Showing posts tagged “John Jaso”
Adam Sobsey ·
22 Sep 2009, 12:00 AM ·
4 Comments
You can still watch a few highlights of the Bulls’ dramatic championship-clinching win over Scranton/ Wilkes-Barre on the team Web site. Those clips drive home (so to speak) just how crazy the last inning really was. Justin Ruggiano’s diving catch of Reegie Corona’s sinking slice down the left-field line was not only great per se; it also saved the game, because the ball was ruled fair (but was it fair?) by the umpire. At the end of that play, though, second baseman Ray Olmedo made a poor relay throw to first base in an attempt to turn a game-ending double play, a throw he shouldn’t have attempted at all under the circumstances. He was fortunate that after the ball sailed well to the left of first baseman Joe Dillon, it bounced straight off the railing where it was picked up by pitcher Julio DePaula, who was properly backing up the play and made a quick recovery of the ball in foul territory.
To top things off, DePaula himself nearly blew the game, catastrophically, on the very last play: Doug Bernier’s bouncer back to the mound was easy enough for DePaula to field, and you could understand his excitement in running the ball all the way to first base himself rather than make an easy toss to Dillon. But DePaula decided to make a big puddle-jump onto the bag, and the hop-step he indulged in slowed him down so much that Bernier, hustling all the way, nearly beat DePaula to first base. As it was, DePaula won the race by about three quarters of a step, but it was a scarily close play. Had Bernier been safe due to DePaula’s grasshopper insouciance, the game would have been tied. As it was, the Bulls are champions. (Champions! It’s really extraordinary, when you think about it, after all that.)
A few more notes follow on the game, the season, and the final ballgame to come. If you’re deplaning here, one thing to take away with you: Tyler’s, the pub/eatery right by the DBAP, is hosting a viewing party (the game will be televised nationally on ESPN 2) of Tuesday night’s Triple-A championship game between the Bulls and the Memphis Redbirds, an affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals and winner of the Pacific Coast League. Game time is 7:00 p.m. and it will be a lot of fun to watch it right by the ballpark, surrounded by Bulls fans, in a place that serves something like 712 different beers. Come on out, and do drop by my table to say hello, to buy me a beer or to pour one over my head. I’ll be the guy with black (going gray) hair, the black button-down shirt, the blue jeans, the bandanna, and Heather.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls Allen Craig, Calvin Medlock, championship, David Freese, Desmond Jennings, Governor's Cup, Heath Rollins, Jaime Garcia, Jeremy Hellickson, John Jaso, John Rodriguez, Juan Miranda, Julio DePaula, Justin Hoffpauir, Justin Ruggiano, Memphis Redbirds, playoffs, Ray Olmedo, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, Triple-A championship, Tyler Greene
Adam Sobsey ·
17 Sep 2009, 11:43 PM ·
6 Comments
Hot off the radio, sportsfans: The Durham Bulls have just beaten the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, 3-2 in 12 innings, to claim the Governor’s Cup, their first since 2003.
The bottom of the 12th was a sweaty-palmed affair after the Bulls plated the go-ahead run on the top of the inning on a double by John Jaso. Durham closer Winston Abreu, the most dominant pitcher in the league, came on seeking his third save in as many nights. He issued a four-pitch leadoff walk to Juan Miranda, discovered a bloody popped blister on his finger, and left the game.
Julio DePaula came in, making his third appearance in as many nights. DePaula is the only Bull to have been on the active roster all season long. He got Cody Ransom to fly out to left field on the first pitch he threw. Then he walked John Rodriguez. It was the 11th walk of the night allowed by Durham pitchers. The next batter, Reegie Corona, sliced a looper down the left-field line. Justin Ruggiano chased after it and made a diving, game-saving catch. The Roodge threw into the infield, where Ray Olmedo fielded the ball and tried to double Rodriguez off of first—but his throw was wild. Both runners advanced. Ruggiano crouched in left field, in pain. In the previous inning, Desmond Jennings, who had tied the game in the eighth inning with a slump-breaking, two-out, two-run single, had apparently injured himself a little bit on a big swing. He stayed in the game. The Bulls were going down, man by man, before our eyes ears.
With two outs now, the tying run was on third and the winning run on second. Doug Bernier, one of those pesky slap hitters, stepped in. He got ahead 2-1, then DePaula evened it at 2-2. Bernier hit a comebacker toward the mound. DePaula speared it. Rather than risk a throw, he ran the ball to first himself, stepped on the bag for a 1u putout (it brought to mind a funky 1u putout he made earlier this season when he ran down a man in the shortstop hole), and with their only wire-to-wire player taking the final out into his own hands, the Bulls were champions of the league. They’ll play in the Triple-A Championship game in Oklahoma City on Tuesday night, against the winner of the Pacific Coast League championship series between Memphis and Sacramento.
