from Sacramento in three days at Sutter Health Park, and despite that, the division lead is still four games. That is the nature of a seven-game cushion — it absorbs a bad series, it even absorbs a bad week, and it still leaves the team in first place with the second half ahead. The sweep by Columbus was a genuine rough stretch: Jang uncharacteristically poor in his start, Gunn allowing ten hits in five innings in the finale, the offense going quiet against three pitchers who had no particular reason to dominate Sacramento. None of that is structural. None of it changes the fact that this team has played .652 baseball for nearly ninety games. San Jose would need Sacramento to go something like twenty and thirty in the second half for the lead to evaporate entirely, and the team that spent the first half building a seven-game lead is not going to play .400 ball for the next sixty days. Be watchful. Be informed. Don't be worried. ______________________________ Fifty-eight and thirty-one. Tied with Long Beach for the best record in baseball. Four games up on San Jose. Jang healthy. Lozano five weeks away. Seattle comes for four games starting Thursday, then San Jose visits for a three-games series that will tell us everything about the second half of the season. ______________________________ 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: 548	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.

06-18-2026, 07:58 PM	#392
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 548	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *July 23 – August 1, 2001 \| Seventy-Two and Thirty-Seven \| Garcia Traded to San Jose on Deadline Day \| Division Lead is Seven Games* ______________________________ VICTOR CRUZ MELTS DOWN, SACRAMENTO WINS IN TEN INNINGS REGARDLESS It required three home runs from Nashville in the second inning, a 8-2 deficit through four innings, six pitchers after Cruz exited, Florez hitting a grand slam in the same second inning that partially offset what Cruz allowed, Van Ham clearing the bases with a double in the third to tie it, multiple lead changes across the middle innings, Benson coming on in the ninth and holding things, and finally Choi hitting a sacrifice fly in the tenth off Bass to win it. The entire exercise lasted nearly four hours and ended with Sacramento one game closer to whatever October is going to look like. The 13-12 victory on July 29th followed a 9-8 walk-off win the previous afternoon when Lopez drew a bases-loaded walk in the tenth inning off Edgar. Back-to-back extra-inning walk-off wins against a Nashville team that fought on every pitch thrown. If Sacramento were a lesser club, either game produces a loss that shifts the narrative completely. Instead they are seventy-two and thirty-seven with the best record in the American League and Lozano is one to two weeks away from returning to the infield. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY @ Milwaukee, July 23-24 (1-1) The game on July 23rd featured Jeon at his least convincing: four and two-thirds innings, four earned runs, three home runs allowed — two to Mesa and one to Ramos in the first inning alone. Labra threw eight innings with eleven strikeouts and made Sacramento loss inevitable from the third inning forward. Sacramento scored all three of its runs in the ninth, on Shinohara's twenty-first homer and Cruz's seventh. The rally was real; the final margin was not. Five to three, Milwaukee. July 24th: Cruz threw six innings of two-run ball and the offense produced just enough. England hit his first home run as a Prayer in the first inning — a solo shot off Crossley that came in his first week with the organization. Navarro homered in the eighth. Van Ham contributed a sacrifice fly. Three to two, Sacramento, with Musselman and Benson closing it efficiently. vs. San Antonio, July 25-26 (2-0) The Hell Fire have lost eighty games and the series against them was handled appropriately. July 25th: Gunn pitched adequately if not dominantly, England drove in three runs, Florez hit a bases-clearing double, and the offense scored eleven times. July 26th: Andretti threw seven innings against a lineup that offered very little resistance, Navarro went four for four with two doubles and two singles, and Benson closed his twenty-sixth save. Five to two. No drama whatsoever. vs. Nashville, July 27-29 (2-1) July 27th was Nick Brown's remarkable evening. Eight and one-third innings, four hits, zero runs, three strikeouts, and a command that Sacramento's lineup simply could not locate a solution for. Jang gave up four runs in five and one-third innings including a Ritter three-run homer. Zero to four, a loss that came from a good pitcher pitching a great game. July 28th was ten innings of something else entirely. Jeon gave up five earned runs in four innings but Florez hit a grand slam in the second inning that briefly gave Sacramento the lead. Nashville took it back, Sacramento tied it, Benson entered in the ninth with a one-run lead and walked two batters before allowing Nashville to tie it in the eighth — wait, the actual sequence went wrong in more directions than the official description captures. What matters is that Lopez drew a walk with the bases loaded in the tenth off Edgar, and Sacramento won nine to eight. Musselman got the win. The crowd at Sutter Health Park had earned its concessions. July 29th began with Cruz taking the mound. He retired five of the first seven batters he faced in the first, and then the second inning arrived. Six walks. Oliver's three-run homer. Vargas's two-run homer. Seven earned runs in one and two-thirds innings. That was quite an ugly meltdown, the kind of start that produces pregame-show segments about rotation questions for three days. Sacramento trailed eight to two and still won thirteen to twelve in ten innings because Van Ham had four RBI, Florez hit his eleventh homer, Alvarez hit two doubles, and Choi's sac fly ended it. vs. Charlotte, July 30 - Aug 1 (2-1) On July 30th Gunn earned his tenth win with six and one-third innings of four-run ball, which Sacramento outscored ten to seven on the strength of a Lopez homer and double, a Cruz two-run shot, and a Nakazawa bases-clearing double in the fourth inning that turned a two-run deficit into a three-run lead. July 31st: Andretti threw six excellent innings allowing one run, and Sacramento led six to one going into the ninth inning. Then Xin Ke entered and allowed Landau's three-run homer and Thomas's solo shot to tie it at seven, and Charlotte scored once more to win eight to seven. One of the more dispiriting losses of the second half — a quality start wasted, a lead vanished in minutes. Ke's ERA climbs toward five. August 1st: Sacramento rebounded without delay. Four consecutive doubles in the fourth inning off James — Schmitt, Nakazawa, England, and Choi all hitting doubles in sequence — produced six runs in the frame. Jang won his eleventh game with five and one-third innings. Six to four, the series taken. ______________________________ THE GARCIA TRADE At the July 31st trade deadline, Sacramento traded Fernando Garcia to San Jose for outfield prospect Manny Mendez and a first, a second and a third-round picks. Garcia was hitting .256 with six home runs and twenty RBI for Sacramento, filling in capably at second base during the Lozano injury stretch and before that serving as the utility infielder of first resort throughout the season's first half. The draft capital haul is significant — three picks in the top three rounds, along with a twenty-four-year-old outfield prospect, represents genuine organizational depth. The complication is that Garcia went to San Jose, the team Sacramento is trying to put away in the division race. Garcia is a solid contributor at the level he has been deployed; adding him to a San Jose roster that is seven games behind does not change the division outcome, but it provides them a capable utility option for whatever October role they earn. Sacramento's infield calculation going forward: Lozano returns within two weeks, England holds the second base role, Gil Cruz remains at shortstop, and the third base combination of Schmitt and Navarro continues to cover admirably. The roster is thinner in the middle infield than it was before the trade. The draft picks and Mendez represent the bet that the team is healthy enough to win the division without Garcia and will be better positioned over the next three seasons because of what they received. ______________________________ THE PITCHING PICTURE — HEAT AND COLD Andretti is three and zero with a 1.87 ERA over his last seven starts. That is not a statistical artifact — his ground-ball rate over this stretch, his command of the sinker at the bottom of the strike zone, and the consistency with which he has worked deep into games all reflect a forty-one-year-old veteran who has found the version of himself that wins at this level. His ERA for the season sits at 3.53. He has been this organization's steadiest starter since the All-Star break. Medina has a 0.56 ERA over his last fifteen appearances, his ERA now 1.91 on the season. Whatever disrupted his twenty-seven-game scoreless streak in Seattle has been fully corrected. He is again the most reliable arm between the starters and Benson, doing it in high-leverage situations and coming out clean. Espenoza is the concern the hot streak indicators have been confirming: 10.59 ERA over his last thirteen appearances. He was one of Sacramento's best pitchers from April through the first week of July. He has been a liability since. The causes are not fully transparent from the box score alone — the command metrics suggest he has lost some precision with his breaking ball, and opposing hitters who saw him twenty-five times in April and May have made adjustments. Whether this corrects itself or represents a more durable problem is the most important pitching question Sacramento carries into August. Cruz's July 29th start belongs to a different category — a complete mechanical breakdown in a single start rather than a trend. His last four appearances other than that game have been serviceable. One disaster does not define a pitcher's trajectory. ______________________________ LOZANO COMING BACK SOON? One to two weeks. After spending nearly six weeks on the injured list with shoulder tendinitis, Lozano is within a fortnight of returning to the Sacramento lineup. His presence reinstates the infield's best player at third base, takes the defensive pressure off Schmitt's overtime deployment, and — perhaps most importantly — returns the bat that anchors the five and six spots in the order. Lozano was hitting .259 with ten home runs and thirty-eight RBI when he went down. Those are not All-Star numbers but they represent legitimate offensive output, and the lineup with Lozano in it is significantly better than the lineup without him. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE Charlotte and Detroit are tied atop the AL Central at sixty-three and forty-five — the tightest race remaining in the American League, with both teams playing well enough to argue for the division crown deep into September. Long Beach at seventy and thirty-eight is running the best record in the NL Pacific. Cleveland at sixty-nine and thirty-nine continues to make the Central their property. Alex Aguilar of Phoenix has forty-two home runs and one hundred and seventeen RBI at the start of August, which is the kind of pace that makes award conversations irrelevant — when someone is that dominant, the award is already decided. