Link Report for Games of Wednesday, April 20th

[DHonks]

four wild pitches included in Tim Dillard's rough night

 

Mass, makes me wonder if maybe Palmisano just had a rough night. We know he has a good sinker, but I wonder if a bunch were sinkers in the dirt that Lou just didn't block well.

 

As for the non-descript part, I don't get it really. We're talking about a squad with Anderson, Palmisano, Heether, and Sollmann. It'd be easier to get excited, but the only one doing decently is Anderson, and even then it's not like he's clubbing homers. Some others (Deevers, De La Cruz) may be playing at a level too high, but that WV squad is about as young as they get. Ideally a couple in WV do so well that in June they're looking at promotions...looking specifically at Richardson, Iribarren.

[Mass Haas]

Link while active, text follows:

 

www.wvgazette.com/section...2005042047

 

Strikeouts make long day for Power

By Jim Workman

For The Charleston Gazette

 

Any time your team strikes out 14 times, it?s going to be a long day.

 

For the West Virginia Power, the head-hung-low trip back to the dugout was a scene viewed quite frequently by the crowd of 2,480 at ?Grand Slam School Day? at Appalachian Power Park Wednesday.

 

The Lexington Legends used the punchout effectively in defeating the Power 6-2 in an morning/afternoon South Atlantic League contest.

 

Five different Power starters struck out twice, and all but first baseman Grant Richardson had at least one K to their credit.

 

?We?ve been striking out too much,? said Power manager Ramon Aviles. ?The guys aren?t being aggressive. They?re taking the fastball and swinging at the breaking pitches. That?s a tough way to hit. You have to be ready to hit a fastball. To play in the big leagues, you have to hit a fastball. I don?t know why they?re guessing and swinging at the bad pitches.

 

?When you end up swinging at a pitch out of the strike zone, you?re not going to put the ball in play. We had some chances; we just didn?t come through.??

 

Many scoring opportunities were squandered, as eight runners were left on base by the Power.

 

?In the first inning, we had men on first and second and didn?t even make contact,? Aviles pointed out. ?All we needed to do was hit a ground ball to first or second base and we could have moved a runner to third base. But we couldn?t do that. We have to make adjustments. This is a game of adjustments.?

 

The Power woes weren?t exclusive to the offensive side. Two fielding errors added more frustration.

 

?I?m not upset about losing the game, because you?re going to win some and you?re going to lose some games,? Aviles said. ?I?m upset about the effort out there. I don?t think we gave our best effort.?

 

The game?s first pitch came at 10:35 a.m. due to the children from several schools being in attendance for the club?s promotion. But Aviles didn?t have a problem with the breakfast-time beginning following a late Tuesday night game.

 

?I don?t like making excuses that we had a game [Tuesday] night,? he said. ?Lexington had a long trip and came in here and won that game and they got the same amount of sleep as we did and won this game. We can?t take that as an excuse because we played an early game.?

 

Scott Robinson got the Legends (7-6) on the board by singling home Jonny Ash in the first inning. Lou Santangelo swatted a solo home run in the third to increase the Lexington lead to 2-0. Santagelo blasted a triple in the top of the fifth and scored on Ash?s sacrifice fly to up the advantage.

 

West Virginia (2-11) plated its two runs in the bottom of the fifth when Alcides Escobar smashed a two-run triple.

 

The Power was still in the game, trailing just 3-2, after eight innings. But the Legends tacked on three more runs in the top of the ninth. Santangelo walked, advanced to second on an error, went to third on a wild pitch and scored on a sacrifice fly by Ash. Scott Robinson knocked in Ben Zobrist and Hunter Pence with a two-run double to stretch the lead to 6-2.

 

Left-handed reliever Jeff Wigdahl slammed the door shut, pitching the final two innings to record the save for the Legends.

 

Aviles said roster moves could be coming to remedy the Power problems.

 

?We have some guys in extended [spring training] that are swinging the bat pretty good,? he said. ?They better be looking over their shoulder. There?s always somebody behind you that wants to take your spot. I never relaxed when I played. We have some people that are not doing their job.?

 

The Power will play Lexington tonight at 7:05 in the final game of the three-game series with the Houston Astros affiliate. Right-hander Forrest Martin (0-2, 5.19 ERA) is scheduled to start for the Power. Lexington will start right-hander Jimmy Barthmaier (0-0, 1.10).

 

The Power?s Agustin Septimo (16) dives back to third base as Lexington?s Saul Torres chases down the ball.

