Showing posts tagged “Craig Albernaz”
Adam Sobsey ·
7 Sep 2009, 5:00 AM ·
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DBAP/ DURHAM—There’s a tacit understanding among ballplayers regarding season-ending series. If the postseason is all settled, the deal is this: the pitchers throw strikes, the hitters swing at them; you avoid long at-bats; you avoid injuries, too, by staying out of collisions on the basepaths; you try to decide games quickly and painlessly—and with a bonhomie that revolves around mutual good sportsmanship.
Cut to last night at the DBAP, home of the IL South Division Champion Durham Bulls. After three innings, the game was on a brisk 90-minute pace. The two starting pitchers had combined to throw just 57 pitches. Only one man had reached base, Justin Ruggiano, and he was thrown out (on what looked like a bad call) trying to stretch his liner off the Blue Monster into a double. We were cruising, coasting, flying toward the finish line. When Sean Rodriguez hit his first home run as a Bull, a solo shot in the fifth inning (which I predicted when he stepped to the plate!), it felt like that might turn out to be the only run of the game.
It wasn’t. The Bulls fell behind, tied it up, and won 3-2—and wouldn’t you know it, even with the suspense drained out of the regular season, they did it in dramatic fashion.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Bob McCrory, Charlie Montoyo, Craig Albernaz, FNG, I Am Psychic, Jason Cromer, John Jaso, Justin Ruggiano, Mitch Talbot, Norfolk Tides, Paul Phillips, Ray Olmedo, Sean Rodriguez, Wade Davis
Adam Sobsey ·
6 Sep 2009, 5:00 AM ·
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DBAP/ DURHAM—Shortly before game time last night, a debate broke out in the press box about the Bulls’ “magic number” for clinching the International League South Division title. The Bulls were two games ahead of Gwinnett going into the game, so it seemed initially that, with three games to play, it would take any combination of Durham wins and Gwinnett losses totaling two to seal the deal.
But others pointed out that, in case of a regular-season tie, the Bulls would, for the purpose of the playoffs, be named the winner by virtue of their better record within the division. (The first tiebreaker, the teams’ head-to-head record, was nullified because the Bulls and Braves were 11-11 in direct competition with one another.) The Braves would be the wild card team. Thus, it was argued, the magic number was really only 1, because a single Bulls win or Gwinnett loss would assure an outcome no worse for the Bulls than the tie they needed.
Someone else countered that a tie is still a tie, and the tiebreaker was merely a latency, a fiction until it had to be actually wielded; and then someone else used the word semantics, kind of grouchily, and in any case it was decided that the score of the Gwinnett Braves’ game versus the Charlotte Knights would occasionally, as the evening progressed, be flashed on the big screen affixed to the Blue Monster.
As it happened, that game began an hour before the Bulls took on the Norfolk Tides, so just as the action as the DBAP was beginning, the out-of-town score went up on the board. It was already 6-1 Charlotte in the third inning down in Georgia.
Cheers from the stands. Then Bulls’ General Manager Mike Birling rendered much of the rest of the debate immaterial by informing us that the champagne was already on ice down in the clubhouse.
And the Bulls made it even less material by beating the Tides, 5-1. It was Durham’s third straight division title, and the team’s in the last 12 years, a truly remarkable run.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Charlie Montoyo, Craig Albernaz, Dale Thayer, F.O.B., Gwinnett Braves, Julio DePaula, Matt Joyce, Norfolk Tides, Rayner Oliveros, Winston Abreu
Adam Sobsey ·
19 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
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DBAP/ DURHAM—I missed more than two innings of last night’s 5-2 Bulls win over Charlotte. I spent half an inning in the visitor’s clubhouse as part of the crowded media contingent interviewing the Knights’ Jake Peavy (pictured) following his four-inning, 67-pitch outing against the Bulls, his second rehab start for the Chicago White Sox, and another two innings waiting for that interview. It was much like the game that rehabbing Tampa lefty Scott Kazmir started for the Bulls a couple of months ago, when we were whisked down into the bowels of the DBAP for a mid-game interview with a pitcher.
