Showing posts tagged “Andy Sonnanstine”
Adam Sobsey ·
1 Sep 2009, 5:00 AM ·
1 Comment
DBAP/ DURHAM—The weather changed abruptly yesterday. At game time Sunday we were still in the sweaty languor of late summer, but the heat and sun fell out of the sky overnight. The season that replaced them on Monday wasn’t so much autumnal as alien—as if the primer-gray clouds, the unsettled breeze and the melancholy dampness had been imported from a British Isle, or Soviet-bloc Europe.
And the Bulls’ meteorology changed, too, with the same suddenness. Not only did their seven-game winning-streak come to an ugly end in a sluggish, poorly-played (by both teams) 8-6 loss to Gwinnett, but the date, August 31, marked the beginning of Bull-poaching season. Five players—a full rundown of them below (well, almost full; you’ll see)—left the DBAP for Tampa Bay after last night’s loss. It was less meteorology that hit the Bulls’ clubhouse than a meteor, which decimated the squad. Or, put another way, if September has come to take the sun and heat out of the sky, then its accompanying major-league roster expansion has swiped some of the stars, too.
And that’s not all. Two more Bulls, Jason Childers and Jon Weber, are off to join Team USA for the Baseball World Cup, to be played in Europe later this month. (Why doesn’t the IBAF schedule this tournament two weeks later? Then the minor-league season would be over, and none of the players on Team USA—all of whom are in Double-A and Triple-A—would have to miss the playoffs.) Childers and Weber have been near the front of the Bulls’ charge to the brink of the post-season—the Bulls have a one-game lead in the IL South Division, and a 4.5 game lead in the wild card race with seven left to play—but they won’t be here to help push the team across the threshold.
More’s the pity, because both of those stalwarts had a chance to help the Bulls notch one more victory last night, and both came up short. How that happened, and what happens next to the Bulls, follows.
Continue reading »
Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays 10000 Maniacs, Andy Sonnanstine, Baseball World Cup, Bulls on the Move, Charlie Montoyo, Desmond Jennings, Fernando Perez, Gregor Blanco, Gwinnett Braves, Jason Childers, Jeff Bennett, Joe Nelson, Jon Weber, Montgomery Biscuits, MVP, Paul Phillips, Rayner Oliveros, Shawn Riggans, Team USA, Trapper John M.D., Wade Davis, Winston Abreu
Adam Sobsey ·
30 Aug 2009, 6:00 AM ·
5 Comments
DBAP/ DURHAM—You’ve probably heard of the Infinite Monkey Theorem, which “states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.”
If you apply the Infinite Monkey Theorem to baseball, you’ll get something like the Durham Bulls’ 10-9, 14-inning win over Gwinnett last night. It’s unlikely that a monkey will type Hamlet, but it’s also inevitable, in infinite time. And it’s also unlikely that last night’s game should ever happen, but last night’s game did happen. You could look it up.
“No, I’ve never seen anything like it,” was the first sentence out of Charlie Montoyo’s mouth afterward, before anyone had even asked him a question.
It would take me an infinite number of words to describe everything noteworthy about the doings at the DBAP on Saturday night (and, in fact, a bit of Sunday morning; the five-hour game ended at about ten past midnight). Although I don’t mind claiming that I am not a sportswriter who would ever, ever succumb to fatigue—I am a veritable dog with a bone, or better yet a monkey with an infinite number of bananas (and if you read that last clause carefully, you found the syntactical giveaway: I’m not a sportswriter)—as I say, although I don’t mind claiming indefatigability, which is an eight-syllable word, the Bulls have another game fairly soon, and at some point between now and then I have to sleep, eat, exercise, and, uh, type. Like a monkey.
And in case you need more monkey stuff, consider that last night’s ballgame featured mascot antics from something called Reggy the Purple Party Dude (he looks like a Sesame Street character who has somehow started growing french fries out of the top of his head). He monkeyed around in the first inning with a fake first-base coach, later with the umpire and Wool E. Bull, and then with “his inflatable nine-foot monkey,” which was both exactly what it sounds like and also inhabited somewhere in its recesses by a person. During one mid-inning caper, a banana figured heavily, along with spray cans of that fake shaving cream stuff that is actually string; and although I know that this is a family Web site, the fact is that the whole Reggy act, including the “his inflatable monkey” scenes and (especially) the fake-first-base-coach antics, played uncomfortably like the preparatory scenes of very, very, very specialized pornography targeted at an extremely specific fetish market I would prefer not to know anything about.