Charleston Gazette Photographer: M.K. McFarland

 

http://www.wvgazettemail.com/images/stories/pow1.jpg

[Mass Haas]

Link while active, text follows:

 

www.al.com/stars/huntsvil...174690.xml

 

Rally makes BayBears see Stars

Huntsville wins fifth straight with 10-7 comeback

By MARK McCARTER

Times Sports Staff markcolumn@aol.com

 

Who said:

 

"I'm watching ... then I hear, 'Pow!' ''

 

(a) Stars first baseman Brandon Gemoll, whose 3-for-3, two-RBI day was rudely interrupted by a jolting, frightening collision with Mobile's Greg Sain.

 

(b) Mobile's Greg Sain.

 

© Mobile manager Gary Jones, the former Stars skipper, whose club started the season 4-0 only to lose nine in a row, including Wednesday's mid-day 10-7 defeat at the hands of the Stars at Joe Davis Stadium.

 

(d) Huntsville manager Don Money, whose team's winning streak has blossomed to five after a dismal 1-6 start.

 

(e) Mobile left fielder Paul McAnulty, who went full-speed, face-first into the fence, chasing a Tony Zuniga blast that would up an inside-the-park home run. It merely proved baseball is not a cartoon, else he'd have left a full-sized Paul McAnulty silhouette on the fence as he ran straight through it.

 

(f) All the above.

 

That it happened to be (d) Don Money is only incidental. It could have been (f). Well, maybe not (a), since Gemoll was left with a concussion, a gash in the chin that would require stitches on a post-game hospital visit and various other bruised and tender spots.

 

Again, that proved baseball is not a cartoon, else he'd have been sitting on the trainer's table with little birds tweet-tweet-tweeting around his head in the universal sign for a character knocked loopy.

 

Let's not make too light of it all. Trainer Dave Yeager said Gemoll could be sidelined five to seven days, depending upon how he responds.

 

It was, however, a Cartoon Network sort of crowd, with more than a thousand school kids making up the majority of the announced crowd of 1,323.

 

The Stars will be shooting for a slightly older demographic tonight in their "Thirsty Thursday,'' promotion, the final game of the homestand before the club hits the road for eight in a row.

 

No matter the outcome tonight, there is considerably more optimism now than a week ago. Money didn't want to celebrate the turnaround too boldly - "you do that, it comes back to bite you in the butt,'' he said - but it is a Huntsville team that has proved both resilient in the big picture, from the sputtering start, and in snapshots, as in its rally from a 5-2 deficit Wednesday.

 

"It shows the guys aren't giving up,'' Money said. "It's a good sign being able to come back.''

 

Huntsville starter Manny Parra gave up three hits and a pair of runs in the first inning, and would last only three innings. The Stars tied it 2-2 in the first on consecutive hits by Tony Gwynn, Gemoll and Nelson Cruz, plus a bad pickoff attempt by losing pitcher Travis Chick.

 

Mobile went up 5-2 in the third on a pair of Huntsville errors, a walk, a balk and only one hit, but the made it 5-5 in the bottom half on a Gemoll RBI double and Zuniga's two-run inside-the-park homer as McAnulty lay dazed on the warning track.

 

Huntsville blew it apart with a five-run fourth that included a Kennard Bibbs RBI triple, Gemoll's third hit of the day, a two-run Cruz single and a Zuniga RBI single.

 

The Mobile fifth brought the day's biggest pow! With one out, Sain hit a high infield pop near the first base line. Gemoll hustled in, calling off catcher Vinny Rottino, watching the ball the whole way. Sain was running toward first, head down. They hit violently, each spending five minutes sprawled on the field as they were tended to by trainers.

 

Poor Gemoll. Last spring, he took an errant throw in the face during practice that left him with badly blackened eyes. This year, after a half-season in Triple-A, he was returned to Double-A.

 

The Stars are resilient. Now, how much resiliency will one Star need?

[Mass Haas]

Link while active, text follows:

 

www.al.com/sports/huntsvi...174690.xml

 

Joe Davis Stadium is filled with noise, bedlam and joy

Contact Mark McCarter at markcolumn@aol.com

Huntsville Times

 

The promotion was entitled "Three R's With The Stars,'' an educational experience intertwined in baseball.

 

The 'rithmetic would have sent Einstein reaching for an aspirin bottle.

 

Twenty-six hits.

 

Seventeen runs.

 

Five straight wins for Huntsville.

 

Nine straight losses for Mobile.

 

One-hundred ninety-seven minutes of baseball.

