Showing posts tagged “Joe Nelson”
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 ·
4 Sep 2009, 5:00 AM ·
4 Comments
It has happened twice in the history of major-league baseball. Rennie Stennett of the Pittsburgh Pirates did it in 1975—with someone else’s bat, no less—and Wilbert Robinson did it, too, way back in 1892, when balls were made out of the hides of woolly mammoths and bats from the tusks. Seven hits in a nine-inning game. You probably won’t see this happen again in your lifetime. And you probably aren’t even very old.
Who knows about the International League, which has been around for 126 years? But I’d be willing to bet that Desmond Jennings etched his name into its record books and will stay there for a very long time. He came up seven times last night. He hit six singles and a double.
This is one of those records that requires you to be extraordinarily lucky and very, very good. (In Jennings’s case, being very, very fast didn’t hurt, either.) The beauty of it was that Jennings did it without overswinging: he hit three ground-ball singles up the middle; two more grounders that were knocked down by the shortstop, who was helpless to throw out the speedy Jennings; a solid line-drive to left; and then an opposite-field drive into the gap for a ninth-inning double. “I just went up there hacking,” he is reported to have said. Yeah, sure, Desmond.
It’s a very good thing, in retrospect, that the official scorer at Charlotte’s ballpark had reversed a call earlier, when he charged Knights shortstop Justin Fuller with an error on one of Jennings’s infield grounders. According to Bulls broadcaster Neil Solondz, Fuller had no chance to throw out Jennings. (I believe Solondz’s exact words were “You’ve gotta be kidding me” when the scoreboard flashed E.) A couple of batters later, you could dimly hear the scorer announce the error-to-hit change in the background. Had he not done so then, you’d better believe Bulls manager Charlie Montoyo would have been on the phone to the press box, in high dudgeon, immediately after the game. Fortunately for everyone involved, it didn’t come to that.
Oh: guess how many hits the entire Knights team had? Seven.
Oh, also, before I forget—because, believe it or not, there is so much to report tonight that losing track isn’t unthinkable—the Bulls clinched a playoff spot with a resounding 14-3 win over the Bristol Sox Charlotte Knights.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Bulls on the Move, Button Gwinnett, Calvin Medlock, Charlotte Knights, Chicago White Sox, Dale Thayer, Desmond Jennings, Fernando Perez, Gwinnett Braves, Jason Childers, Joe Bateman, Joe Nelson, Jorge Julio, Justin Ruggiano, Louisville Bats, Rashad Eldridge, record, Reid Brignac, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, Sean Rodriguez, seven hits in a nine inning game, strikeouts, Team USA, Wade Davis
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 ·
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.
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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 ·
28 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
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Five times this season, first on June 2 and most recently on Wednesday, the Bulls have gone 16 games over .500. Each time, they lost the next the game, and never reached the 17-games-over mark.
There’s nothing particularly special about 17; it’s just a number; but for whatever reason, it came to represent the ceiling of the Bulls’ success in 2009. Try as they might, they just couldn’t get there. They seemed doomed to be a 16-games-over team. Given that it’s mathematically impossible to finish a 144-game season 17 games over .500—and kids, don’t look now but the season is, in terrifying fact, 92.36% finished—maybe there was something appropriately chimerical about the mark.
Last night, they finally broke through. Their fourth straight win, a 3-1 margin delivered by Chris Richard’s three-run, ninth-inning home run, pushed the Bulls’ record to 75-58, and pulled them dead even for the IL South Division lead with the Gwinnett Braves, who lost their fourth straight to Charlotte.
Given how long it took the Bulls to pass 16 and to reclaim a share of first place (where they haven’t been since August 10), the way they crested those humps last night was appropriate.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls Baseball World Cup, Bob McCrory, Chris Lambert, Chris Richard, Gwinnett Braves, Jason Childers, Jason Cromer, Joe Dillon, Joe Nelson, Joey Gathright, Jon Weber, Josh Perrault, Justin Ruggiano, Melvin Dorta, Norfolk Tides, RISP, Runners In Scoring Position, Shawn Riggans, Team USA, Winston Abreu
Adam Sobsey ·
23 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
Comment
Nice to see the Bulls get off to a resoundingly positive start on a crucial seven-game road trip to Syracuse and Norfolk, the two teams trailing them in the International League wild-card race. That isn’t to say that the South Division title is out of reach—the Bulls trail Gwinnett by three games with 16 left to play—but if they concentrate on putting some distance between themselves and their pursuers, they’ll have plenty of momentum coming into their four-game showdown with the Braves at the DBAP when they return (buy your tickets now!).