And also, the game was full of monkey wrenches.
I’ll give you all I’ve got if you click Continue reading »
Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Akinori Iwamura, Andy Sonnanstine, Aristotle, Barbaro Canizares, Brandon Jones, Charlie Montoyo, Chris Richard, Desmond Jennings, Deunte Heath, Diory Hernandez, Douglas Adams, duct tape, Elliot johnson, extraneous innings, F.O.B., Fernando Perez, Gwinnett Braves, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Infinite Improbability Drive, Infinite Monkey Theorem, Inflatable Monkey, injury, Joe Bateman, Joe Nelson, Jon Weber, Julio DePaula, Michel Hernandez, monkey, Olympic Rings, Ray Olmedo, Reggy the Purple Party Dude, Reid Brignac, Wade Davis, walks, Wes Timmons
Adam Sobsey ·
29 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
1 Comment
Maybe we misspelled his name when we Googled him
There’s often not too much to say about
11-2 routs like last night’s. The Bulls took an early lead and then systematically enlarged it, unimpeded by a 54-minute rain delay that ended starter Wade Davis’s night early. One night after tying the Bulls’ Triple-A franchise record for career homers, Chris Richard broke it. Matt Joyce and Elliot Johnson added round-trippers of their own (the
Tides have been out-homered 39-6 in their last 30 games!), the Bulls racked up 16 hits off of five Norfolk pitchers, the last of whom was second baseman Brandon Pinckney, and your local news is coming up next, thank you for staying up with us.
It was the Bulls’ fifth straight win, which kept them even with Gwinnett (who won at Charlotte) atop the International League South Division. Guess who comes to Durham for a four-game series on Saturday?
So the romp was a mere setup for the showdown we’ve all been waiting for, and as such was secondary to its surrounding weather, a complex and unpredictable collision of fast-approaching fronts and precipitations that will pass over the DBAP very soon. Details follow.
Continue reading »
Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Akinori Iwamura, Andy Sonnanstine, Brandon Chaves, chokers, Chris Richard, Desmond Jennings, Gwinnett Braves, Jake McGee, Jason Childers, Jeremy Hellickson, John Halama, Jon Weber, Mitch Talbot, Norfolk Tides, playoffs, Ray Olmedo, Scott Kazmir, Team USA, trade, Wade Davis, wild card
Adam Sobsey ·
25 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
1 Comment
The Syracuse Chiefs took a 2-0 lead over the Durham Bulls early in last night’s game, and Bulls broadcaster Neil Solondz noted that the Bulls had done the same in Sunday’s game before the Chiefs rallied to win, 3-2. You got the sense that he was hoping the Bulls might reverse the stream and visit the same comeback on Syracuse. Sure enough, the Bulls tied the game with two runs in the sixth, then won it in the eighth, by that same 3-2 score, on Michel Hernandez’s second sacrifice fly of the night.
This was a big win for the Bulls. They dropped Syracuse 2.5 games behind them in the wild-card chase; elsewhere, both Norfolk and Toledo lost and each team fell five games back; and Gwinnett lost both games of a doubleheader at home to Charlotte. That pulled the Bulls to within 2.5 games of the Braves for the South Division lead. Plenty can happen between now and Saturday, when the Braves visit the DBAP for four games, but if the Bulls can stay close, it’ll be a critical series. If nothing else, the Bulls can add another important game to their wild-card lead on Tuesday if they can beat Syracuse again. They can also earn their first series win in their last six.
Game details and notes follow.
Continue reading »
Baseball, Durham Bulls Andy Sonnanstine, Chris Richard, Fernando Perez, Jeremy Hellickson, Justin Ruggiano, Michel Hernandez, Shawn Riggans, Syracuse Chiefs, Winston Abreu
Adam Sobsey ·
20 Aug 2009, 2:42 AM ·
3 Comments
DBAP/ DURHAM—”We had no pitching and no offense. It’s that easy.” Those were the first words out of the mouth of Durham Bulls’ manager Charlie Montoyo after last night’s 8-1 drubbing at the hands of the last-place Charlotte Knights, before we’d even asked him a question.
No argument from me. Andy Sonnanstine had his second straight poor outing; the Bulls left five men in scoring position in the first five innings and then put only one more runner on base for the rest of the game against four different Charlotte relievers; Joe Nelson came on in the seventh and served up a two-run homer to Wilson Betemit; and the normally reliable Calvin Medlock gave up an obligatory ninth-inning gopher ball to Mike Restovich, who now has four of his 16 homers against the Bulls, all launched to approximately the same spot on the concourse behind the Blue Monster.