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Solange Tchibinda of Sacramento's Lemon Hill neighborhood, a community college professor, who asks: "Sacramento traded Garcia to San Jose — a division rival — on deadline day. Should fans be uncomfortable with that?" Some discomfort is reasonable and I would not dismiss it with a purely financial argument. The draft picks and Mendez represent genuine organizational value, and the front office clearly decided that Garcia's contribution to Sacramento's 2001 chances was smaller than the long-term return from three top-three-round picks. That is probably correct. What makes the trade feel complicated is that Sacramento's window for winning is open right now, and adding a capable utility infielder to San Jose — even a seven-games-back San Jose — creates a scenario where Sacramento could face Garcia in October if both teams advance. The calculus here depends on your read of how close San Jose can actually get. At seven games back with fifty-three to play, the Demons would need to play forty-three and ten to force a coin flip, which is not going to happen. The division pick haul is the right call. The optics will smooth over as soon as Sacramento clinches. From Ragnar Sigurdsson of Sacramento's River Park neighborhood, a civil contractor, who asks: "Cruz allowed seven runs in less than two innings on July 29th and then Sacramento won the game. What does that start tell us about him?" Mostly it tells us about the offense, not about Cruz. One start does not determine a rotation slot, and Cruz's body of work — nine wins, one hundred strikeouts, a 4.23 ERA that has been hovering between 3.57 and 4.23 for three months — is the relevant data set. What the July 29th start did reveal is that Cruz's command of the strike zone remains fragile in ways that can cascade: when he cannot locate the fastball early in counts, he falls behind, he nibbles, he walks batters, and the walks lead to runs faster than average because the hitters behind the walks are good enough to drive them in. Six walks in one and two-thirds innings is not a pitcher having bad luck. That is a pitcher who lost his release point and could not recover it. Whether that was a one-time mechanical break or an early signal of something worth monitoring is the question his next three starts will answer. From Hyun-soo Lim of Sacramento's Campus Commons neighborhood, a dentist, who asks: "Espenoza is ice cold and Andretti is as hot as he's been all year. With Lozano returning, what does the roster look like entering the final two months?" It looks like a team with a reasonable amount of depth in most places and one growing concern. The infield returns to full strength when Lozano comes back in the next week or two — third base covered, Garcia's departure absorbed, England and Cruz splitting the middle infield work competently. The rotation is Jang, Gunn, Andretti, Cruz, and Jeon — five starters with varying degrees of reliability, none of them dominant enough to be automatic, all of them capable of quality starts on a given day. The bullpen is Benson closing, Gutierrez and Medina bridging, and then a collection of arms — Musselman, Luna, Espenoza, Ke — that range from serviceable to concerning depending on the week. The Espenoza cold streak is the one thread that worries me most right now. He was used heavily in a starting and high-leverage relief role through the first half, and it is possible he has run into the fatigue wall that can claim innings-heavy relievers in late July. If he does not correct before September, Sacramento will need Ke or Luna to step into his role with more consistency than either has shown. That is a solvable problem. It is not yet a solved one. ______________________________ Seventy-two and thirty-seven. Seven games up on San Jose. Lozano in one to two weeks from returning to the lineup. Portland home for three, then trip San Jose for the series of the year. The rotation question is Cruz. The bullpen question is Espenoza. Everything else can wait. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.

06-19-2026, 11:26 AM	#393
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 548	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *August 3 – 12, 2001 \| Seventy-Six and Forty-Two \| Ha-joon Choi Is Playing the Best Baseball on the Roster \| Andretti's Rough Night in Seattle* ______________________________ SACRAMENTO DOES NOT LOOK LIKE ITSELF THESE PAST TEN DAYS I don't want to push the panic button yet, and perhaps we are simply witnessing the inevitable cost of a long summer, but the truth be told, I am starting to feel somewhat uncomfortable observing current situation the Prayers find themselves in. You be the judge: Sacramento lost two of three to Portland at home — a team that has lost sixty-six games and counting. They lost two of three at San Jose, conceding ground in the division for the first time in a month. They lost Alejandro Lopez to a back strain that will keep him out four weeks, just days after he had finally looked like himself again following the ACL recovery. And in the final game of the stretch, Bernardo Andretti — who had been the best pitcher on the staff for three weeks running — recorded two outs and allowed five earned runs in his last start before manager Jimmy Aces had seen enough and took him out of the game. Now, that being said, none of that erases what Ha-joon Choi has done in the same span: five home runs in his last eight games, a .333 average, the best player on this roster by a wide margin over the past two weeks. Nor does it erase the fact that Sacramento remains six games up with forty-four to play, still owns the best record in the American League, and gets Daniel Lozano back in the lineup any day now. But this is the first ten-day stretch since June where the team has looked genuinely vulnerable, and it is worth taking seriously rather than waving away. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY vs. Portland, August 3-5 (1-2) Series opener on August 3rd got away from Sacramento in the worst possible fashion. Jeon allowed six runs in four and one-third innings, the bullpen could not stop the bleeding, and Sacramento still found itself tied at ten in the ninth before Oscar Garcia's single off Xin Ke won it for Portland, eleven to ten. Lopez was hurt running the bases in this game — painful back strain will sideline him for at least a month. A frustrating loss compounded by a worse injury. August 4th corrected things emphatically. Cruz threw six innings of two-run ball, Choi went three for five with a home run and three RBI, and Schmitt added a two-run shot. Nine to two, the kind of response Sacramento needed. The closing game on August 5th slipped away in extra-inning fashion. Andretti was rocked early — five runs in three and two-thirds innings — and though Sacramento clawed back to tie it at nine with Choi hitting two more home runs, Benson walked in the go-ahead run with the bases loaded in the ninth on a free pass to Raimondi. Ten to nine, Portland, and a series loss to a team currently sitting at twenty-four games under .500 on the season. @ San Jose, August 6-8 (1-2) The biggest series of the stretch did not go Sacramento's way either. August 6th: Jang pitched well — seven innings, two earned runs — but Benson again blew the save in the ninth and Barbosa's walk-off single won it for San Jose, four to three. The division race tightened by a game. The following day on August 7th was the response Sacramento needed and delivered completely: Gunn threw six and one-third shutout innings for his eleventh win, Gil Cruz hit a three-run homer, Choi and Navarro both went deep, and Sacramento blew the doors off, eleven to one. August 8th series finishing game undid the good feeling. Jeon was adequate — five innings, two earned runs — but now it was Gutierrez, who imploded in relief, recording one out while allowing five runs on five hits. Finocchiaro went four for five for San Jose. Nine to four, San Jose, and Sacramento left Excite Ballpark having lost the season series to its closest competitor for the first time all year. @ Seattle, August 10-12 (2-1) Cruz won August 10th matchup with five and one-third innings of shutout ball, Chavarria drove in two with a pair of doubles, and Sacramento closed out a clean six-to-two win in the rain. Jang won his twelfth game on August 11th — six innings, two earned runs, and Choi continued his tear with a double and a home run. Nine to two. Then August 12th arrived and Andretti, to everybody's dismay in the Prayers' dugout, could not get out of the first inning. Seven hits, five earned runs, two outs recorded, and Sacramento's bullpen was left to absorb the rest of an ugly nine-to-two loss. Jun-young Cho went three for three with two doubles for Seattle. It was Andretti's second poor outing in eight days after three weeks of being the best pitcher on the staff — the kind of reversal that, paired with Espenoza's ongoing struggles, has turned the back of the rotation into a genuine question mark heading into the stretch run. ______________________________ WHO'S HOT AND WHO'S COLD Who's Hot: Ha-joon Choi, without much competition. Five home runs and a .333 average over his last eight games, sixteen home runs and thirty-nine RBI for the season despite missing the season's first three months with a fractured finger. He has been the most dangerous hitter in the Sacramento lineup since the All-Star break, full stop. Gil Cruz has also quietly strung together a strong two weeks at the plate and on the bases, with twenty-two stolen bases and a renewed presence at the top of the order. Who's Cold: Mario Espenoza's ERA over his last eighteen appearances sits at 9.62. That is not a slump — that is a pitcher who has lost something, whether it is fatigue from heavy first-half usage or a mechanical issue that has not yet been corrected. Andretti's last two outings — five and five earned runs in a combined four and one-third innings — represent the same category of concern, though his larger sample this season argues he is more likely to rebound than not. The bullpen behind Benson and Gutierrez has carried significant water all season. The last ten days suggest that water is starting to feel heavier, or maybe the buckets in which it is being carried are leaking... ______________________________ LOPEZ OUT FOUR WEEKS The latissimus dorsi strain that sidelined Lopez on August 3rd is the kind of injury that, while not requiring the multiple months Rubalcava or Delgado have needed, removes a player at precisely the moment he was rounding into form for several weeks minimum. He was hitting around .240 with the kind of on-base skills and base-stealing instincts that had begun to look like the Lopez of 2000 again. Optimistic assessment of four weeks to full recovery puts his return somewhere in early September, which would still allow him a meaningful runway before the postseason — assuming Sacramento gets there, which remains the heavy favorite outcome. In the meantime, the outfield rotation of Chavarria, Mollohan, Van Ham, and Choi will absorb the workload, with Durango available off the bench. It is a deep enough group to manage a month without disaster. It is not as deep as it was with Lopez healthy. ______________________________ LOZANO IS BACK One day remained on Lozano's injured list timeline as of the most recent report, which means by the time this reaches print he is very likely activated or close to it. After nearly two months sidelined by shoulder tendinitis, the team gets back its starting third baseman and a bat that was hitting .259 with ten home runs when he went down in late June. His return restores the defensive alignment the organization built this roster around and takes the everyday burden off Schmitt, who has performed admirably as a fill-in but is not the long-term answer at the position. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE San Jose closer Vince Brooks recorded his three hundredth career save on August 4th in a 3-1 win over Seattle, a milestone reached over six hundred and six relief appearances. The Excite Ballpark crowd gave him a standing ovation, and it is worth pausing to recognize the achievement even as his team competes directly against ours for the division. Daniel Mele of Vancouver collected his 2,500th career hit on August 8th, a milestone for a thirty-six-year-old third baseman who has hit .327 for his career with four hundred and thirty-eight home runs. These are the markers that remind you how long professional careers can run, and how rare it is to sustain excellence across that many seasons. Alex Aguilar of Phoenix now has forty-five home runs and one hundred twenty-four RBI with seven weeks remaining in the season — a pace that, if it holds, will be remembered for a long time regardless of what division he plays in. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Tamar Avetisyan of Sacramento's Glenbrook neighborhood, an orthopedic surgeon, who asks: "Sacramento lost two of three to a last-place Portland team. How worried should fans actually be?" Genuinely worried, no. Attentive, yes. A series loss to a sub-.500 club happens to every good team over a hundred-and-sixty-game season — Sacramento itself has been on the other side of similar results against weaker opponents earlier this year. What makes this stretch worth attention rather than dismissal is the convergence: the Portland series loss, the San Jose series loss, Lopez's injury, and two rough Andretti starts all landed inside the same ten days. Any one of those alone is background noise. Together, they represent the first sustained wobble Sacramento has shown since the early-June stretch that preceded the ten-game winning streak. History suggests this team responds well to adversity. The next ten days will tell us whether that pattern holds. From Wanjiru Kamau of Sacramento's South Land Park neighborhood, an electrician, who asks: "Choi has been the best hitter on the team for weeks. Does he deserve more national attention than he's getting?" Yes, unambiguously. Sixteen home runs and a .298 average from a player who didn't appear in a game until June, who has been at his best precisely when the rest of the lineup has needed him most — that is the profile of a player who would be generating significant buzz on a team with a less crowded star system. Shinohara is the headline name on this roster and deserves to be. But over the last month, Choi has arguably been the more impactful player, and the gap between his actual production and his national profile is wider than it should be. If Sacramento makes a deep October run, expect that gap to close quickly. From Esteban Quiroga of Sacramento's Parkway neighborhood, a pastry chef, who asks: "With Lozano back and Lopez out, how does the lineup shake out for the stretch run?" The likely everyday alignment: Lozano at third, Navarro at short, Gil Cruz and England splitting second base duties, Alvarez at first, Shinohara, Choi, and a rotation of Chavarria, Mollohan, and Van Ham across the outfield with Lopez sidelined. That is a deep, professional lineup even without one of its better hitters. The bigger question is not the lineup construction but the bullpen behind the rotation — whether Espenoza rights himself, whether Andretti's last two outings are an aberration or a trend, and whether Xin Ke and Luna can provide enough length in middle relief to keep the late innings from becoming an adventure every night. The position-player depth chart looks fine. The pitching depth chart is the thing to watch over the next three weeks. ______________________________ Seventy-six and forty-two. Six games up on San Jose. Lopez out four weeks. Lozano back any day. Choi is the hottest hitter in the league and nobody outside Sacramento seems to have noticed yet. Coming up next: two games in Vancouver, then back to Sacramento to face Las Vegas and Detroit at home. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.

06-19-2026, 08:29 PM	#394
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 548	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *August 13 – 22, 2001 \| Eighty-Three and Forty-Five \| A Three-Game Sweep of Brooklyn to Close the Stretch \| Jang's Brief Scare* ______________________________ WHAT A CHAMPIONSHIP-CALIBER TEAM LOOKS LIKE WHEN IT REMEMBERS WHO IT IS After the wobble of early August, Sacramento needed a response, and over these ten days it delivered one in installments. The road trip was uneven — a walk-off loss in Vancouver, a response win, a frustrating loss to Las Vegas sandwiched around a blowout. But the homestand that followed was the version of this team that built a seven-game lead in July: two of three from a genuine AL Central contender in Detroit, then a clean sweep of Brooklyn to finish it off. Seven wins in ten games, the best record in the American League intact, and Daniel Lozano back in the lineup at third base for the first time since late June. The headline number, though, belongs to Soshu Shinohara. Twenty-eight home runs. Ninety-one RBI. A .290 average that has crept steadily upward all season. He is no longer just Sacramento's best player — he is making a serious claim to be the best player in the American League, full stop. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY @ Vancouver, August 13-14 (1-1) Game on August 13th went eleven innings and ended badly. Jeon was excellent — seven innings, one earned run — but Benson allowed Daniel Mele's two-run double in the bottom of the eleventh, and Vancouver won three to two. Mele's blast came off a future Hall of Fame arc that has nothing to do with Sacramento's fortunes, but it stung all the same. August 14th showdown turned into a track meet in Sacramento's favor. Shinohara hit two home runs and drove in six. Gunn surrendered one run in five and one-third innings for his twelfth win. Eight to one, though the afternoon is better remembered for Mollohan and Vancouver's Jason Garcia getting ejected in the third inning for igniting a bench-clearing brawl. Baseball tempers run hot in August. vs. Las Vegas, August 15-16 (1-1) Cruz had a rough one on August 15th — three earned runs in five and two-thirds innings — and Tetsuharu Sakakibara, who has had Sacramento's number more than once this season, went three for four with a homer. Four to one, Las Vegas. August 16th was a laugher in the other direction. Sacramento scored five in the first inning, Shinohara and Choi both homered, and the Prayers won nine to one. Jang was pulled early after being hurt while pitching — a moment that briefly raised alarm given the season's run of rotation injuries — but Espenoza, Gutierrez, and Musselman combined to cover the rest of the game capably, and the injury proved minor enough that Jang would take the mound again less than a week later. vs. Detroit, August 17-19 (2-1) August 17th was the kind of game that announces itself immediately as memorable. Shinohara hit a grand slam in the fifth. Choi homered twice. Nakazawa went four for four with a home run, two doubles, and a walk — four runs scored, three driven in, the best game of his season. Andretti cruised through six and one-third innings. Fifteen to three, against a Detroit team that came in seventy-two and fifty. August 18th was tighter and cleaner: Jeon allowed one run over five innings, Mollohan drove in two with a first-inning single, and the bullpen — Musselman, Luna, and Medina — combined for four scoreless innings to close it out. Six to one. August 19th went the other way. Gunn allowed two earned runs in five innings before Gutierrez surrendered a three-run Jimmy Rosen homer that put Detroit ahead for good. Nine to four, Detroit, and the series — taken two games to one — still represented real validation against one of the better teams in the league. vs. Brooklyn, August 20-22 (3-0) The sweep began with a tight one. Vic Cruz threw seven strong innings, Mollohan's two-out single in the eighth provided the decisive run, and Medina and Benson combined to close out a three-to-two win over a Brooklyn team getting a strong outing from Steve Robitaille. August 21st belonged to Hector Florez — four for five with a double and three RBI — while Jang, fully recovered from his brief scare, threw five and one-third innings for his thirteenth win. Nine to two. August 22nd completed the sweep. Andretti threw six shutout innings, Lozano hit a home run in his first week back, and Sacramento won five to two. The Brooklyn series, against a team that had been playing well in the AL East all summer, ended in the most one-sided fashion possible. ______________________________ LOZANO'S RETURN He has been back at third base since the middle of this stretch, and the results have arrived quickly: a home run against Brooklyn on August 22nd, doubles, stolen bases, the full complement of what made him a thirty-home-run threat a season ago. More important than any single box score line is what his presence does structurally — Schmitt moves back to a true utility role, Navarro and Cruz settle into their customary positions, and the defensive infield Sacramento built this roster around is whole again for the stretch run. Two months on the injured list is a significant absence to overcome in six weeks, but the early returns suggest he has lost very little. ______________________________ SHINOHARA'S MVP CASE Twenty-eight home runs. Ninety-one RBI. Thirty-five stolen bases. A .290 average that keeps climbing despite the power numbers that would normally come with some trade-off in contact rate. He leads the team in nearly every meaningful offensive category and has done it while playing plus defense in right field. The American League MVP conversation has been centered on Alex Aguilar of Phoenix and a handful of others in the National League, with Ebizo Suzuki rightfully drawing Cy Young attention in San Jose's own division. But within the American League specifically, it is difficult to point to a position player having a better all-around season than Shinohara. The grand slam against Detroit on August 17th was simply the most visible recent example of a player performing at the peak of his abilities in the most important stretch of the season. ______________________________ WHO'S HOT, WHO'S COLD Who's Hot: Shinohara, obviously, but also Jang and Gunn, who combined to allow four earned runs over their last two starts apiece, and Jeon, who has quietly strung together a 1.50 ERA across his last two outings after a summer of inconsistency. The rotation, as a unit, has looked like its July self again over this final stretch. Who's Cold: Tim Van Ham is hitting .107 with no home runs over his last eight games — a significant comedown from the player who signed a five-year extension in early July. Some of this is mechanical, some is simply the variance that comes with a smaller role since Lopez's injury and Choi's emergence have squeezed his playing time. He remains a useful piece. He has not looked like one in two weeks. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE Detroit is seventy-seven and fifty-one, two and a half games up on Charlotte in the AL Central — the tightest divisional race remaining in the American League, and a team Sacramento now knows can compete with anyone after splitting that three-game set at Sutter Health Park. Brooklyn's Steve Robitaille threw eight strong innings in a losing effort against Cruz on August 20th, a reminder that pitching performances and pitching results do not always align. Cleveland at seventy-nine and forty-eight continues to lead the NL, with Long Beach at eighty-one and forty-six running them close. Marco Corral of Vancouver has two hundred and twelve strikeouts with over a month still to play — a number that will likely stand as one of the league's defining individual achievements this season regardless of how his team's record looks. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Knarik Hovhannisyan of Sacramento's Gardenland neighborhood, an urban planner, who asks: "Lozano came back and already has a home run. How much does his return change the lineup's ceiling for the stretch run?" Meaningfully. The lineup performed well in his absence — that much is obvious from the record — but performing well without your third-best power threat and performing at full strength with him are different propositions. Lozano gives Sacramento a fifth legitimate home run threat alongside Shinohara, Choi, Alvarez, and Van Ham, which makes it considerably harder for opposing pitchers to navigate the lineup without exposure somewhere. His defense at third base, even two months removed from regular play, has looked sound rather than rusty. If he sustains anything close to his pre-injury production through September, this lineup is deeper than it has been at any point since Opening Day. From Folasade Bankole of Sacramento's Robla neighborhood, a mechanic, who asks: "Shinohara has 28 home runs and 91 RBI. Is he the best position player in the American League right now?" He belongs firmly in that conversation, and a strong case exists that he is exactly that. The combination of power, average, speed, and defensive value is rare — most thirty-home-run hitters are not also stealing thirty-five bases, and most players with his stolen-base totals are not driving in ninety-one runs. Where the case gets complicated is the comparison pool: this is genuinely a strong year for hitters across both leagues, and reasonable people will weigh different statistical categories differently. What I can say without hesitation is that no Sacramento player has had a season this complete in recent memory, and few players anywhere in the American League have matched his combination of skills in 2001. From Itzel Reyes of Sacramento's Avondale neighborhood, a graphic designer, who asks: "Six games up with about a month left. When does it start to feel safe to think about October planning?" The math says Sacramento needs to play roughly .500 baseball over the remaining thirty-two games for the lead to hold, assuming San Jose plays at a strong-but-not-historic pace the rest of the way. That is an extremely comfortable position, and I would not blame anyone in the organization for beginning to think seriously about postseason roster construction, pitching matchups, and health management at this point. That said, "safe to think about" and "safe to assume" are different things. The lead can still shrink if Sacramento goes through a genuine slump, and Lopez's continued absence plus the questions around Espenoza's role mean there are real variables left to resolve before October arrives. My honest answer: it is reasonable to start planning now. It is not yet reasonable to stop paying attention to the day-to-day. ______________________________ Eighty-three and forty-five. Six games up on San Jose with thirty-two to play. Lozano back. Lopez two weeks away. Shinohara making an MVP case in real time. Baltimore on the road, then to Portland to close the month. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.

06-20-2026, 08:34 AM	#395
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 548	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *August 24 – September 2, 2001 \| Eighty-Eight and Forty-Nine \| Shinohara at Ninety-Seven RBI \| Andretti's Complete Turnaround* ______________________________ AFFORDING INCONSISTENCY THAT WOULD SINK MOST CONTENDERS There is a pattern emerging in the late-season schedule that deserves naming plainly: Sacramento has now lost series to two of the league's worst teams in the span of a month — Portland in early August, Baltimore in this stretch — while continuing to struggle against the one team chasing them in the standings. San Jose has now taken two of three from Sacramento in back-to-back series, including a one-to-nothing shutout loss on August 31st in which William Rodriguez threw eight scoreless innings against this lineup. None of that has dented the lead, which sits at six games with twenty-five remaining, because Sacramento's overall record remains the best in the American League regardless of who beats them on a given week. What carries this team through the inconsistency is increasingly obvious: Soshu Shinohara, who has ninety-seven RBI and thirty-one home runs and is going to flirt seriously with one hundred RBI before the calendar turns to mid-September. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY @ Baltimore, August 24-26 (1-2) The opening game on August 24th ended on a walk-off solo homer from Jimmy Voss in the bottom of the ninth, five to six, despite a three-for-three day from Chavarria and a two-out Shinohara homer in the first. Jeon had given up five runs in five and two-thirds innings, and the late-inning home runs — Sacramento hit two of its own in the ninth from Van Ham and Alvarez — were not enough to survive Voss's answer. August 25th was a clean loss to a good outing: Hiroshi Toyama of Baltimore allowed one run over six and two-thirds innings, Tyler Baskin homered, and Cruz could not match the performance, allowing three earned runs in four and one-third. Five to one, Baltimore. August 26th was the response — but barely. Sacramento scored nine runs on fifteen hits, with Tony Villalobos doing damage in the other direction for Baltimore, and the Prayers survived a back-and-forth slugfest, nine to six. The series was still lost, two games to one, to a team currently twenty-two games under .500. @ Portland, August 27-29 (3-0) Series on the road in Portland showed us the version of Sacramento that makes the inconsistency elsewhere tolerable. Andretti threw six shutout innings on August 27th, Alvarez hit a three-run homer, and Sacramento won six to nothing — Andretti's record improving to ten and three. Next day, on August 28th, Gunn went seven innings allowing three earned runs, Lozano delivered the go-ahead RBI single in the seventh, and Sacramento won six to four for Gunn's thirteenth victory of the season. August 29th: Jeon threw five and two-thirds innings and Nakazawa drove in two with a double and a single. Five to three, the clean sweep complete, with Sacramento moving to six and a half games up in the division — the high-water mark of the stretch. @ San Jose, August 31 - September 2 (1-2) August 31st was as quiet a loss as Sacramento has suffered all season. William Rodriguez threw eight scoreless innings, struck out seven, and allowed three hits. Choi had two of them. One to nothing, San Jose, in a game where Sacramento simply could not solve a pitcher having the best night of his season. September 1st, midpoint game of the series, was a real heartbreaker. Alvarez went three for four with a home run and two RBI, Sacramento built leads multiple times, but still lost when Jose Adams delivered a walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth off Benson. Six to five, San Jose, and the blown save dropped Benson's record on the season further into uncomfortable territory. September 2nd salvaged the series. Andretti continued his remarkable turnaround with six innings of one-run ball, Lozano's two-run double in the first set the tone, and Shinohara's thirty-first home run in the sixth sealed it. Seven to two, Sacramento, and a series loss that could have been a sweep instead ended with a much-needed answer. ______________________________ SHINOHARA'S MARCH TOWARD ONE HUNDRED Ninety-seven RBI with twenty-five games remaining. Thirty-one home runs. A .294 average that has held remarkably steady across a season of increasing power production — the rare hitter whose contact rate has not eroded as his home run total climbed. He will almost certainly cross one hundred RBI within the next week, and the larger question — whether he finishes the season as the best position player in the American League, full stop — gets harder to argue against with every passing series. What stands out watching him now is the complete absence of any visible slump all season. Other hitters in this lineup have had cold stretches, sometimes lasting weeks. Shinohara has not had one. ______________________________ ANDRETTI'S COMPLETE TURNAROUND Three weeks ago, Andretti recorded two outs against Seattle and allowed five earned runs, the kind of outing that raises real concerns about a forty-one-year-old starter's remaining gas in the tank. Since then: three starts, three wins, a 0.50 ERA. Six shutout innings against Portland. Six innings of one-run ball against San Jose. The disaster start in Seattle looks, in retrospect, like an aberration rather than a trend — a single bad night rather than the beginning of a decline. His season ERA now sits at 3.64, his record is eleven and three. For a pitcher who has been the subject of durability questions for two consecutive seasons, this is precisely the kind of stretch the organization needed to see as the games that matter most approach. ______________________________ THE INJURY LEDGER, BRIEFLY Lopez has four days remaining on his latissimus dorsi recovery timeline, which puts his return inside this coming week. Gil Cruz, hurt running the bases in the August 31st game at San Jose, is day-to-day with a bruised knee and expected back within three days. Neither is a significant concern. The deeper injuries — DeVore's kneecap, Rubalcava's rotator cuff, Delgado's rotator cuff — remain unchanged and effectively off the table for 2001. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE Detroit and Charlotte remain locked in the tightest race in the American League, separated by a game and a half in the Central with twenty-five games to play. Long Beach at eighty-seven and forty-nine continues to hold pace with Sacramento for the best record in professional baseball. Cleveland at eighty-four and fifty-two leads the NL Central comfortably. Alex Aguilar of Phoenix has fifty-one home runs and one hundred thirty-nine RBI — numbers that, with a month still remaining, put him in rarefied historical territory regardless of division standings. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Armine Petrosyan of Sacramento's Wilhaggin neighborhood, a massage therapist, who asks: "Sacramento has now lost series to two of the league's worst teams this month. Should that worry fans more than it seems to?" It is a real pattern worth tracking, but I would not let it overwhelm the larger picture. Both losses came against teams playing meaningfully better baseball in those specific series than their overall record suggested — Baltimore got strong starts from Toyama and a walk-off from Voss, Portland got nothing extra and simply lost three straight, which suggests the Baltimore series was closer to bad luck than systemic weakness. The more worrisome signal, frankly, comes from the San Jose results: losing two of three to your direct division competitor twice in a row is worth more attention than losses to non-contenders. Even there, though, the lead has not moved. Six games with twenty-five to play remains an extremely comfortable position. Worried is too strong a word. Watchful is correct. From Chinwe Okafor of Sacramento's Sierra Oaks neighborhood, an IT technician, who asks: "Shinohara is closing in on 100 RBI. Has any Sacramento player had a season this complete in recent memory?" Not that I can point to with confidence. The 2000 championship roster had standout individual seasons — Lozano's home run binge in the World Series, Rubalcava's Cy Young campaign before the injury — but a single-season combination of thirty-plus home runs, a sub-.300 but genuinely productive average, near-forty stolen bases, and approaching one hundred RBI is the kind of complete offensive profile that very few players in this organization's recent history have produced. What makes it more remarkable is the consistency: no extended slumps, no visible fatigue as the calendar moves into September. If he finishes anywhere close to his current pace, this becomes one of the signature individual seasons of the championship era. From Mai Phuong Nguyen of Sacramento's Foothill Farms neighborhood, a florist, who asks: "With twenty-five games left and a six-game lead, what does the path to clinching actually look like from here?" The cleanest way to think about it: Sacramento needs to maintain roughly the same winning percentage it has shown all season — somewhere around .640 — for the lead to either hold or grow, and even a more modest .500 stretch over the final twenty-five games would likely be enough given San Jose's need to play at an extremely high level just to close the gap. The schedule ahead includes St. Louis and El Paso on the immediate horizon, both manageable opponents, before Seattle returns to Sutter Health Park. Barring an extended collapse — something this roster has not shown any inclination toward even during its roughest ten-day stretches — the division title is Sacramento's to claim somewhere in the final two weeks of the season. The more interesting question by mid-September will not be whether they clinch, but what kind of form they carry into October when it matters most. ______________________________ Eighty-eight and forty-nine. Six games up with twenty-five to play. Shinohara at ninety-seven RBI and climbing. Andretti has rediscovered himself completely. Lopez back within days. St. Louis on the road, then El Paso and Seattle at home are next on the schedule. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.

