Showing posts tagged “Elliot johnson”
Adam Sobsey ·
21 Oct 2009, 4:00 AM ·
1 Comment
Apparently just discovering that they won the Triple-A championship a full month after it happened, the Durham Bulls are throwing a party tonight at Durham Bulls Athletic Park, from 6-8 p.m.
Highlights: The trophy will be on display, as will the International League Governor’s Cup trophy, which the Bulls also won. Bulls utilityman Elliot Johnson and first baseman Chris Richard—the latter is, don’t forget, the Bulls’ all-time home run leader—will be on hand to sign autographs (both players live in Durham in the off-season). The first 500 fans get early-bird perks, and everyone gets free hot dogs, chips, cookies and soda. You can also bring a glove and play catch under the lights. No word on whether you’ll be charged with an error if you drop a pop-up.
It’s only too bad that Scott Kazmir, who won one of the Bulls’ regular-season games this season, took the loss for the Los Anagram Gleans of Anywhoo last night. Otherwise, tonight’s party offers unalloyed good vibes. Spend your twilight at the DBAP and celebrate your champions.
Baseball, Durham Bulls Chris Richard, Elliot johnson, Governor's Cup, party, Scott Kazmir, Triple-A championship
Adam Sobsey ·
11 Sep 2009, 4:00 AM ·
1 Comment
DBAP/ DURHAM—The luck bubbles were still blowing for the Durham Bulls in the first inning of last night’s 5-2 loss to the Louisville Bats. They had gotten a healthy spray of good fortune in Game One: four errors by the Bats, which helped score three Durham runs (plus, the Bulls’ three errors didn’t figure in any of Louisville’s four runs); and some well-placed, softly struck hits. The Bulls’ eight runs on Wednesday were somehow rather bubble-like—transparent, hollow, unmemorable—but they still won the game.
And in the first inning last night, the Bulls were lucky before anyone came to the plate: rehabbing Reds right fielder Jay Bruce was out with a sore groin. Then, both Desmond Jennings and Rashad Eldridge reached on infield singles, the latter when his dribbler down the third base line hit the bag. The third man to hit was Joe Dillon, and with the count 2-1, Charlie Montoyo put on a hit-and-run. Dillon’s little grounder found the precise first-base hole it needed to, and Jennings scored. Eldridge scored, too, on Matt Joyce’s subsequent double-play ball. Four batters, two runs.
Those were the only runs they’d get. The luck ran out. Or rather, it kept running, but it kept running in the way that water keeps running even after the hot water tank runs out. The proof of that was in the sixth inning. We cut to that soon after the jump.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Ben Jukich, Charlie Montoyo, Desmond Jennings, Elliot johnson, Enerio Del Rosario, Joe Dillon, John Jaso, Louisville Bats, Luck, Maximo Del Rosario, Mitch Talbot, momentum, pilaf, Rashad Eldridge, risotto
Adam Sobsey ·
7 Sep 2009, 8:00 PM ·
4 Comments
DBAP/ DURHAM—I thought it was cute that second baseman Henry Mateo was penciled in at first base in this afternoon’s season finale, a 4-3, 10-inning loss to Norfolk. Mateo had played there once before, on August 23, although he moved back to his natural position at second base when rehabbing Akinori Iwamura left the game early, as scheduled. It seemed like it was just for kicks that Mateo was playing there again today, like a way for Charlie Montoyo to say thanks for filling the hole for us this season. Mateo was signed out of the independent Atlantic League in May, and he came on like gangbusters, batting well over .300 for more than a month and holding down the fort at second base. He wound up at .277 and looked shakier in the field as the season progressed, but there’s no question that Mateo did something for the Bulls that they badly needed: he showed up and played every day.
And so it was fun when the diminutive infielder had to leap for a tall throw from the pitcher in the sixth inning, and funner still when he ended the eighth inning by diving to grab a line drive and then polishing off an unassisted double play after the Tides’ Jonathan Tucker broke too far from first base.
Turns out it’s not so cute. It was Joe Dillon’s day off, and Chris Richard, the guy who you would call the Durham Bulls’ first baseman if someone asked you who played that position, was called up to Tampa. In the afternoon opener of a day/night doubleheader at Yankee Stadium, Rays’ first baseman Carlos Pena had two fingers broken when he was hit by a pitch from C. C. Sabathia. Richard (pictured, top) was headed to the airport shortly afterward—and by shortly, I mean, like, minutes, and he may get into Game Two tonight in the Bronx if he can get there on time. Maybe the NYPD will clear a lane of the Triborough Bridge for him.