I’ll be back with more later, perhaps not until tomorrow. But for now: Congratulations, 2009 Bulls, from Triangle Offense and the Independent Weekly. It’s been a helluva season.
Baseball, Durham Bulls Cody Ransom, Desmond Jennings, Doug Bernier, Governor's Cup, John Jaso, John Rodriguez, Juan Miranda, Julio DePaula, Justin Ruggiano, playoffs, Ray Olmedo, Reegie Corona, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, The Roodge, Winston Abreu
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 ·
8 Sep 2009, 12:39 PM ·
3 Comments
Triple-A baseball teams are subject to a variation on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the one you may have run across in the movie The Man Who Wasn’t There or in the play Copenhagen. Basically, it says that you can’t determine both the velocity and position of a particle at the same time. It’s possible that we’re really talking about the Observer Effect here, or possibly Schrödinger’s cat, or even quantum superpositions. All I can say is, don’t do what I did; don’t go look them all up, because the next thing you know you’re lost in something very like the Uncertainty Principle yourself: you think you know what you’re looking for, and then as soon as you think you’ve found it, it turns into something else. Eventually you wind up desperately lost in a terrible, mountainous region, overrun by wild beasts and full of tar pits, known as Verschränkung. Just don’t go there, kids.
Instead, do what Bulls manager Charlie Montoyo does before each series—or rather, don’t do what he doesn’t do: pay any attention to the opposing team’s record, or to what happened the last time the Bulls played them. Montoyo has said several times this year that all he looks at is how they’ve been playing the last couple of weeks.
That’s because, as you probably know if you’re a Bulls fan, minor-league teams change constantly. The last time the Durham Bulls played the Louisville Bats was July 19 at Louisville. Thirty-two players saw action in that game, and only half of them remain on the teams’ rosters. Both starters, each team’s leading home-run hitter, four of Durham’s five pitchers that night, the league’s Most Valuable Pitcher (Justin Lehr) and the Bats’ leadoff man: all gone.
So take the following preview as a thought experiment, a la Schrödinger’s cat—until Wednesday at 7:05 p.m., when the cat (the Durham Bulls) actually goes into the box (the DBAP) with the flask of poison (the Louisville Bats) and the radioactive substance (Jeremy Hellickson’s first pitch, let’s say). Then we’ll see if the beast lives or dies.
If my colleague Mike Potter, who for most of the season has covered the Reds’ Double-A affiliate, the Carolina Mudcats, feels inspired to chime in, the cat will get at least partway out of the bag/box: more than half of the current Bats’ roster has seen time in Zebulon this year.
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Baseball, Carolina Mudcats, Durham Bulls Ben Jukich, Charlie Montoyo, Chris Heisey, Chris Nowak, Chris Richard, Jason Cromer, Jay Bruce, Jeremy Hellickson, John Jaso, Logan Ondrusek, Louisville Bats, Mitch Talbot, Paul Phillips, playoffs, Sam LeCure, Schrodinger's Cat, Sean Rodriguez, Travis Wood, Uncertainy Principle, Yonder Alonzo
Adam Sobsey ·
7 Sep 2009, 5:00 AM ·
Comment
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 ·
21 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
Comment
DBAP/ DURHAM—Out here in (oh, just go ahead and call it the) blogosphere, we were getting a little restless after the Bulls got crushed by the Charlotte Knights on Wednesday, 8-1. The team seemed flat and dull, listless and [adjective of your choice]. And when Charlotte scored a run in the top of the first inning last night with a bloop single that was so shallow it was actually fielded by Bulls’ third baseman Ray Olmedo, you couldn’t help but think, and now here comes the bad luck, too.
The Bulls took a 2-1 lead in the bottom of the second inning, but they got help in the form of a bases-loaded walk (to John Jaso) and left the pasture F.O.B., failing to get a hit with the sacks packed. In the top of the third, the Knights tied it 2-2 when Olmedo made two errors (16, 17) on one play.
And then the Bulls loaded the bases again in the bottom of the third inning. Here’s how they did it: walk, strikeout, flyout, walk, walk. Two outs, three on, zero hits. The Bulls seem to fail routinely in this situation lately. Jaso steps to the plate. With runners in scoring position this year he’s 10/73, which is tragically bad—it seems he needs bases-loaded walks to succeed when it counts. But what I haven’t bothered to look up is Jaso’s average with the bases loaded.