06-20-2026, 03:10 PM	#396
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 548	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *September 3 – 12, 2001 \| Ninety-Seven and Fifty \| Magic Number Down to Eight \| Nakazawa's Power Surge* ______________________________ A MOMENT THAT WILL DEFINE THE NEXT MONTH The baseball was as good as it has been all year. Sacramento swept St. Louis, swept El Paso, took two of three from Seattle, then swept Portland to close the stretch — the kind of dominant ten-day run that builds a champion's cushion with two and a half weeks remaining. The division lead grew from six games to eight. The magic number, which tracks the combination of Sacramento wins and San Jose losses needed to clinch, now sits at eight — single digits for the first time all season. None of that changes what happened on September 11th. Shinohara was hit by a pitch in the fourth inning against Portland and left the game. The diagnosis that followed — iliopsoas tendinitis, five to six weeks — removes the best player in this organization, arguably the best position player in the American League this season, for the remainder of the regular season and a good chank of whatever comes after it. Combined with Victor Alvarez's shoulder labral tear, suffered in a base collision on September 4th and projected to keep him out three weeks, Sacramento now enters its final stretch of meaningful baseball without its two most productive power hitters. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY @ St. Louis, September 3-4 (2-0) Mollohan went three for four on September 3rd, capped by a two-run double in the eighth that put away a six-to-two win. Jeon worked through traffic for four and one-third innings before handing things to Espenoza and Medina, who combined for four and two-thirds scoreless innings of relief. September 4th turned into a rout: Navarro homered and drove in three, Lozano added a home run of his own, and Sacramento scored eleven runs against a St. Louis pitching staff that had no answers. Gunn picked up his fourteenth win. The only sour note came when Alvarez was injured in a base collision — the play that would later be diagnosed as a shoulder labral tear. vs. El Paso, September 5-6 (2-0) September 5th ended on a walk-off note: Chavarria's two-run homer off Rich Flores in the bottom of the eighth turned a tied game into a seven-to-five win, Sacramento's fourth straight victory. Jang battled through five and one-third innings allowing three earned runs, and the bullpen held. September 6th brought Alejandro Lopez back into the lineup for the first time since his back strain, and he delivered immediately — a home run in his second at-bat back. Nakazawa added a two-run shot of his own, Cruz threw six strong innings, and Sacramento won seven to two. vs. Seattle, September 7-9 (2-1) September 7th was Santiago Gomez's night — six and two-thirds innings, two earned runs, and a Chase Welsh home run that set the tone early. Andretti struggled, allowing five runs in four innings. Five to two, Seattle, snapping Sacramento's win streak at four. September 8th was a complete reversal: Jeon allowed nothing over six and one-third innings, Chavarria drove in four runs, and Navarro added a home run and seven total bases. Eleven to nothing, as one-sided as any game Sacramento has played this season. September 9th went to the eighth inning tied before Nakazawa's two-run double off Jeff Dombrowski broke it open. Danny Rodine had thrown seven and one-third shutout innings for Seattle before the bullpen unraveled. Five to three, Sacramento, with Musselman picking up the win. vs. Portland, September 10-12 (3-0) September 10th: Navarro went three for four with a home run and two RBI, Nakazawa homered early, and Jang won his fourteenth game despite a shaky finish. Eight to four. September 11th was the day everything changed. Sacramento won seven to five behind a strong offensive effort — Lozano went three for five, Van Ham drove in two — but the headline was Shinohara exiting in the fourth inning after being hit by a pitch. He would not return, and the iliopsoas tendinitis diagnosis arrived in the days that followed. September 12th: Andretti continued his remarkable second-half turnaround with seven innings of three-run ball for his twelfth win, and Van Ham's two-run homer in the fifth provided the decisive runs. Six to three, Sacramento's fifth straight win, Portland's sixth straight loss. ______________________________ WHAT SHINOHARA'S ABSENCE MEANS Thirty-one home runs. One hundred and three RBI. A .292 average, forty stolen bases, and the best all-around season any Sacramento position player has produced in recent memory — all of it now paused for five to six weeks at the exact moment the stretch run begins. The lineup will not collapse without him; this roster has demonstrated all season that it can absorb significant losses and keep winning. But there is a difference between absorbing injuries to complementary pieces and losing the single most dangerous bat in the order. Whoever fills the gap in the outfield — Durango, Van Ham, some combination of both — is replacing a level of production that cannot be fully recreated. The honest framing is this: Sacramento's margin for error just shrank considerably, even as its actual division lead grew. ______________________________ ALVAREZ AND LOPEZ — THE OTHER INJURY NEWS Alvarez's shoulder labral tear, suffered in the September 4th collision at St. Louis, is expected to keep him out approximately three weeks — a recovery window that, optimistically, returns him in time for the postseason but not for the remainder of the regular season's meaningful stretch. He was hitting .259 with nineteen home runs and seventy-eight RBI, the clear second power threat behind Shinohara, and his absence compounds the lineup question the team now faces. Lopez's situation is more frustrating than serious. He returned from his back strain on September 6th and delivered a home run, only to be hurt running the bases again on September 8th — back stiffness this time, day-to-day with a one-to-two-week recovery window. The recurring nature of his back issues this season is a pattern worth watching even as none of the individual injuries has been catastrophic. ______________________________ WHO'S HOT, WHO'S COLD Who's Hot: Alejandro Navarro, who is hitting .571 with three home runs over his last six games and has emerged as Sacramento's most complete everyday player not named Shinohara — a .306 average, fifteen home runs, and seventy-one RBI from the shortstop position. Nakazawa has been nearly as good, hitting .478 with three home runs over his last seven games, finally producing the power the organization projected from him entering the season. With Shinohara and Alvarez both sidelined, these two will need to sustain this level of production for the lineup to hold its current shape. Who's Cold: Javier Gutierrez has a 9.60 ERA over his last twelve appearances, a significant decline from the pitcher who was nearly automatic in middle relief through the first half of the season. The bullpen behind Benson has carried real weight all year; Gutierrez's recent struggles are the most concerning development in relief since Espenoza's midsummer slump. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE San Jose has already clinched a wildcard berth, securing their place in October regardless of how the division race finishes — a reminder that even if Sacramento's lead were to evaporate entirely, both AL West contenders are now ticketed for the postseason. Long Beach has clinched the NL Pacific. Detroit and Charlotte remain separated by two and a half games in the AL Central with the season's final stretch approaching. Alex Aguilar of Phoenix has fifty-three home runs and one hundred forty-six RBI — a season for the record books regardless of what division anyone plays in. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Vardan Mkrtchyan of Sacramento's Midtown neighborhood, a pharmacist, who asks: "Shinohara is out five to six weeks. How worried should fans be heading into the postseason?" The timeline is the relevant detail here. Five to six weeks from September 11th puts a realistic return somewhere in mid-to-late October — which, depending on how deep Sacramento goes, could mean he misses the division series entirely and returns for a later round, or it could mean he is fully healthy for whatever October has in store. Iliopsoas tendinitis is a recoverable injury that does not carry the long-term concern of a structural tear, which is the more encouraging read. The honest worry is not about his long-term health — it is about whether this lineup can sustain its production for a month without him while also navigating Alvarez's absence. That is a real test. It is not, by itself, a reason to panic about October. From Ngozi Chukwu of Sacramento's Downtown neighborhood, a firefighter, who asks: "Navarro has been incredible the last week. Is he capable of being the primary offensive threat with Shinohara out?" He has already shown signs of it. A .306 season average with fifteen home runs from the shortstop position is excellent production in its own right, and his recent stretch — three home runs in six games — suggests a player capable of carrying additional offensive weight when called upon. Whether he can sustain that specific level of production for five or six weeks is a different question; no player maintains a .571 average for a month. But the broader case for optimism is real: Navarro has gotten progressively better as the season has gone on, not worse, which is the opposite of fatigue and the kind of trajectory that suggests he can handle a larger role without his performance collapsing. From Camila Espinoza of Sacramento's South Sacramento neighborhood, a real estate agent, who asks: "The magic number is down to eight with Shinohara and Alvarez both hurt. How quickly can Sacramento actually clinch?" Mathematically, very quickly — eight combined Sacramento wins and San Jose losses would do it, and given Sacramento's pace over the last ten days, that could happen within the next week and a half even accounting for some inevitable adjustment to the lineup changes. The more important question isn't the clinching date, which is now close enough not to be in serious doubt, but what condition the team is in when it happens. Clinching early with a diminished lineup and then using the remaining games to get healthy and find rhythm before October would be the ideal outcome. Sacramento has the housing built. The next two weeks are about who they are when they move into it. ______________________________ Ninety-seven and fifty. Eight games up. Magic number eight. Shinohara out five to six weeks. Alvarez out three. Navarro and Nakazawa will need to carry more than anyone expected. Houston on the road, then Columbus, with the clinch coming soon. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.