This is why major-league clubs employ older players like Richard: so that when there’s a catastrophe upstairs, you’ve got a guy who can immediately fill in and isn’t going to be cowed by Yankee Stadium or the fastballs A. J. Burnett throws in it. Now, Carlos Pena is leading the American League in homers, so Richard is certainly a major downgrade. But he’s a well-trained left-handed hitter with good power, going to a ballpark famously generous with its right-field homers; and on top of that, Richard is an easy guy to get along with in the clubhouse. He fits right in at first base, where he is a very good defensive player.
He also hasn’t played in the major leagues since 2003, and that was only 27 at-bats. So, you know, we’ll see.
Richard is 35 years old, the oldest player on the Bulls’ roster. Although it’s a blow to lose him on the eve of the playoffs, he’s a guy you feel good for when he gets a chance like this (admittedly, it’s a muted positive, given that it comes as a result of a bad injury to a star player). Charlie Montoyo was so happy for Richard that he wasted no time after the game in telling us about the promotion. We asked him a question about Mitch Talbot, who was in the dugout yesterday, and Montoyo answered it in one word (”yes”) before jumping to the news about Richard. “I was really happy to tell Chris Richard he was going up. That guy’s been with me for three years now, and he’s been one of my leaders.”
And now that leader is gone.
Some brief notes follow, before I return tomorrow with more on the upcoming playoff series against Louisville.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Bulls on the Move, Carlos Peña, Charlie Montoyo, Chris Nowak, Chris Richard, Elliot johnson, Henry Mateo, Jason Cromer, Joe Bateman, Joe Nelson, Louisville Bats, Mike Wlodarczyk, Mitch Talbot, Norfolk Tides, Rashad Eldridge, walks
Adam Sobsey ·
2 Sep 2009, 3:00 AM ·
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DBAP/ DURHAM—First things first: the “mystery” fifth Bull promoted to Tampa was none other than last night’s starter, Wade Davis, Charlie Montoyo said after the Durham Bulls’ 10-2 loss to Gwinnett. You can finally get some sleep! You can also rest assured that Davis’s promotion had nothing to do with his performance last night, probably his worst of the season. Davis had trouble finding the strike zone for the first three innings, throwing just half of his pitches for strikes. Then, when he did find it, his strikes got hit in the fourth inning, culminating in a disputed grand slam home run by Alvin Colina (more on the dispute later). Davis came out of the game one batter later, having reached a workload limit imposed by the Tampa Bay brass, who want him fresh for his first start as a Ray, which rumor has it will take place in a doubleheader scheduled for Labor Day in a place called [ruffles through papers] Yankee Stadium, which I understand is in one of the outer boroughs of New York City. Congrats to Davis: he’s shown himself worthy of the callup; and with his reserved demeanor and his competitive edge, he seems ready for the challenge.
He wasn’t last night, though—you’ll find some of his thoughts after the jump—and neither were his teammates. The quality of baseball at the Class AAA level is generally pretty high. No surprise there: it’s just one level down from the top, and most of the players have or will have played in the majors in their careers. But every now and then, you get reminded where you are.
And so we were last night. The Bulls’ fumbling, stumbling loss dropped them back into a tie with the Braves for the IL South Division lead, with six games to play. The two teams split their final series, two games apiece, as well as the season series, 11-11 (although they could meet again in the playoffs). They have identical home records, too: 39-30. Oh, and they also have identical road records. Guess what it is? 39-30.
Suffice it to say that, at the moment, there’s a rightness to all of this evenness, which also extends into the future: each team has three games remaining against Charlotte and three against Norfolk.
It wasn’t only the Bulls who played like minor-leaguers last night: the Braves didn’t exactly look like world-beaters, either. But it was actually two other parties, the umpires and the architects, who set the tone for Tuesday’s richness of embarrassments. See how, and also more roster moves, below.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Alvin Colina, Bulls on the Move, Charlie Montoyo, Elliot johnson, Gwinnett Braves, Heath Rollins, Henry Mateo, Joe Nelson, Jon Weber, Paul Phillips, Reid Brignac, Sean Rodriguez, Wade Davis
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 ·
27 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
1 Comment
Jeff Bennett’s arrival in Durham a couple of weeks ago has drawn relatively little attention. Akinori Iwamura and Fernando Perez are getting most of the attention on their rehab assignments, and Tampa had already recently demoted another struggling major-league reliever, Joe Nelson. Bennett doesn’t even appear on the Bulls’ roster list on the team’s web site.