All in all, one to forget. Some thoughts follow.
Continue reading »
Baseball, Durham Bulls Andy Sonnanstine, Charlie Montoyo, Charlotte Knights, Daniel Hudson, Desmond Jennings, Gwinnett Braves, Henry Mateo, horse latitudes, Joe Nelson, Norfolk Tides, Ray Olmedo, Reid Brignac, RISP, Runners In Scoring Position, Syracuse Chiefs
Adam Sobsey ·
15 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
1 Comment
DBAP/ DURHAM—The Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees have some big dudes on their team. Shelley Duncan: 6-foot-5, 225 pounds. Chris Stewart: 6-foot-4, 210 (that’s really tall for a catcher). Their starter last night, Ivan Nova: 6-foot-4, 210. They have another starting pitcher who is 6-foot-8, 250, and two relievers who between them are nearly 13 feet tall and weigh 520 pounds. And these are all official, listed weights. You probably know what that means.
The Bulls, by contrast, got littler. Rehabbing second baseman Akinori Iwamura, who made his first appearance last night, is 5-foot-9, although he is deceptively stout at 200 pounds. Iwamura’s presence temporarily pushed Henry Mateo to left field. The Zampano-like Jon Weber (5-foot-10, 190; only one of those numbers is correct) usually plays there, but Mateo is much slighter. He’s listed, rather optimistically, at six feet tall. If that’s his actual height, and if Ray Olmedo, who played third base on Friday, is 5-foot-11, then I am pleased to discover that I’m 6-foot-2 and never realized it all these years. Cool!
The size contrast between the Yankees and the Bulls showed last night in more ways than one. For one thing, it seemed appropriate that the Sumo wrestling diversion between innings ended in the season’s first tie; you just couldn’t ignore those two fat-suited contestants. But the main evidence of the weight on the field was the score, and it wasn’t anything like a tie: the Yankees flattened the Bulls, 9-5. Durham fell two games behind Gwinnett, which beat Pawtucket.
Continue reading »
Baseball, Durham Bulls Akinori Iwamura, Andy Sonnanstine, Austin Jackson, Bulls on the Move, Calvin Medlock, Charlie Montoyo, Damaso Marte, Fernando Perez, Ivan Nova, Jeff Bennett, Joe Dillon, Jon Weber, Jonathan Albaladejo, Juan Miranda, Matt Joyce, Michel Hernandez, Ray Olmedo, Reid Brignac, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, triple play, Winston Abreu, Xavier Hernandez, Zach Kroenke, Zampano
Adam Sobsey ·
10 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
1 Comment
DBAP/ DURHAM—After the Syracuse Chiefs squelched the Bulls on Saturday night, holding them to two unearned runs and four hits, manager Charlie Montoyo was disgusted by his team’s hitting. “Our approach wasn’t good,” Montoyo said, which is managerspeak for something like, “we really stunk.” But he also insisted that his team would keep working.
Whatever they did on Sunday before they trounced Syracuse, 11-5 behind Andy Sonnanstine (pictured), they should keep doing it. You have to go back to June 27 to find a game in which the Bulls scored that many runs; in fact, they hadn’t scored more than seven in a game since July 12, nearly a month ago. That was also the last day on which the Bulls had beaten anyone by more than four runs. In Sunday’s romp, they set a season high with 18 hits. Chris Richard hit his 20th home run, Jon Weber whacked his 40th (!) double, and the Bulls batted .375 with runners in scoring position. They scored eight of their runs with two outs. Power hitting, clutch hitting, hits strung together (in one stretch, 10 of 13 straight batters hit safely), a pair of bunt singles, only five strikeouts (two after the second inning): this was a show of total, explosive force.
After the game, the first question posed to Montoyo was: “Did you take extra batting practice today?” His response: “We didn’t take extra batting practice.” What did the Bulls do, then, to manufacture such an outburst? “Just show up and play,” he said.
Continue reading »
Baseball, Durham Bulls Add new tag, Andy Sonnanstine, Carlos Hernandez, Charlie Montoyo, Chris Richard, Dale Thayer, Desmond Jennings, Elliot johnson, Joyce Carol Oates, Ross Detwiler, SBG, Syracuse Chiefs, Winston Abreu
Adam Sobsey ·
4 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
Comment
DBAP/ DURHAM—In the sixth inning of the Bulls’ 6-2 loss to Indianapolis, the sky grew ominous, and thunder rumbled in the distance. In the press box, Dave Levine checked the radar, which showed an orange-red storm cell moving toward the DBAP.