06-21-2026, 09:26 AM	#397
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 548	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *September 14 – 23, 2001 \| One Hundred Three and Fifty-Three \| Sacramento Clinches 30th Division Title \| Shinohara and Alvarez Both Progressing Toward October* ______________________________ THE SACRAMENTO PRAYERS CLINCHED THE AMERICAN LEAGUE WEST DIVISION There is something fitting about how this one arrived — not with a walk-off swing or a closer's strikeout, but quietly, on an off day, the product of weeks of accumulated winning finally crossing the finish line while the team rested. Sacramento sat at one hundred and one wins and fifty-two losses when the math turned final. Thirty division titles is a number that places this organization among the sport's most consistently excellent franchises, and the 2001 group secured it despite losing Soshu Shinohara to injury just nine days earlier and despite missing Victor Alvarez for nearly three weeks. What got them here in the final stretch deserves its own recognition: Daniel Lozano, hitting .476 with three home runs over his last five games, has been the single biggest reason the lineup hasn't missed a beat. Jung-keun Jang reached sixteen wins. And the encouraging medical news arrived alongside the clinch — both Shinohara and Alvarez have shortened timelines, with real hope that both return for whatever October brings. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY @ Houston, September 14-16 (2-1) Barry Rudinski turned the opener on its head in the third inning, golfing a three-run homer off Jeon that held up as the difference. Xavier Guzman went seven and one-third innings for Houston, and Sacramento's late push fell one run short, four to three. The response arrived fast the very next day. Jang was nearly untouchable — one run on one hit over six and two-thirds innings — and Choi's home run did the rest of the heavy lifting in a six-to-one win that pushed Jang to fifteen victories on the season. Sunday game came down to a two-out at-bat in the seventh, when Chavarria singled home the go-ahead run off a Houston bullpen that had kept the score level all afternoon. Espenoza picked up the win in relief of Cruz, who battled through traffic for three and two-thirds innings, and Benson closed it out for his thirty-seventh save. Four to three, Sacramento, series won. @ Columbus, September 17-19 (2-1) Cody Zeiders made this one look easy for eight innings, and Sacramento needed extra frames to finally crack him. Chavarria's bases-loaded walk in the tenth pushed across the winning run, four to two, with Medina earning the victory after the Columbus bullpen finally cracked. Columbus answered the next night with its own late-inning theater. Roberto Lopez went deep and drove in a run, and Dan Diaz delivered the walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth that ended it, seven to six — the kind of loss that stings more for how close Sacramento came to escaping with the win. Jeon found his best form in weeks to close the set: six innings, one earned run, seven strikeouts, and a two-run double from England in the fifth that put the game away early. Six to two, series taken, two games to one. vs. San Jose, September 21-23 (2-1) Daniel Lozano put on a show against the team chasing Sacramento in the standings — two home runs, three RBI, the best individual performance of the homestand. Jang matched him with five shutout innings for his sixteenth win, and Sacramento sent a message with an eleven-to-two rout that had San Jose's manager openly conceding the day belonged to Sacramento. Jose Adams answered with two home runs of his own the following afternoon, but it wasn't enough — Cruz limited San Jose to two runs over six innings, and a third-inning homer from Van Ham proved decisive in a four-to-three win. San Jose closed the set with the response Sacramento couldn't match. Jesus Mendez was dominant, six and one-third shutout innings, and a bases-loaded single from Jayden Patrick in the second was all the offense his team needed. Five to nothing, San Jose, a clean shutout to end the homestand on a quiet note. ______________________________ THIRTY DIVISION TITLES The number itself tells a story about sustained organizational excellence that spans generations of players, managers, and front offices. This year's version arrived with its own particular character — a team that survived injuries to Rubalcava in October of last year, to Lopez for most of this season, and now to Shinohara and Alvarez in its final stretch, and kept winning anyway. Manager Jimmy Aces, asked about reports of clubhouse friction, deflected plainly: any team deals with its share of internal issues, and what matters in the end is what happens on the field. Navarro put it more directly — a roster of players who came together for the same cause. Whatever exists beneath the surface of a one-hundred-win season, the surface result speaks for itself. ______________________________ LOZANO FILLING THE VOID Since Shinohara went down, Lozano has been the lineup's most dangerous bat — .476 with three home runs over his last five games, capped by a two-homer, three-RBI performance against San Jose on September 21st that may be the best single game any Sacramento hitter has had all season. He finished the year recovering from a midseason shoulder injury that cost him five weeks; what he has produced since returning suggests no diminished capacity whatsoever. With Shinohara sidelined and Alvarez only now approaching a return, Lozano's production has been the difference between a lineup that merely survives and one that has continued to win series against the league's best competition. ______________________________ THE INJURY LEDGER — ENCOURAGING SIGNS Both major injuries have trended in the right direction. Shinohara's iliopsoas tendinitis timeline has shortened to four weeks remaining, down from the original five-to-six-week projection — a real possibility now exists that he returns in the postseason if Sacramento's run extends. Alvarez's shoulder labral tear has just one week remaining on its recovery clock, which puts his return squarely within the final week of the regular season. Travis McCartney, a recent addition to the outfield mix, suffered a sprained thumb running the bases on September 21st and will be out five to six weeks — a frustrating setback for a player who had only just arrived, though not one that threatens the team's larger plans. ______________________________ WHO'S HOT, WHO'S COLD Who's Hot: Jang has a 0.77 ERA over his last two starts. Nakazawa is hitting .373 with four home runs over his last fifteen games, a stretch that has quietly turned him into one of the lineup's most reliable contributors down the stretch. Musselman has a 1.02 ERA over his last eleven appearances, continuing to be one of the bullpen's most underappreciated arms. Who's Cold: Javier Gutierrez's ERA over his last fourteen appearances sits at 8.68 — a prolonged stretch of struggle that has now lasted well over a month. With October approaching, his role in any postseason bullpen plan is the single biggest open question on the pitching staff. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE Long Beach has clinched the NL Pacific. Brooklyn and Charlotte have both clinched AL wildcard berths, joining San Jose, meaning four American League teams have now secured October baseball with Detroit still chasing the AL Central title against Charlotte by four games and a magic number of three. Milwaukee and Fort Worth have clinched NL wildcard spots of their own. The October field is rapidly taking shape across both leagues, and Sacramento — for the second consecutive year — enters it as a division champion with real momentum, regardless of the bumps along the way. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Lilit Hakobyan of Sacramento's Natomas Crossing neighborhood, a winemaker, who asks: "Thirty division titles is an incredible number. What does this one mean compared to past championships?" Every title carries its own character, and this one's defining trait is resilience under attrition. The 2000 championship team dealt with Rubalcava's postseason injury and still won it all. This year's division title arrived after absorbing Lopez's season-long recovery saga, DeVore's season-ending injury, Garcia's midseason departure, and now Shinohara and Alvarez both sidelined in the final stretch. Numerically it's the thirtieth division crown, which places it alongside decades of sustained excellence. Contextually, it might be remembered as the year this particular roster proved its depth mattered as much as its star power — because the star power kept getting hurt, and the team kept winning anyway. From Thandiwe Mokoena of Sacramento's Freeport neighborhood, an athletic trainer, who asks: "With Shinohara at four weeks and Alvarez at one week, what's the realistic outlook for both being healthy for the postseason?" Alvarez looks like a near-certainty to be ready — a one-week timeline as of late September puts him back in the lineup before the regular season even concludes, giving him a handful of games to shake off rust before anything that matters in October begins. Shinohara is the more uncertain case. Four weeks from late September puts his return somewhere in late October, which depending on how deep Sacramento advances could mean he's back for a Championship Series or a World Series but unavailable for an opening-round series. Iliopsoas injuries can also be unpredictable in their final recovery stages — sometimes resolving faster than projected, sometimes requiring the full window. The organization's medical staff will be conservative given what's at stake. The realistic outlook: Alvarez very likely plays in October. Shinohara is a meaningful question mark that won't resolve itself for a few more weeks. From Renato Salazar of Sacramento's North Natomas neighborhood, a city council aide, who asks: "Lozano has been incredible since Shinohara went down. Does this change how the team should be built going into next season?" It's an interesting question to ask before this season has even finished, but it speaks to something real: Lozano's performance over these last weeks confirms he's a legitimate middle-of-the-order bat when healthy, not merely a complementary piece. That matters for roster planning regardless of what happens with Shinohara's long-term outlook, because it means the organization has more frontline offensive talent under contract than the early-season injury narrative might have suggested. Whether that changes specific offseason moves is something the front office will work through once the season actually ends. For now, the more relevant point is that Lozano has made this stretch run considerably less stressful than it could have been, and that performance carries weight beyond just 2001. ______________________________ One hundred three and fifty-three. AL West champions for the thirtieth time in franchise history. Alvarez back within a week. Shinohara within a month. Six games remain on the regular-season schedule, and then October starts in earnest. Seattle on the road to close it out. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.