But a Bull he is, and although Bennett (pictured), who is primarily a reliever, has been far from perfect in two starts—he has walked five in 9 1/3 innings, a habit that suits him well to the Bulls’ walk-happy staff—he has also done a serviceable job filling in for injured lefty starter Carlos Hernandez. Pitching last night against Norfolk, Bennett lasted 5 1/3 innings, and his only significant mistake was surrendering a two-run homer to—you ready for this?—former Bull Rhyne Hughes. (Yes, okay, Rhyne, we’re sorry we traded you. Now that’s enough of that.)
Other than that, Norfolk failed to score, thanks in no small part to some wiggling out of jams by Julio DePaula and Joe Bateman—although granted that they brought the pectin to the mound with them. Bennett got his first victory as a Bull and Durham beat Norfolk, 4-2. The lineup wasn’t especially potent, but they scored the runs they needed to score, all of them by the fifth inning. The win gave the Bulls their first three-game winning streak in about a month, and it pushed their lead over the Tides to six games in the wild-card race with 12 left to play. Syracuse beat Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to remain 3.5 games back. (Don’t look now, but the revivified Chiefs trail the Yankees by just 2.5 games in the IL North Division.)
More intriguingly, Charlotte rallied to beat Gwinnett in 11 innings, 10-7, pulling Durham to within just a single game of the Braves for the South Division lead. (Who knew that Reid Gorecki, called up to the majors a week ago, was the team’s glue? His departure snapped a five-game winning streak, and Gwinnett is just 3-4 since.) Things are getting quite interesting, to say the least, as the season races to its close.
A few notes follow.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls Elliot johnson, Gwinnett Braves, Henry Mateo, Jeff Bennett, Joe Bateman, Julio DePaula, Norfolk Tides, Ray Olmedo, Reid Brignac, Reid Gorecki, Rhyne Hughes, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, slump, Syracuse Chiefs
Adam Sobsey ·
24 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
1 Comment
The Bulls’ Joe Bateman hit consecutive batters in the ninth inning last night in Syracuse, but it was the Bulls who felt the pain. The Chiefs’ Norris Hopper hit a two-out, game-
winning single to score one of the plunkees, handing the Bulls a 3-2 loss.
So it wasn’t walks that did the Bulls in, but a sort of fast-track walk, the hit batter. And where the Bulls’ clutch hitting tends to abet control problems in losses, last night the lineup didn’t even mount enough threats to set up clutch situations. The Bulls scored twice in the second inning (with help from a pair of, ahem, walks); after that, they had only four baserunners, and just one of those advanced to second base.
Wade Davis did a fine job on the mound for the Bulls, but a Reid Brignac error helped an unearned run score, and Davis gave up a solo homer to (I told you to watch out for) Brad Eldred. Davis’s counterpart, the Chiefs’ Marco Estrada—the same guy who opposed him a couple of weeks ago at the DBAP—was again excellent. He stifled the Bulls on August 8, allowing just a pair of unearned runs on two hits in seven innings; last night, he allowed two runs in six innings, overcoming his second-inning control problems and matching Davis’s results. Charlie Montoyo was reluctant to credit Estrada in the August 8 ballgame, choosing instead to blame his hitters’ approach at the plate. But after Estrada shut Durham down again last night, one has to concede that Estrada himself may have been the reason for his success.
Some curious bullpen management by Montoyo last night: Dale Thayer replaced Davis in the seventh and tossed a pair of scoreless innings, leaving he ninth for Bateman. Usually, it would be Thayer handling the late shift, with Bateman setting him up. There’s definitely a reason for the switch, perhaps Tampa-related, and Bateman has closed out games for Montoyo before; still, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher.
In the Bulls’ official game report, you’ll happen upon a typo: “The Bulls are 1.5 games behind Syracuse in the wild card race and four games in front of Toledo and Norfolk.” The Bulls are actually 1.5 games ahead of the Chiefs, but the mistake reflects some growing pessimism, even inside the organization, about the Bulls’ state of affairs. Although the team is still lined up for a playoff spot, lately they haven’t looked like they’re headed for the post-season. Good games are followed by bad ones, the club’s overall energy rises and falls, and their record over the last three weeks is just 10-12. The Bulls look middling, inconsistent, beatable.
Meanwhile, Gwinnett keeps on winning and now has a four-game lead over Durham in the International League South Division. And the wild-card race is thickening—in the quotation nestled in the paragraph above, careful readers will have spotted Toledo now entering the rear-view mirror (this is not a NASCAR post!), thanks to the Mud Hens’ eight-game winning streak. Make no mistake: if the Bulls coast all the way into Labor Day at a .500 pace, one of the three teams on their tail will overtake them. The law of averages virtually assures it.