Desmond Jennings (pictured) was one hit short of the cycle for the second time in his last three starts, this time substituting a homer for the triple, and the Bulls took a quick 5-0 lead after three innings, extended it to 7-0 after five, and rode out a 9-2 win at Syracuse. Every Bull in the starting lineup had at least one hit, including Shawn Riggans, whose fifth-inning double snapped an 0/18 spell since his return from the disabled list. Jason Cromer pitched well enough, if inefficiently, and earned his sixth win. Calvin Medlock, Joe Nelson and Winston Abreu finished up. Nelson allowed singles to the first two men he faced, so his BA-against and OBP-against are still very scary, but perhaps we’re seeing a gradual return to good form for him.
A very good thing has happened to the Chiefs’ Mike Morse: he was recalled to Washington a few days ago. That’s also very good thing for the Bulls, because Morse pounded Durham pitching when the Chiefs came to town earlier this month: he went 6/14 with two homers, a double, three walks and seven RBIs. Syracuse did, however, regain the services of 6-foot-5, 290-pound (!) righty slugger Brad Eldred. Eldred went hitless in five trips to the plate last night, with a walk and a strikeout. The Chiefs pulled a Durham, going 2/12 with RISP and stranding 12 men on base—a little balancing of the Bulls’ recent ledger.
Chris Richard sat out a third straight game with what Charlie Montoyo told us was a wrist problem. With Elliot Johnson on the disabled list—he’s eligible to come off Sunday, although there’s no word if he will—Richard’s absence means that Joe Dillon is the everyday first baseman and Ray Olmedo is inked in at third. Olmedo has now played nine straight games, which is many more than any Bull should be logging right now. He’s 8/35 in that stretch. All eight of his hits have been singles (one of them a bunt), he’s drawn only one walk, and he has hit into three double plays. He has also committed four errors. It’s one of those oddities of minor-league baseball that a guy with a .614 OPS, who leads the team in errors, and who walks about once every 20 times at bat, can wind up with the third-most games played on the roster. The Olmedos of the world tend to be utility players because they aren’t good enough to hold down a position. Their utility makes them, unfortunately, indispensable; they’re the duct tape of ballclubs, which tend to want for nails (the good hardware is used for major-league jobs). And I think I’ve hammered that point into the floor (ha ha ha, sorry).
Wade Davis, coming off a superb outing in which he took a no-hitter into the sixth inning, is on the mound for the Bulls on Sunday. On August 8 at the DBAP, he came within a batter of blanking Syracuse for seven innings. Gametime is 5:00 p.m.
Baseball, Durham Bulls Brad Eldred, Chris Richard, Desmond Jennings, Gwinnett Braves, injury, Jason Cromer, Joe Nelson, Mike Morse, Ray Olmedo, Syracuse Chiefs, utility player, wild card
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.
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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 ·
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
Adam Sobsey ·
14 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
1 Comment
Leave it to the Bulls to get their only win of this grim series against the Braves by overcoming a two-time major-league All-Star. Rehabbing Atlanta pitcher Tim Hudson wasn’t anything like the victim in last night’s 9-5 Durham win, but he didn’t shut the Bulls down either, permitting five hits and two runs in four innings before departing after reaching what I assume was a predetermined pitch-count limit. The Bulls then sloshed around for a while before finally deciding to unload on Gwinnett closer Luis Valdez, whom they bombarded for six runs in the ninth inning and handed his eighth blown save. Had they lost, the Bulls would have staggered home after a sweep at the hands of the Braves, two games back of the division lead. As it stands, they return just a game back, and coming off another electrifying comeback win. No matter how or when or for how long they struggle, this team never quits. You have to give them credit for that.
A few notes follow.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Bronson Arroyo, Bulls on the Move, Dale Thayer, Gwinnett Braves, Jason Childers, Joe Dillon, Joe Nelson, Jon Weber, Jonny Gomes, Kei Igawa, Luis Valdez, Tim Hudson
