Showing posts tagged “Syracuse Chiefs”
Adam Sobsey ·
3 Sep 2009, 5:00 AM ·
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And just like that, right after a pair of ugly losses at home to their division rivals, the Bulls got healthy last night against the desperately depleted Charlotte Knights, 9-0. I didn’t recognize any of the last four names in the Knights’ lineup; they were all callups and patches on a roster that has been gutted by the parent club and Team USA. Gone are Joshes Fields and Kroeger, Tyler Flowers, Ehren Wassermann and especially Carlos Torres. Goodbye, fields, goodbye flowers and towers. We shall run roughshod over your abandoned realm (or something like that).
Doubt and resentment recently set in over at WDBB about the Rays’ lack of interest in supporting the Bulls; but the future for les taureaux is bullish compared to their cross-state rivals. The Bulls currently have six players who have been in the majors this season, including a seasoned catcher; they have not one but two closers; they have the franchise’s all-time home run leader; and they have two of the hottest prospects in baseball—plus they’re about to get a middle infielder who has 29 homers this season. There is no reason to panic, and probably also no excuse for the Bulls to lose even one of the three games down at Fort Mill. But on the other hand we’ll be seeing Calvin Medlock and His Flying Bullpen Brothers on Thursday night, so why indulge in predictions?
Desmond Jennings, basking in the glow of his Southern League MVP award—you know you’re having a good year when you can miss the final month of the season and still win the hardware—had the big stat night for the Bulls, with a homer, a triple, two walks, a hit-by-pitch (retaliation? I didn’t hear the broadcast, can’t say), and two stolen bases. His .898 OPS with the Bulls is actually higher than his Double-A mark of .881. It seems only a matter of time before he makes B. J. Upton expendable in Tampa.
Chris Richard, the aforementioned home run king of Durham, also had a nice night, belting his 24th homer and adding three singles, knocking in four runs. Justin Ruggiano had a pair of doubles. Jason Cromer tossed six scoreless innings to earn his seventh win and lower his ERA to a team-leading (among starters) 2.33. In his last 18 1/3 innings, he has allowed only three runs.
And Winston Abreu, trotted out in the ninth inning in order to stay sharp (I guess), struck out the side in order. Consider him sharpened. Abreu has not allowed a hit in his last 11 2/3 innings. He has 19 strikeouts and just two walks in that stretch. He’s completely automatic right now, and so good that you wonder how it could be possible that he was knocked around in the majors with Cleveland before the Rays welcomed him back to the flock. Gwinnett closer Luis Valdez was named the International League’s All-Star reliever, and I would love for someone to try to look me in the eye and tell me that Valdez deserves the award over Abreu. Because he has 26 saves? Even though he needed 36 save opps to get them? Please. Some stats are only indicators of context, not performance, and saves are one of them. People who looked at Valdez’s saves total and gave him the award based on that one number are lazy and narrowminded.
Elsewhere, Syracuse won and Gwinnett lost. The Bulls lead the Braves by a game in the division race; their wild card lead held at 4.5 games over the Chiefs (Braves and Chiefs? what is this, Indian summer?). Durham’s magic number for clinching a playoff spot is 2: any combination of Bulls victories and Chiefs losses sends them to the post-season. The Chiefs have played one game fewer than the Bulls, but they will make up their earlier rainout against Lehigh Valley. Even if the Bulls lose four of their final five games, Syracuse will still have to win all six of theirs. But why tempt fate? A couple more wins over Charlotte, which may have to consider changing its name from the Knights to the Russe, will begin a chorus of “Hell to the Chiefs.”
Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Charlotte Knights, Chris Richard, Desmond Jennings, Gwinnett Braves, Jason Cromer, Luis Valdez, Syracuse Chiefs, Winston Abreu
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 ·
25 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
1 Comment
The Syracuse Chiefs took a 2-0 lead over the Durham Bulls early in last night’s game, and Bulls broadcaster Neil Solondz noted that the Bulls had done the same in Sunday’s game before the Chiefs rallied to win, 3-2. You got the sense that he was hoping the Bulls might reverse the stream and visit the same comeback on Syracuse. Sure enough, the Bulls tied the game with two runs in the sixth, then won it in the eighth, by that same 3-2 score, on Michel Hernandez’s second sacrifice fly of the night.
This was a big win for the Bulls. They dropped Syracuse 2.5 games behind them in the wild-card chase; elsewhere, both Norfolk and Toledo lost and each team fell five games back; and Gwinnett lost both games of a doubleheader at home to Charlotte. That pulled the Bulls to within 2.5 games of the Braves for the South Division lead. Plenty can happen between now and Saturday, when the Braves visit the DBAP for four games, but if the Bulls can stay close, it’ll be a critical series. If nothing else, the Bulls can add another important game to their wild-card lead on Tuesday if they can beat Syracuse again. They can also earn their first series win in their last six.