Both times, I was happy to do this—it’s not every day that you get to talk to one of the dozen or so best active pitchers on planet Earth—but I have to say that I got very antsy in the administrative lobby while watching the ballgame on a television feed as Peavy threw a supplementary bullpen session. All that did was make me wish I was seeing the action firsthand rather than on a screen. I suppose that my reaction means that, for better or worse, I’ve become more interested in the fortunes of the Durham Bulls than I am about pretty much any other baseball being played.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls Akinori Iwamura, Carlos Hernandez, Carlos Torres, Charlie Montoyo, Charlotte Knights, Chicago White Sox, Craig Albernaz, Dale Thayer, Daniel Hudson, Elliot johnson, Fernando Perez, Gwinnett Braves, Henry Mateo, injury, Jake Peavy, Jeff Bennett, Joe Dillon, Jon Weber, Justin Ruggiano, Matt Joyce, RISP, Runners In Scoring Position, Wade Davis
Adam Sobsey ·
18 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
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DBAP/ DURHAM—A few days ago, Bulls right fielder Matt Joyce lost a fly ball in the lights, but finally spotted it just in time to make the catch. After the game, he talked about the helpless feeling that overcomes an outfielder when that happens, and he recalled a similar play in the majors last year, when he lost a ball hit by the Twins’ Joe Mauer in the notorious Bermuda Triangle of the Minneapolis Metrodome’s lights and ceiling. He happened to spot it at the very last moment and leaped to spear it for an out. Fortunately, it seems like more often than not, the ball eventually emerges from the white-out and gets caught.
In the fifth inning of last night’s 9-3 loss to the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, the Bulls were already in a deep hole, down 7-0. But somehow the game seemed closer than that. Bulls starter Jason Cromer had struggled from the very first batter of the game, getting tagged for three runs in the first inning, but he actually didn’t look all that bad over the next three-plus innings. Although he had trouble hitting his spots, and kept working long at-bats, he might have gotten through the fifth without allowing any more runs to score but for some bad luck and some worse fielding (partly his own). Instead, he gave up an unearned run in the second inning and another in the fourth. But after that, he recovered and retired the next six Yankees. By the end of five innings, he had thrown 99 pitches, and it was the perfect time for Charlie Montoyo to take him out of the game.
But it was quite obvious that Cromer was staying in. Why? Because the Durham bullpen is once again ragged with overuse, and Montoyo has been forced to ride his starters a little longer than usual. On Friday night, Montoyo felt compelled to leave Andy Sonnanstine on the mound to get battered for 11 hits and seven runs in five innings. The next night, he left Jeremy Hellickson in for an extra couple of batters in another bullpen-preservation attempt, and it cost Hellickson a run when he allowed a home run to John Rodriguez. Then, on Sunday, Carlos Hernandez missed his second straight start with a wrist injury, and Montoyo had to call on reliever Joe Bateman for a 54-pitch, 3 1/3-inning spot start; after Bateman, three other relievers burned up ample pitches to close out the game.
So when Cromer ran into immediate first-inning trouble last night, we in the press box were already wondering aloud how Montoyo would manage his pitching staff for the rest of the evening. It was clear that Jason Childers, Julio DePaula and Dale Thayer were available, but I felt compelled to add that if the game got out of hand, we’d see Craig Albernaz, the Bulls’ little-used fourth(!)-string catcher. Montoyo had revealed in a side comment a few nights ago that Albernaz might have to do some mop-up work in support of the short-handed bullpen (Jeff Bennett, recently demoted from Tampa, hasn’t arrived in Durham yet); and although he said that with a a smirk on his face, I could tell that what he didn’t want to have to admit was that he wasn’t really kidding.
So: Cromer takes the mound again in the top of the sixth on Monday, trailing 5-0, and I’m thinking, uh-oh.