The Bulls trailed, 3-2. They’d taken a 2-0 lead with single runs in the first and second innings, and early on they looked poised to rebound from Sunday’s disheartening loss to the Indians. But Indianapolis touched Durham starter Andy Sonnanstine for single runs in the third, fourth and fifth—two scored on solo homers, and the other on a lot of bad luck. You got the feeling, as the sky darkened not only with the onset of night but the gathering of clouds, that the Bulls might be on the verge of erupting after 23 deceptively punchless innings so far. Sure, the Bulls had scored six times in splitting the first two games of the series, which isn’t awful, but they’d looked out-of-sorts at the plate and had choked repeatedly when they needed a big hit. In the series so far, they’re 5-29 with runners in scoring position.
And so the last of sixth seemed rather emblematic. Jon Weber and Shawn Riggans struck out—two of 10 whiffs on the night for Durham—but then Rhyne Hughes, the ubermensch of the moment for Durham, the team’s lone star in an overcast stretch, ripped his second double of the night. This was a boomer hit to nearly the same place as the fateful one he belted on Sunday, the one that plated one run less than it should have.
Here are Rhyne Hughes’s numbers during his 11-game hitting streak, which is the longest of the season by a Bull: 20-37 (that is a .541 batting average), 10 doubles and a homer (.892 slugging). You could complain that he has only drawn three walks during the streak, but do you really expect a guy to take pitches when he’s hitting like this?
But Hughes’s double amounted to distant thunder. Henry Mateo followed Hughes’s double by grounding out to first base and ending the inning. The storm passed without hitting the DBAP; the night grew heavy and still; the small crowd (just over 4,000) got very quiet and stayed that way for most of the rest of the game; and so did the Bulls’ lineup. They failed to score in the last seven innings, going 0-10 with men in scoring position in that stretch and stranding nine baserunners all told. Afterward, Charlie Montoyo used the word “horrible” to describe the Bulls’ current hitting with men in scoring position. Montoyo doesn’t resort to language that strong very often.
Heather worried after the game that Montoyo shouldn’t have called the current roster “the best team of the year,” which he consented to do when that headline-ready phrase was suggested to him two games ago. I agree not only with Montoyo that the Bulls have a sprained RISP right now, but also with Heather that comments like “best team of the year” are an almost sure way to jinx a ballclub. Still, I don’t think Bulls fans should worry too much about their team just yet.
Continue reading »
Baseball, Durham Bulls Andy Sonnanstine, Brian Bixler, Chris Barnwell, Desmond Jennings, Indianapolis Indians, Jon Weber, Matt Joyce, Rhyne Hughes, RISP, Runners In Scoring Position, Shawn Riggans, Tagg Bozied
Adam Sobsey ·
29 Jul 2009, 5:00 AM ·
Comment
There was so much to report on the game-inside-the-game after Monday’s home win by the Bulls over Norfolk that I completely neglected a key part of the big picture. Although I noted that Elliot Johnson replaced Henry Mateo at the top of the order, I failed to recount what Johnson did there: he went 3-4 with a homer, a double and a walk, and was basically the player of the game for the Bulls.
(I must digress here briefly for an I Am Psychic moment. On Monday night, I totally called Johnson’s homer off of Norfolk’s David Pauley. His first inning single was sharply struck, and Pauley then left a number of pitches up in the zone during his first time through the Bulls’ lineup. Johnson is good at getting his hands up on top of high fastballs, and I had a feeling he’d come up next time looking for one from Pauley. Before his third-inning at-bat, I said, “Johnson’s gonna hit a home run here.” One pitch later, pow: Pauley threw the high fastball and Johnson clubbed it over the right field wall. Alas, no one had heard my prediction, but Dave Levine, seated to my left, can back me up, because I was so worked up about it that I practically bashed a hole in the press box desk. Kids, I am psychic. Believe me.)
After Johnson shined in Monday’s game, I asked Charlie Montoyo about the decision to promote Johnson to the leadoff slot. Montoyo responded that it had more to do with giving Mateo a chance to break out of his prolonged slump than it did with rewarding Johnson, who in the week or so prior to Monday’s game had gone a decent but not awesome 10-33 with two homers and two doubles, but only four walks and an uncomfortable 12 strikeouts. Still, he was a better candidate to lead off than Mateo, who hasn’t looked consistently good in over a month. And after Johnson’s stellar Monday, Montoyo gave us a wry look and said, laughing, “Maybe Johnson’s leading off now.”