06-21-2026, 11:18 PM	#398
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 548	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *September 24 – 30, 2001 \| One Hundred Five and Fifty-Seven \| The Regular Season Is Over \| The Playoff Bracket Is Set* ______________________________ TEAM THAT EARNED A BYE LOOKING LIKE A TEAM ALREADY ON VACATION There is a particular rhythm to a season's final week once the division has been clinched and the only remaining stakes are health and rest. Sacramento lost four of its last six, got blown out by Seattle, got walked off twice by sub-.500 Portland, and somewhere in the middle of it all produced a seventeen-to-one demolition that looked like a different team entirely. None of it changed anything that matters. The Prayers finish at one hundred and five and fifty-seven, the best record in the American League, and they have earned the bye that sends them directly into the next round while six other teams fight through wildcard to advance. The bigger news arrived in the injury report rather than the box scores. Victor Alvarez no longer appears on it — he is healthy, full stop, after missing most of the season's final month. Shinohara's recovery window has shortened to three weeks, putting a return inside the postseason window squarely in play. Sacramento enters October as healthy as it has been at any point since July. ______________________________ DID YOU CATCH THOSE GAMES? — WHAT THE SCORECARDS SAY @ Seattle, September 24-26 (1-2) Devon Goodson turned the opener into a personal showcase, going three for three with four RBI as Seattle piled on eleven runs against a Sacramento pitching staff that had little left in the tank for a game that no longer carried postseason stakes. Eleven to two, a lopsided finish to a series that began with the division long since wrapped up. The lineup found its rhythm the next night. Nakazawa's three-run homer in the third inning broke the game open, Mollohan drove in three of his own, and Sacramento cruised to a ten-to-four win that looked far more like the team that had spent September running away with the West. The finale was the one that stung. Jang was nearly perfect — six and two-thirds innings, no runs, eight strikeouts — and got nothing to show for it when Chris Rosenberg's two-run double in the bottom of the twelfth ended a marathon that ran past three and a half hours. Four to three, Seattle, in a game where the better pitching performance simply didn't matter. @ Portland, September 28-30 (1-2) Alex Bonilla delivered the dagger in the series opener, a three-run walk-off homer off Benson in the bottom of the ninth that turned what should have been a Sacramento win into a six-to-five Portland celebration. Cruz had allowed three runs over five and one-third innings, and the bullpen couldn't hold the lead late. Then came the explosion. Gil Cruz hit a three-run homer in the fourth, Mollohan went three for three with two RBI, and Sacramento scored seventeen runs against a Portland pitching staff that had no answers anywhere in its bullpen. Seventeen to one, the kind of final score that belongs more to batting practice than to a major league box score. The regular season's final game went quietly to Portland. Ricky Serrano allowed one run over six and two-thirds innings, and Sacramento's offense — playing out the string with reserves mixed throughout the lineup — never found traction. Three to one, Portland, and the 2001 regular season closed with a whimper that had no bearing on anything that comes next. ______________________________ CLOSING THE BOOK ON ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE WINS The full-season numbers, now final, tell the story of a team built on remarkable depth absorbing remarkable attrition and still producing the best record in its league. Shinohara's season ended early but his numbers stand on their own: .292, thirty-one home runs, one hundred and three RBI, a 5.3 WAR in only one hundred twenty-seven games — production that, had he stayed healthy the full season, would have entered serious MVP conversation. Jang finished at sixteen and six with a 3.17 ERA, good for fifth in the league and a legitimate dark-horse Cy Young case. Choi, who didn't appear in a game until June, hit .279 with twenty-eight home runs and a 3.6 WAR in just one hundred and six games — arguably the most efficient offensive season on the roster on a per-game basis. Navarro quietly put together the best all-around year of his career: .302, fifteen home runs, seventy-seven RBI, twenty-two stolen bases. Mollohan's .290 average and 3.3 WAR made him one of the most underappreciated everyday players in the league. Adam Bandy of Philadelphia won the AL batting title at .353, and Hector Martinez of Albuquerque took the National League crown. Neither distinction belongs to Sacramento. What belongs to Sacramento is a roster deep enough that losing its best player for the season's final month barely registered in the standings. ______________________________ THE BYE AND THE BRACKET The postseason field is set. Sacramento and Long Beach, the two best records in baseball, have earned byes directly into the next round. Around them, six wildcard series will play out: Charlotte against San Jose, Nashville against Brooklyn, and Columbus against Detroit in the American League; Fort Worth against Milwaukee, Phoenix against El Paso, and Los Angeles against Cleveland in the National League. Sacramento will face the winner of one of those American League series once the wildcard round concludes — a wait that allows the roster additional time to heal before the games that matter most actually begin. There is a strange symmetry in the possibility that San Jose, the team Sacramento spent all season fending off, could be eliminated before ever reaching Sacramento again. Whether that happens is out of Sacramento's hands entirely. For now, the bye is a gift: rest, health, and time. ______________________________ THE INJURY LEDGER — GOOD NEWS ACROSS THE BOARD Alvarez is healthy and off the injury report entirely. Shinohara's iliopsoas tendinitis has three weeks remaining — a timeline that, depending on how long the wildcard round runs, could have him back in the lineup for Sacramento's first game of the next round or shortly after. Mollohan's hip soreness is minor, day-to-day, expected to resolve within forty-eight hours. McCartney remains four to five weeks out with his thumb. The deeper injuries — Rubalcava, Delgado, DeVore — remain unchanged but are no longer relevant to anything Sacramento needs this October. ______________________________ WHO'S HOT, WHO'S COLD Who's Hot: Jang closed the season with a 0.00 ERA over his last two starts, the exclamation point on a fifth-place finish in the league ERA race. Medina's 1.00 ERA over his final fourteen appearances confirms he remains the bullpen's most trusted arm heading into October. Who's Cold: Gutierrez finishes the year with a 7.94 ERA over his last fourteen appearances — a stretch that has now persisted long enough that his role in the postseason bullpen is a genuine open question. Whether he factors into October plans at all may depend on how the next several weeks of evaluation go. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE Detroit finished the season as AL Central champions, clinching with room to spare over Charlotte. Cleveland claimed the NL Central, and Long Beach took the NL Pacific outright. Alex Aguilar of Phoenix closed his season with fifty-six home runs and one hundred sixty-four RBI — numbers that will be discussed for years regardless of how far his team advances. Marco Corral of Vancouver finished with two hundred fifty-nine strikeouts, the league's most dominant pitching season by that measure, on a team that did not qualify for October. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Anahit Gasparyan of Sacramento's Glen Elder neighborhood, a sommelier, who asks: "One hundred five wins despite losing Shinohara for the final month. How does this team's depth compare to the 2000 championship roster?" It compares favorably, and in some ways the comparison flatters this year's group. The 2000 team lost Rubalcava in October, during the postseason itself, and still won it all on the strength of contributions from players who weren't expected to carry that load. This year's team absorbed Lopez's recurring back issues all season, DeVore's season-ending injury, Garcia's midseason departure, and then Shinohara and Alvarez both going down in September — and still won one hundred and five games, the highest total in franchise memory for a non-strike-shortened season. Depth was always going to be this roster's defining trait. The final two months simply provided the most rigorous possible test of that depth, and it passed every time. From Folake Adeyinka of Sacramento's Vintage Park neighborhood, a data analyst, who asks: "With the bye locked in, how should the front office be using these extra days before the next round starts?" Health management is the obvious priority — getting Shinohara as close to game-ready as the three-week timeline allows, making sure Alvarez's timing returns after weeks away, and using the gap to settle the bullpen questions that lingered through September, particularly around Gutierrez's role. Beyond the physical side, there's value in simulated game work for starters who may go an extended stretch without real competitive innings while the wildcard round plays out. The bye is an advantage, but only if the team uses the time productively rather than simply resting on the accomplishment of getting it. From Esperanza Cordero of Sacramento's North Highlands neighborhood, a youth soccer coach, who asks: "Looking at the full-season numbers, who was Sacramento's most valuable player this year?" By WAR, Shinohara's 5.3 in just one hundred twenty-seven games is the highest mark on the roster despite missing the final month — a remarkable rate of production that would have challenged for the league lead in a full healthy season. But value is also about availability, and by that measure a case exists for Jang, who started thirty-six games, threw nearly two hundred innings, and finished fifth in the league in ERA while anchoring a rotation that needed a true ace. My answer: Shinohara was the best player. Jang was the most valuable, in the sense that his full-season durability and production never wavered while almost everyone else on the roster missed time at some point. Both answers are defensible. Neither answer changes what matters now, which is what both of them — and everyone else — do in October. ______________________________ One hundred five and fifty-seven. AL West champions. Best record in the American League. A bye into the next round. Shinohara three weeks out. Alvarez ready now. The wildcard round starts today — Sacramento watches and waits. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.