Later, after Jaso rips a bases-clearing, three-run double to the base of the left-center field wall, I will look up that stat, and discover that he is now 4/8 with nine RBIs when the bases are loaded. It’s now 5-2, Bulls. That’s plenty for Jeremy Hellickson and a pair of relievers. Reid Brignac adds a two-out, two-run single in the fifth, and the rout is on. The Bulls win, 10-2. After the game Charlie Montoyo says, “I’ve never been so relaxed in the ninth inning.” It’s the Bulls first easy win in a week and a half.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls Akinori Iwamura, Charlie Montoyo, Charlotte Knights, F.O.B., Fernando Perez, Jeff Bennett, Jeremy Hellickson, John Jaso, Jon Weber, Ray Olmedo, Reid Brignac, RISP, Runners In Scoring Position, Typewriter Tip Tip Tip, walks
Adam Sobsey ·
12 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
Comment
What was that I was saying about the Bulls’ latest roster changes leaving them with the best relief staff in the league? Including the game after which I wrote that, the Durham bullpen has allowed 12 runs, 11 earned, in 13 2/3 innings pitched over the last five games. That’s a 7.90 ERA. They’ve also allowed every runner they’ve inherited (four in all) to score.
Last night’s culprit was the normally dependable Winston Abreu (pictured), who came on in the eighth inning with the Bulls leading 4-2 and did two things he seldom does: give up walks and homers. In the eighth, he walked the first two batters he faced. A pair of singles scored a run, and Abreu got a huge break when Diory Hernandez didn’t see Brooks Conrad holding at third base on the latter of those hits. Hernandez and Conrad both wound up on third base, and Conrad had no choice but to put himself in a rundown and get thrown out at home. Abreu got out of the inning without further damage, but in the ninth Reid Gorecki hit Abreu’s first pitch for a home run. Wes Timmons lined out to third—apparently, Abreu wasn’t fooling anyone—and Brandon Jones put Abreu out of (or deeply into) his misery by hitting another homer, giving the Braves a 5-4 comeback win and sole possession of first place in the International League South Division.
Coming into the game, Abreu had allowed 16 hits and just one home run all year for the Bulls. He allowed four hits and two homers last night. The two walks he gave up represent 15% of his season total. Given that he issued both of those walks in his first inning of work, along with two hits—and needed 24 pitches to get through the inning—why was Abreu still out there in the ninth?
I have no idea, but speculation and a few notes follow.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls Bullpen, Calvin Medlock, Desmond Jennings, Elliot johnson, Gwinnett Braves, Jason Childers, John Jaso, Jon Weber, Julio DePaula, Justin Ruggiano, Ray Olmedo, Reid Gorecki, Tim Hudson, Winston Abreu
Adam Sobsey ·
11 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
2 Comments
Too bad the Bulls don't have this guy.
A rough loss for the Bulls after the ride down from Durham. Personally, I think that if I were a ballplayer I would rather have left Monday morning than overnight it on the team bus. Gwinnett’s only about six hours away. But as Charlie Montoyo is fond of saying: No excuses. The Bulls didn’t play especially well in
last night’s 6-3 loss to Gwinnett, especially when it came to two fundamentals: taking advantage of opportunities, and limiting same for the other team. They ran themselves into a pair of fly-ball double plays (Jon Weber committed his second S.B.G. in as many games); they had 12 hits and 17 baserunners but scored only three times, stranding 10 and going 1-8 with runners in scoring position; they failed to capitalize on a pair of fielding errors by the Braves; and they committed two errors of their own—in the same inning—after which Joe Nelson came in from the bullpen and started escorting Braves around the bases.
But as always, the never-say-die Bulls fought back. Down 6-2, Elliot Johnson (who committed one of the errors and ran into one of the double plays, but also made a couple of fine plays at third base) led off the ninth inning with a solo home run. Four batters and one pitching change later, the Bulls had the bases loaded and one out, and the lead run was stepping to the plate. But Matt Joyce and Chris Richard struck out—both on check swings, both on sliders from Braves closer Luis Valdez, who had blown a save against the Bulls at the DBAP way back in the first week of the season.
Jeremy Hellickson pitched quite well for the Bulls, working out of one tight spot and leaving having allowed only a two-run homer by Omar Infante, who is on a major-league rehab assignment. Apparently, Gwinnett Manager Dave Brundage found out only a couple of hours before the game that Infante was joining the team. Needless to say, the new acquisition paid immediate dividends. Hellickson took the loss, but he should have departed after seven innings down just 2-1. Instead, the errors and the bullpen doomed him.