Turns out he wasn’t kidding. Johnson was in the pole position again against Scranton on Tuesday night, and played left field. (With Justin Ruggiano out on personal leave while he and his wife have their first child, Johnson may see another game or two there.) The switch-hitting utility player responded by hitting like a corner outfielder, belting two home runs, one from each side of the plate. The second, off of rehabbing Yankees reliever Damaso Marte, gave the Bulls a 3-2 lead in the eighth inning. Johnson is in full Eedge mode.
One out later, Matt Joyce followed Johnson’s home run with another one, a long screamer that gave the Bulls insurance. They won, 4-2. Both Gwinnett and Norfolk lost, so the Bulls are up two games and three and a half, respectively. They have the second-best record in the International League, just half a game behind Louisville. Don’t look now, but they’ve won three straight and five of six.
A few notes follow:
Continue reading »
Baseball, Durham Bulls Andy Sonnanstine, Charlie Montoyo, Dale Thayer, David Pauley, Edward Albee, Elliot johnson, Henry Mateo, I Am Psychic, Jason Childers, Matt Joyce, Norfolk Tides, SBG, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, The Eedge, walks
Adam Sobsey ·
24 Jul 2009, 3:30 PM ·
1 Comment
The Bulls finally come home tonight
A laggard post about the Bulls’ trip-ending,
10-inning, 4-3 loss last night at Indianapolis. The delay owes at least a little to the fatigue that comes from trying to cover a team that hasn’t played a home game in two weeks: you just lose focus a bit.
It would be easy to pin last night’s loss on a key player move: closer Dale Thayer was promoted to Tampa (more on that below), for whom he promptly pitched a fine inning of scoreless relief. Too bad nobody gave a rat’s a**.
Without Thayer, the Bulls’ late-inning solution was Julio DePaula and Joe Bateman. Even though it’s Bateman who has struggled with control (25 walks in 39 innings pitched), DePaula’s wildness struck the big blow in the eighth inning. With one out and the Bulls leading 3-2, he walked consecutive hitters, one of them batting .182 in AAA with only two walks in over 40 at-bats to that point. Bateman came on and gave up a game-tying bloop single. He then added a hit batter in sympathy with DePaula’s location problems, but escaped further damage.
In the 10th inning, though, still tied 3-3, Calvin Medlock relieved and allowed the go-ahead run on an errant toss that was either scored a wild pitch or a passed ball, depending on whether you believe Neil Solondz’s game wrap or the Minor League Baseball recap (safer to go with the former). Either way, the pitch wasn’t a strike, and the Bulls’ relievers gave this one away by simply missing targets.
But the hitters helped, too, tallying 13 hits but scoring only three runs. The game recap also contains a suspicious-looking home-plate-to-second-base double-play grounder by Jon Weber that has visions of an SBG dancing (or perhaps limping) in my head; but I didn’t listen to the game, so I’ll hang fire. Suffice it to say that there were plenty of chances, and that the Bulls didn’t capitalize on them. When a team is struggling, which the Bulls are—they went 2-6 for the road trip—yesterday’s is the sort of game they often seem to have: pretty good pitching (Andy Sonnanstine was sharp in his return, going six innings and allowing two runs), pretty good hitting, decent fielding; all of it good enough to lose.
Don’t forget, though, that the Bulls haven’t played at DBAP since July 9, a two-week stretch awkwardly divided by the All-Star break. This is a disjointed time and a disjointed team: lots of traveling, some unexpected player moves, and you never know who’s going to start the next game.
Speaking of that, youngster Jeremy Hellickson makes his first-ever Triple-A start tonight at at the DBAP (I repeat yesterday’s message, only in all caps: BE THERE). Hellickson is a highly regarded 22-year-old pitcher, and if the trade rumors win out and Wade Davis is dealt as the July 31 waiver-deadline approaches, Hellickson becomes the No. 1 pitching prospect in the Rays’ organization. As I said, be there tonight, not only because Hellickson’s on the mound, but because the opponent is Norfolk, whom the Bulls trail by just half a game in the International League South division.
Other things, mostly to do with pitching:
Continue reading »
Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Andy Sonnanstine, Calvin Medlock, Dale Thayer, Gwinnett Braves, Indianapolis Indians, Jeremy Hellickson, Joe Bateman, Julio DePaula, Justin Ruggiano, Norfolk Tides, SBG, trade, Wade Davis