06-22-2026, 11:48 AM	#399
liberty-ca All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2017 Location: New Westminster, BC Posts: 548	THE HOT CORNER *Baseball coverage from the inside — Sacramento Prayers and the FBL* By Claude Playball \| Baseball Insider & Analyst \| Host, "Hot Corner" Podcast ______________________________ *October 2001 \| The Wildcard Round Is Done \| Division Series Preview* ______________________________ TEAM THAT SPENT ALL SEASON CHASING SACRAMENTO IS GONE The wildcard round delivered its most significant result not in the winners but in the losers. San Jose, ninety-six wins, second-best record in the American League, the team that spent six months making Sacramento earn every game of its nine-game cushion — eliminated in three games by Charlotte, the Monks winning the clincher seven to four. Sacramento spent all summer watching its back for San Jose, but doesn't have to face them in October. Charlotte did that work for them. Now Charlotte is the opponent, and the instinct to underestimate a ninety-two-win team that just knocked off a ninety-six-win team would be exactly the wrong instinct to act on. Luis Guerra is a genuine top-of-the-rotation pitcher. Josh Thomas is the hottest hitter in the American League right now. And Luis Martinez, the series MVP against San Jose, is a thirty-one-home-run threat who just demonstrated he performs when everything is on the line. Sacramento is the better team. The gap is real. It is not, however, as wide as the seedings make it appear. ______________________________ THE WILDCARD ROUND — WHAT HAPPENED AROUND THE LEAGUE Charlotte's series win over San Jose was the result that will reshape postseason narratives. Eliminating the team with the best record among wildcard participants, in three games, with Martinez going .455 with four RBI — that is a team playing its best baseball at the right moment. Sacramento takes notice. In the other AL series, Nashville edged Brooklyn in three games with Itay Vazquez earning MVP honors, while Columbus pulled off perhaps the biggest upset of the round, eliminating Detroit in three games despite the Preachers finishing the season at one hundred wins. Giacomo Benoldi went .417 with a home run and three RBI for Columbus. Nashville and Columbus now meet in the other division series. On the National League side, Cleveland swept Los Angeles behind a dominant series from Ernesto Gil, Fort Worth handled Milwaukee in two games with Carlos Torro leading the way, and Phoenix edged El Paso in three to set up a Cleveland-Phoenix series that should be compelling. Fort Worth earned the right to face Long Beach, the other bye team, in an NL Division Series matchup. ______________________________ THE MATCHUP: SACRAMENTO vs. CHARLOTTE This series comes down to a straightforward tension: Charlotte can score runs off anyone, and Sacramento can prevent anyone from scoring. Something has to give. Charlotte led the American League in slugging percentage at .457 and extra-base hits at five hundred ninety-four. Chitoji Kitagawa drove in one hundred twenty-five runs this season. Martinez has thirty-one home runs. Josh Thomas is hitting .373 with six home runs over his last fourteen games — a man who has found another gear at exactly the wrong time for Sacramento. These are not numbers you dismiss because your opponent has a good ERA. What Sacramento has in response is the best pitching staff in the American League by every meaningful measure — league-best ERA at 3.65, best starters' ERA at 3.81, best bullpen ERA at 3.41, best opponents' average, best BABIP against. In a five-game series, the rotation can line up Jang, Cruz, and Andretti for three starts before anyone has to consider a fourth option. Charlotte's starting pitching is led by Guerra at 3.25 ERA, which is a genuine ace-level performance, and then falls off considerably — Raya at 4.80, Lee at 4.39. The back end of their staff has been the most reliable. Their bullpen, though, has been the Achilles heel all season, posting a 4.65 ERA that ranks tenth in the American League. Sacramento's baserunning — two hundred and seven stolen bases this season, first in the league — combined with a lineup built on patience and contact is precisely the profile that punishes bad relief pitching. Once Sacramento gets into Charlotte's bullpen, the stolen base threat and walk rate become multipliers. The Monks' one-run record of twenty-seven and twenty-one against Sacramento's twenty and twenty-five is worth flagging. Charlotte has demonstrated all year that they know how to win close games. Sacramento's one-run record is actually the weaker side of their profile. If this series tightens up into late-game leverage situations night after night, the historical split favors Charlotte in a way that shouldn't be ignored. ______________________________ THE GUERRA QUESTION Luis Guerra is the central pitching challenge of this series. Seventeen wins, a 3.25 ERA, one hundred sixty-one strikeouts, and trending in the right direction — a 1.38 ERA over his last two starts entering the postseason. If Sacramento's lineup cannot solve Guerra in Game One, the series dynamics shift immediately. Charlotte's bullpen being vulnerable means Sacramento wants to see Guerra for as many pitches as possible, force deep counts, and get into the relief corps as early as they can — but if Guerra is dealing, that strategy runs into the reality of what a good pitcher does when you're trying to run up his count: he gets strikeouts and keeps you from making contact at all. Sacramento's approach will need to be disciplined enough to work counts without expanding the strike zone, which is a particular challenge given Charlotte's pitching is built around attacking the zone rather than around it. ______________________________ THE INJURY PICTURE ENTERING OCTOBER Alvarez is healthy, fully cleared, and brings nineteen home runs and a .259 average back into a lineup that missed his presence considerably over the final weeks of the season. His return alone restores the lineup's middle-of-the-order structure that carried Sacramento through most of the year. Mollohan's hip soreness was minor and should be a non-issue. Shinohara remains three weeks away from a return. The arithmetic of the postseason matters here: a five-game division series that runs its full length ends approximately a week and a half from now, and a seven-game league championship series could extend into the third week of October. If Sacramento advances deep enough, Shinohara could return. That possibility is worth holding onto, but it cannot be the plan. The plan has to be winning this division series without him. ______________________________ AROUND THE LEAGUE The NL bracket is set with Cleveland against Phoenix and Fort Worth against Long Beach. Long Beach at one hundred and three wins and Fort Worth at eighty-eight represents a significant talent gap on paper, though Fort Worth's eight-game winning streak to close the season suggests a team that has found its October form. Cleveland eliminating Los Angeles in two games was as emphatic an opening-round statement as anyone made anywhere. ______________________________ THE INBOX From Nneka Obiora of Sacramento's Carmichael neighborhood, a civil engineer, who asks: "Charlotte just eliminated San Jose in three games. Should Sacramento be more worried about them than the seedings suggest?" Yes, and I think any Sacramento fan or analyst who isn't at least somewhat recalibrating their expectations after watching what Charlotte did to San Jose is letting comfort cloud their judgment. Ninety-two wins is indicative of a legitimate postseason team, Guerra is as good as any starter Sacramento will face all October, and Martinez just proved under pressure that his regular-season numbers translate. Sure, Sacramento is the better team. That does not mean this matchup is a formality. The Monks are playing with genuine confidence right now, and confidence in October is worth more than the standings say it should be. From Takuya Shimizu of Sacramento's East Sacramento neighborhood, a high school history teacher, who asks: "How does Sacramento's rotation line up for this series, and is that an advantage?" It is the biggest structural advantage Sacramento has entering this series. Jang opens Game One — the league's fifth-best ERA, sixteen wins, and coming off a zero-run outing in his final start. Cruz takes Game Two. When the series extends to Game Three and possibly beyond, Andretti and Jeon are both legitimate playoff-quality starters. Charlotte counters with Guerra in Game One, and then the quality drops. Sacramento's depth in the rotation means that even if Charlotte's lineup solves one starter, the next one presents a completely different problem. That is how dominant pitching staffs win postseason series — not by being perfect, but by never giving the opponent anything predictable to prepare for. From Inês Barbosa of Sacramento's River Park neighborhood, a physical therapist, who asks: "With Shinohara still out, who carries the most pressure in this lineup going into October?" Lozano, without hesitation. What he did in September — filling Shinohara's slot in the order, hitting .476 over a five-game stretch, delivering the two-homer game against San Jose — established him as the lineup's most dangerous presence over the season's final weeks. If he sustains that level of production into October, Sacramento doesn't miss Shinohara as much as the numbers on paper suggest they should. Navarro has been the other name to watch, carrying a .302 average and an ascending finish to the year. And Alvarez's return adds genuine middle-of-the-order protection that the lineup genuinely lacked after his injury. The honest answer is that no one player carries more pressure than any other on a roster this deep — but if Sacramento wins this series, Lozano's name will be the one attached to why. ______________________________ One hundred five and fifty-seven. San Jose is gone — Charlotte eliminated them and is now Sacramento's opponent. Guerra is the challenge. The bullpen is the opening. Alvarez is ready. Shinohara is waiting. October starts now. ______________________________ Claude Playball is a baseball insider and analyst and host of the Hot Corner podcast, based in Sacramento, California.