What I couldn’t have known was that I should perhaps have been thinking uh-oh on someone else’s behalf.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Akinori Iwamura, Bullpen, Charlie Montoyo, Chris Richard, Craig Albernaz, Elliot johnson, Fernando Perez, Gwinnett Braves, halfro, Jake Peavy, Jason Childers, Jason Cromer, Jeff Bennett, Jon Weber, Jonathan Albaladejo, Josh Towers, Julio DePaula, Justin Ruggiano, Matt Joyce, Russ Ortiz, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, Yurendell de Caster
Adam Sobsey ·
16 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
1 Comment
DBAP/ DURHAM—This was one of those games that seemed like it was over early. In the third inning, down 1-0 on Juan Miranda’s second homer in as many nights (and hit to nearly the same place), five consecutive Bulls reached base against Scranton’s Kei Igawa before Igawa recorded an out. All five scored. No one scored again until the eighth, and in the mean time, the Bulls’ 5-1 lead seemed like 15-1.
That was because of Jeremy Hellickson (pictured). The young right-hander, who had beaten the Yankees at Scranton just over two weeks ago with six three-hit, shutout innings, was even better last night. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine him pitching much better against the Yankees’ sluggers. He allowed only two hits, both solo homers. He threw 108 pitches, 72 for strikes, and produced an eye-opening 21 swings-and-misses (11 of which came in his first 33 pitches). Nearly all of those whiffs were on Hellickson’s changeup, which the Yankees never came close to solving. The changeup was so good last night that Hellickson barely even bothered with his curveball, which he threw just a handful of times and which wasn’t very effective. Fastballs and changeups, fastballs and changeups. By the end of Hellickson’s outing, his excellent control had widened home plate umpire Derek Crabill’s strike zone, and the young Iowan was getting called strikes on anything close to the plate and around the knees.
When Hellickson departed, he received the loudest ovation I’ve heard for a player at the DBAP this year. “He earned it,” manager Charlie Montoyo said. And so he did. Reliever Jason Childers came on and nearly blew the game for Hellickson, but Dale Thayer gathered up the live wires Childers left dangling and snuffed them out. The Bulls won, 5-4.
Hellickson’s performance might have been even better had he come out of the game at the logical point. But Montoyo needed more from him, and it cost Hellickson a run—and almost cost the Bulls the game.
Meanwhile, a spaghetti junction of injuries, trades, demotions, slumps and collisions made this an especially busy night in the postgame clubhouse. Many loose ends to tie up, from the game itself and the extra-curricular surroundings. All of that follows. Length advisory.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Akinori Iwamura, Austin Jackson, Carlos Hernandez, Charlie Montoyo, Craig Albernaz, Dale Thayer, Damaso Marte, Desmond Jennings, Elliot johnson, injury, Jason Childers, Jeff Bennett, Jeremy Hellickson, Joe Dillon, John Rodriguez, Juan Miranda, Justin Ruggiano, Kei Igawa, Matt Joyce, Michel Hernandez, New York Yankees, Reegie Corona, Rhyne Hughes, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, Shawn Riggans, Shelley Duncan, Xavier Hernandez, Yurendell de Caster
Adam Sobsey ·
7 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
1 Comment
DBAP/ DURHAM—Here are a few sentences I shouldn’t have written, but did anyway the other day, after the Bulls lost their second straight game to Indianapolis:
“The Bulls lead the league in home runs but haven’t hit one in 19 innings. They’ll hit a bunch soon, I promise. Dale Thayer will reel off a few scoreless appearances in a row.”
The idea there was that, in order for the Bulls to start winning again, those things would have to happen. Well, the Bulls have won two in a row since then, and they’ve done it by hitting exactly one home run (a solo shot by Chris Richard on Tuesday) and getting another ragged outing from Dale Thayer, who has allowed five runs in his last 9 1/3 innings.
I guess I should have cut straight to the two sentences that followed the ones I ought to have deleted:
The Bulls will drive in a bunch of runners in scoring position. And Jon Weber will keep hitting doubles, just like he did again last night.