Some game notes follow the jump.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Elliot johnson, Gwinnett Braves, Jeremy Hellickson, Joe Maddon, Joe Nelson, John Jaso, Lost Son of Havana, Luis Tiant, Roger Angell, SBG, strikeouts, walks
Adam Sobsey ·
8 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
6 Comments
DBAP/ DURHAM—And by “wonder-full,” I mean full of wondrous things. If you’re one of those quick-and-dirty types who stops reading at the jump, let me dispense with the summary:
The Bulls battled back from a 6-2, sixth-inning deficit. They scored three times in sixth inning and twice in the eighth inning and took a 7-6 lead into the ninth against Syracuse. Joe Nelson, the fifth Bulls pitcher, came in to save the game, but he put two men on with a single and a walk. With two outs and a full count on Justin Maxwell, he threw a fastball that tailed back toward the middle of the plate, and Maxwell tattooed it. His long, high drive sailed over the Blue Monster—just foul, it appeared to us, up in the press box. But home plate umpire Fran Burke, the only one of the three officials with a straight-on view of the play, called it fair.
Things went nuts. The Bulls all argued. Charlie Montoyo charged out of the dugout to join them. We watched two replays in the press box, both of which seemed to show the ball crossing in front of the screen that extends from the foul pole—which would indicate a foul ball. Charlie Montoyo implored the umpires to watch the replay on the big screen behind them. They didn’t. The call stood. Montoyo was so mad, he threw not only his hat but also the photos of his kids that he keeps in his back pocket. He went into ultra-argue mode, which is manager-code for Eject Me Now, Please. Crew Chief Kevin Causey complied and ejected him. Montoyo, as if only now realizing just how mad all of this had made him, then had to be held back by one ump while he yelled at another. Finally he departed, but not before picking up the photos he’d thrown. A fan threw beer on the field and was escorted from the ballpark. After the game, which the Chiefs won, 9-7, Bulls’ General Manager Mike Birling had a brief, heated exchange with with one of the umpires.
And that was only one exciting sequence in a game full of them.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Anthony Michael Hall, Baltimore Orioles, Bulls on the Move, catcher's interference, Charlie Montoyo, ejection, Elliot johnson, F.O.B., Fran Burke, Greg Zaun, injury, Jack Spradlin, Joe Nelson, John Hughes, John Jaso, John Meloan, Jorge Julio, Justin Maxwell, Justin Ruggiano, Kevin Causey, Matt DeSalvo, Matt Joyce, Reid Brignac, Rhyne Hughes, Shairon Martis, Shawn Riggans, Sixteen Candles, Syracuse Chiefs, Winston Abreu, Zechry Zinicola
Adam Sobsey ·
31 Jul 2009, 5:00 AM ·
1 Comment
In one chapter of Word Freak, Stefan Fatsis’s absorbing account of his foray deep into the world of competitive Scrabble, Fatsis narrates the history of the game and its painstaking design by an obsessive tinkerer named Alfred Butts. Butts spent years fussing with the board layout, the premium-square arrangement, and the calibration and distribution of points and tiles. Fatsis concludes:
Perfection isn’t arrived at overnight, and the more I play, the more Alfred’s game seems perfect. I think he was like Alexander Cartwright’s Knickerbocker Base Ball Club laying the bases ninety feet apart or James Naismith setting the height of his peach baskets at ten feet.
I thought of Fatsis’s praise of Butts’s exacting design for Scrabble while listening to bits and pieces of yesterday’s doubleheader between the Durham Bulls and the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees (the teams split, 6-2 Durham in Game One, 8-2 Scranton in Game Two). When the two games are played consecutively in a minor-league twinbill, as they were Thursday when the Bulls and Yankees made up Wednesday’s rainout, they are shortened by rule to seven regulation-innings each. That truncation may not sound like much of a big deal, but there are a couple of problems with it. First off, it treats the players like they’re not fully mature and can’t handle a major-league twinbill. I’d be willing to wager that most minor leaguers can probably handle a pair of nine-inning games better than many big-league veterans.
Second, baseball games are supposed to be nine innings long. The reasons are ineffable, but there’s something wrong with a ballgame that only goes seven innings. You don’t get enough development, enough structure. The team that jumps out to an early lead seems almost sure to win; the game never evolves properly, rewarding sprinters over marathoners—and if there’s one thing that sets baseball apart from most other sports, it’s in the patience and endurance that must accompany not only each game but the whole season, which unfolds day by day for almost half the year. In a seven-inning game, if you’re losing after two turns of the order, it’s already getting almost too late. A baseball game needs nine innings in order to play itself out fully. Seven innings is just too short.
Things other than length were also wrong with Thursday’s doubleheader.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Dale Thayer, doubleheader, Jeremy Hellickson, John Jaso, Jorge Julio, Matt DeSalvo, Ray Olmedo, Scrabble, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, Stefan Fatsis, Victor Martinez, Word Freak