A quick note about the roster. Chris Richard had a cortisone shot in his wrist (maybe he and Carlos Hernandez, who also had one recently, can compare notes), and he’s expected back perhaps as early as Monday. In the interest of giving Joe Dillon most of a night off on Sunday, Charlie Montoyo started Henry Mateo at first base, which is something I can’t even picture. Dillon entered the game late when Mateo moved to second to replace Akinori Iwamura, who played a scheduled seven innings. Elliot Johnson (strained quadriceps) is eligible to come off the disabled list, and he has been running and taking batting practice. Look for him to return to action very soon. He’ll give the team a boost. It needs one.
Andy Sonnanstine pitches for the Bulls on Monday night. If the Chiefs’ rotation is still in the same order, his opponent will be Ross Detwiler. Those two faced each other at the DBAP on August 9, and the Bulls shredded Detwiler on their way to giving Sonnanstine an easy 11-5 win.
Baseball, Durham Bulls Brad Eldred, Chris Richard, Dale Thayer, Elliot johnson, injury, Joe Bateman, Marco Estrada, Reid Brignac, Syracuse Chiefs, Wade Davis, wild card
Adam Sobsey ·
19 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
1 Comment
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 ·
17 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
1 Comment
DBAP/ DURHAM—Bulls’ manager Charlie Montoyo occasionally bemoans how much he’s forced to use his bullpen. It comes with the territory of managing a minor-league team, of course. Every parent club tends to be very, well, parental about its starting pitchers: limiting pitch counts, controlling innings pitched every year, giving extra rest to youngsters, etc. There is already chatter about how many more starts David Price will be permitted to make for Tampa before his workload is reduced; and in New York, Joba Chamberlain is getting extra days off between outings.
Starting pitchers are the child prodigies of baseball: rare and expensive, brilliant but sensitive, usually self-absorbed and easily disrupted, adept at something few mortals can even contemplate doing yet frequently unable to do it consistently themselves, the center of attention while they perform, sometimes arrogant or fussy, and often doomed to short careers. So they get babied.
In the case of Carlos Hernandez, a former hot prospect of the Houston Astros whom the Tampa Bay Rays are trying to rehabilitate at age 29, kid gloves have become essential. Hernandez has had a pair of major shoulder surgeries, and he was put back on a strict innings/pitch-count limit recently for fear of over-stressing his arm this year. Then the left-hander developed a mysterious wrist problem and has had to miss his last two starts, including last night’s.
That’s no big deal in the eyes of the front office—you want to protect your investment by whatever means necessary—but it is for Charlie Montoyo, who for the second time in five days had to fabricate a starter out of bullpen parts. A game like that is kind of like a bullfight with no matador: you can still kill the bull (or in this case the Yankee), but it will require much warier management of time and personnel, and the risk of someone getting gored is a lot higher.
Amazingly, the amalgamated-starter manufacture has worked swimmingly for the Bulls both times. On Tuesday, Calvin Medlock and Julio DePaula kept Gwinnett down for six innings before turning the game over to the Bulls’ late-inning mercenaries; but Jason Childers and Winston Abreu gave the game away. Then, last night at the DBAP, Medlock teamed with Joe Bateman (pictured)—who started his first game since 2004—to blank Scranton for five innings. Joe Nelson then played the Jason Childers role, sponsoring an unearned run (as Childers did on Tuesday) and then going Childers one better by chipping in an earned run of his own. It should be said in Nelson’s defense that the two hits he allowed were an infield trickler and an opposite-field bloop, and he was also cheated out of a pair of double plays: one on a blown call by the first base umpire, and the other on an error by Ray Olmedo. Nonetheless, Nelson departed with two outs in the seventh inning and the Bulls’ lead down from 5-0 to 5-2, i.e. from comfortable to sticky.
And then Winston Abreu came in. Abreu has been stepping on rakes all over the yard lately, allowing more runs in his last three appearances than he had given up all season before that, plus three home runs to the last eight batters he’d faced—after giving up just one homer all of 2009 before that. So there was every reason to be nervous when he spelled Nelson.
Abreu proceeded to retire the next seven Yankees in order for his 11th save of the year. The Bulls won, 5-2.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Austin Jackson, Calvin Medlock, Carlos Hernandez, Charlie Montoyo, Cody Ransom, Desmond Jennings, Elliot johnson, injury, Joe Bateman, Joe Dillon, Joe Nelson, Justin Ruggiano, Kei Igawa, Matt Joyce, Russ Ortiz, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, Shelley Duncan, sushi, Winston Abreu