Guess what? I’m not entirely a quack after all. The Bulls went 4-8 last night with RISP (and are 8 for their last 20 over their last two games), and Jon Weber hit yet another double. He upped his league-leading total to 38. And so the Bulls ducked a late rally last night and beat the Syracuse Chiefs, 5-3. With Gwinnett’s loss at Toledo, the Bulls have first place all to themselves again.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Carlos Hernandez, Charlie Montoyo, Craig Albernaz, Dale Thayer, Daryle Ward, Jason Childers, Joe Bateman, Justin Ruggiano, Reid Brignac, Shawn Riggans, Syracuse Chiefs, The Roodge, Winston Abreu, Xavier Hernandez
Adam Sobsey ·
30 Jul 2009, 5:30 AM ·
2 Comments
The Bulls were rained out at Scranton on Tuesday
The Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, who play in none of the three places implied by their name, have had 12 games postponed this year. Some of those postponements came on sunny days: the drainage system at PNC Park in Moosic, PA is superannuated and ineffective; after wet weather passes, the field is sometimes still too wet to play on. A lot of people have been
pretty mad about it.
On Wednesday night, though, rain was the culprit. The folks in Scranton, along with help from the New York Yankees, have been working to jerry-build a temporary fix until a major overhaul of the ballpark can be done during the offseason; and so the upshot is that one can only hope that Thursday’s doubleheader, which is scheduled to begin at 1:05 p.m., actually takes place. If it does, a pair of the Bulls’ three starting Aitches will pitch: Jeremy Hellickson (who was slated for Wednesday) and Carlos Hernandez. Gwinnett and Norfolk both won last night, and crept to within 1.5 and 3 games of the Bulls, respectively, in the International League South Division.
A few notes follow:
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Bette Davis, Craig Albernaz, Dale Thayer, doubles, Elliot johnson, Gwinnett Braves, Matt Joyce, Norfolk Tides, rainout, Reid Brignac, SBG, Shawn Riggans, Shelley Duncan
Adam Sobsey ·
28 Jul 2009, 5:00 AM ·
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DBAP/DURHAM—I am in the general habit of watching the first few innings of each game at the DBAP from the press box, and then moving down behind the plate to get a closer look at the pitchers and hitters. I did that last night and found myself sitting in front of Norfolk Tides’ pitcher Troy Patton (you can read an interesting piece about him here). Patton started Sunday’s game for the Tides and was charting pitches and working the radar gun for Monday’s pitchers. This is common practice, by the way: Jason Cromer of the Bulls (well, technically of the Hudson Valley Renegades for three days until his next start) was a few seats to my right, doing the same for the home team. I was always amazed that David Price wasn’t besieged by fans each time he took his turn.
I chatted on and off with Patton during the Bulls’ 7-5 win over Norfolk last night. It was revealing to watch baseball through his eyes. “Why’d he throw that pitch there?” Patton wondered aloud when one of his teammates left a meatball up and out over the plate ahead 0-2 in the count. He was quite impressed by Julio DePaula’s slider and couldn’t believe it when the Bulls’ reliever abandoned it in the eighth inning for his fastball, which he couldn’t throw for strikes and got himself in trouble with. When Joe Bateman failed to get a strike call on a slider that was so good it seemed to fool home plate umpire Derek Crabill, Patton noted that the hitter, Tides’ right fielder Melvin Dorta, had lifted his hands when the pitch went by him, making it look as though it was inside. “Major league hitters do that all the time” to get a ball called, Patton added. (Dorta, by the way, wins the 2009 prize for Weirdest Cause of Leaving a Game: he had so much earwax buildup on Saturday afternoon that he got dizzy and had to be removed. The ear wax had to be removed, too.)
Patton has suffered from some bad luck in his career (read that article linked above), as well as in the game he’d pitched the previous night, but he seemed in remarkably genial spirits despite the setbacks. You see this over and over again in baseball: there’s an enormous amount of misfortune and failure you just have to shrug off. From the first inning to the last on Monday night, the Bulls did that—and it paid off with a win.
A couple of quick roster notes before I move into a very long post (the closer you get, the more you’re forced to see):
1) Dale Thayer should rejoin the team on Tuesday in Scranton. Brian Shouse was activated after his rehab assignment and Thayer returned to the herd. (Shouse was promptly Swishered and Damonized by the New York Yankees).