Game details and notes follow.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls Andy Sonnanstine, Chris Richard, Fernando Perez, Jeremy Hellickson, Justin Ruggiano, Michel Hernandez, Shawn Riggans, Syracuse Chiefs, Winston Abreu
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 ·
23 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
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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 ·
22 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
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DBAP/ DURHAM—A long time ago, I studied playwriting. I had a brilliant professor who used to say that the first 20 minutes of a play were “free”: the audience would allow almost anything in those first 20 minutes, as long as whatever you gave them in that extended introduction wound up getting “paid back” to them later on; you were sowing seeds that would ripen as the play progressed. Starcrossed lovers, you say? Better do ‘em in by the end of the play.
In other words, those 20 minutes weren’t really free. You were essentially laying the groundwork for whatever was to come, and as a consequence, the first 20 minutes were the most important part of the script.
My professor was talking about a two-hour play, but baseball games—or at least, Durham Bulls baseball games—last about three hours. So we’re really talking about the first half hour of a game. And it was in the first 30 minutes of last night’s disheartening 4-3 loss to the last-place Charlotte Knights that the Bulls constructed the dramaturgy for how they would lose.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls Akinori Iwamura, Bullpen, Charlie Montoyo, Dale Thayer, Gwinnett Braves, Jason Childers, Jeff Bennett, Josh Fields, Matt Joyce, Norfolk Tides, RISP, Romeo and Juliet, Runners In Scoring Position, Sherry Kramer, Syracuse Chiefs, walks
Adam Sobsey ·
20 Aug 2009, 2:42 AM ·
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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 ·
10 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
1 Comment
DBAP/ DURHAM—After the Syracuse Chiefs squelched the Bulls on Saturday night, holding them to two unearned runs and four hits, manager Charlie Montoyo was disgusted by his team’s hitting. “Our approach wasn’t good,” Montoyo said, which is managerspeak for something like, “we really stunk.” But he also insisted that his team would keep working.
Whatever they did on Sunday before they trounced Syracuse, 11-5 behind Andy Sonnanstine (pictured), they should keep doing it. You have to go back to June 27 to find a game in which the Bulls scored that many runs; in fact, they hadn’t scored more than seven in a game since July 12, nearly a month ago. That was also the last day on which the Bulls had beaten anyone by more than four runs. In Sunday’s romp, they set a season high with 18 hits. Chris Richard hit his 20th home run, Jon Weber whacked his 40th (!) double, and the Bulls batted .375 with runners in scoring position. They scored eight of their runs with two outs. Power hitting, clutch hitting, hits strung together (in one stretch, 10 of 13 straight batters hit safely), a pair of bunt singles, only five strikeouts (two after the second inning): this was a show of total, explosive force.
After the game, the first question posed to Montoyo was: “Did you take extra batting practice today?” His response: “We didn’t take extra batting practice.” What did the Bulls do, then, to manufacture such an outburst? “Just show up and play,” he said.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls Add new tag, Andy Sonnanstine, Carlos Hernandez, Charlie Montoyo, Chris Richard, Dale Thayer, Desmond Jennings, Elliot johnson, Joyce Carol Oates, Ross Detwiler, SBG, Syracuse Chiefs, Winston Abreu
Adam Sobsey ·
9 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
2 Comments
DBAP/ DURHAM—It has turned into a rather dreary homestand for the Durham Bulls, who are a gloomy 3-4 and tied for the International League South Division lead with Gwinnett, which is somewhat comforting until you’re reminded that the Bulls should probably be at least two games up. They just lost a pair of games they should have won.
I was thinking, on the way to the park last night, that one reason for the Bulls’ middling results was that they hadn’t had a really good starting pitching performance during the homestand. The best was Andy Sonnanstine’s three runs in six innings on Tuesday night, which is really only decent, especially when you consider that he allowed nine hits in that game. It counted as a so-called “quality start,” but all it did was reiterate that “quality start”—which designates at least six innings and fewer than four runs allowed—is a poorly conceived statistic: a season of “quality starts” translates to a thoroughly so-so 4.50 ERA.
So it seemed that the Bulls were badly in need of a stopper-like start, even a dominant start, and it further seemed that Wade Davis (pictured, top) was the man to give it to them. He has been a bit inconsistent recently, allowing five runs in three of his last five starts, but in his usual fashion he always competed hard, and it seemed only a matter of time before his determination was matched by results. Sure enough, that happened on Saturday night.
But for the second straight night, the Bulls lost late, 3-2.
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Baseball, Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay Rays Charlie Montoyo, ejection, Jason Childers, Jhonatan Solano, Joe Dillon, Justin Maxwell, Kevin Causey, Marco Estrada, Matt Joyce, Michel Hernandez, R. J. Swindle, Ray Sadler, Rhyne Hughes, Russ Springer, Shawn Riggans, Syracuse Chiefs, Wade Davis
Adam Sobsey ·
8 Aug 2009, 5:00 AM ·
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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