2) Justin Ruggiano’s wife is expecting and due any day now. Ruggiano will take a leave from the team during the series at Scranton and will return on Saturday at the DBAP. No word on whether an official move will be made (i.e. a temporary add of someone like Rashad Eldridge).
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Ben Zobrist, Bob McCrory, Brandon Pinckney, Charlie Montoyo, Craig Albernaz, earwax, Henry Mateo, Jason Cromer, Jeff Fiorentino, Joe Bateman, Joey Gathright, Julio DePaula, Justin Ruggiano, Luck, Melvin Dorta, Michael Aubrey, Mississippi, Norfolk Tides, Reid Brignac, Rhyne Hughes, Troy Patton, Wade Davis
Adam Sobsey ·
18 Jul 2009, 5:00 AM ·
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It’s starting to seem like this is going to go on for the rest of the season: Bulls in first, Bulls out of first. I don’t have crunchable numbers in front of me, but I don’t think Durham’s been more than three games up or three games down since April. That’s quite remarkable, if true.
So last night’s 5-4 loss at Louisville, yet another close game, was pretty much the way it goes these days. It’s impossible to predict how they’ll do on any given night. They beat Louisville ace Matt Maloney on Thursday, but lost to the extremely average Ramon Ramirez on Friday with their own top prospect Wade Davis on the mound. Davis had only one bad inning—indeed, only one inning in which the Bats scored—but it cost him all five runs. A passed ball and a questionable fielding decision by catcher Craig Albernaz got Davis into trouble and he couldn’t pitch out of it, allowing a catastrophic three-run triple to All-Star Drew Stubbs during the game-deciding fifth inning. The Bulls were shut down by the Louisville bullpen for the final 3 1/3. They went 1-8 with runners in scoring position, although it should be said that Louisville did, too.
Norfolk retook sole possession of first place with a doubleheader sweep of Charlotte. The Tides have played four twinbills this year and swept all of them. Guess what? The Bulls host the Tides for a doubleheader—the Bulls’ first of the season—a week from today at the DBAP. That’s part of a five-game set that could determine what sort of home stretch the Bulls will ultimately find themselves charging down.
A couple of notes:
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Baseball, Durham Bulls Chris Richard, Craig Albernaz, Henry Mateo, Julio DePaula, Louisville Bats, Wade Davis
Adam Sobsey ·
17 Jul 2009, 5:00 AM ·
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That devious Rick Sweet. The Louisville Bats’ manager guided the International League All-Star squad to a 6-5 win over the Pacific Coast League All-Stars on Wednesday night in Portland, Oregon. In order to do it, he needed a big helping of Durham’s Dale Thayer, a late addition to the team when leading vote-getter Clay Buchholz declined to participate. Sweet summoned Thayer in the fifth inning. Two runs were already in, narrowing the score to 4-3 Internationals, and there were runners on first and third with just one out. On the very first pitch he threw, the unflappable Thayer got Alcides Escobar to pop out to right field, and the Colorado Sky Sox’ Eric Young was doubled off of first base to end the inning. Rally over. The IL scored twice more in the next inning, the PCL All-Stars never tied the game, and Thayer’s two-outs-with-one-pitch was the turning point.
Sweet rewarded Thayer for his heroic one-pitch effort by sending him back out for the sixth inning, too. Thayer worked around a one-out walk and held the PCL scoreless, throwing 1 2/3 shutout innings all told. This from a guy who wasn’t even supposed to be on the team.
But it was vital to Sweet that Thayer pitch plenty in Portland, and it had nothing to do with winning that night’s game, which was merely an exhibition. It had to do with winning the next one, which wasn’t. And although his Bats lost to Durham Thursday night, 4-3, Sweet’s ploy almost worked.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls all star, All Star Game, Chris Richard, Craig Albernaz, Dale Thayer, Elliot johnson, injury, Jason Cromer, Joe Bateman, Louisville Bats, Matt Maloney, Ray Sadler, Reid Brignac, Rick Sweet