 

Then you skip the readin' and writin' and go to science class, with a seven-point-oh on the Richter scale for a collision between Huntsville first baseman Brandon Gemoll and Mobile first baseman Greg Sain on a pop fly.

 

Want to silence 1,000 school kids at once? Have 440 pounds of baseball player going three-quarters speed run directly into each other, then leave them sprawled on the ground for five minutes.

 

I saw Gemoll after the game, propped on a table in the trainer's room. For the first time in my journalistic career, I had a sense of what it was like to cover the losers' locker room for a heavyweight fight.

 

"You might,'' trainer Dave Yeager suggested, "want to wait a day to interview him.''

 

The school kids were given a quick lesson about how the Three R's relate to baseball. For instance, you have to know math to figure a batting average.

 

The picnic tent adjacent to right field was packed. Inside, it had the same roaring, waterfall echo of a school cafeteria, a thousand voices at full decibel. All it was missing was the inimitable school cafeteria smell of green beans, broiling mystery meat and ammonia cleaner.

 

The right side of Joe Davis Stadium was a sea of caps and visors and T-shirts and team jerseys. On the backs were names of the famous to the maybe-one-day-famous, from Iverson and Hardaway to Jayson and Aaron and Pooh.

 

To sit in the stands, eavesdropping, was like sitting on a sofa and clicking through the TV.

 

"Hey, 33, can you get me a ball? ...''

 

"... break a leg ...''

 

" ... did you see that? ...''

 

" ... it's only four dollars ...''

 

" ... sit down where you were sitting before''

 

In Section L, boys were lobbing a baseball back and forth. Said one little girl, perhaps the same one who reminds the teacher at the end of a school day she forgot to assign homework, "They're going to hit someone in the head.''

 

And when a leather-lung shouted at an ump late in the game, "I've seen better eyes on a potato,'' the taunt was greeted with the same sort of giggling as when a teacher accidentally lets slip a cuss word.

 

Escaping the noise and bedlam and joy for a few minutes was Tom Van Schaack, the Stars general manager.

 

"I think it's great to see a stadium with kids in it,'' he said.

 

"The looks on their faces when they walk in the door. When they get their first Dippin' Dots (ice cream). That's the fun part. If they walk away with a smile on their faces, then we've got a fan for life.''

[Mass Haas]

David Weiser's www.starsboxscore.com Huntsville update:

 

Yawn!...... An early riser for fans who wanted to see the Stars today, but this one was meant mostly for the schoolkids who were invited out from various elementary schools around the area. They got their money's worth today. The top of the 5th started shortly before noon, nearly two hours after this game started and was still in the 5th by the time it reached the 2:18 point of yesterday's game.

 

They plan another one of these dates for them on the next homestand, but this one drew considerably less than the 6,900 who filled the stadium along the left side and right side stands last year...... They got an arithmetic lesson today counting the runs, hits, and errors, as well as a wild pitch, a balk, and a Stars victory to top it off........ They also saw a rather frightening collision in the 4th inning, which I'll get to.

 

The Stars win their 5th straight today, 10-7. Mobile loses their 9th straight after winning their first four games of the season. Like I said, it was a long, wild ride.

 

Both teams traded a pair of runs in the 1st....... Kennard Jones and Ronnie Merrill led off with a pair of singles off Manny Parra. On a 1-0 pitch to Paul McAnulty, Parra's wild pitch moved the runners into scoring position...... Ahead of the pitcher, 3-and-1, McAnulty hopped a ball deep to the right side where Brandon Gemoll had to pitch to Parra to retire the batter, ceding the run. Merrill would score on a single up the middle by Corey Smith....... Parra would then settle down and retire the next five batters, striking out two, but he would expend 30 pitches in getting through the first two innings.

 

Meanwhile, the Stars, hot at the plate recently (hitting .315 on this homestand), went to work, matching Mobile's two-spot........ With one out, Tony Gwynn parachuted a single that fell in between Merrill and right fielder Troy Cameron....... Brandon Gemoll started his short and fateful day with a double to dead-center over the head of Kennard Jones, scoring Junior easily from first...... Nelson Cruz, now 9-for-16 (.563) with four doubles in his last four games, slapped a single on an 0-2 pitch through the right side, moving Gemoll to third. On a pickoff attempt to first with a 0-1 count to Tony Zuniga at the plate, Mobile starter Travis Chick throws the ball toward the Mobile bullpen, scoring Gemoll and sending Cruz to 3rd, but Chick would retire Zuniga on a liner snared by Greg Sain and strike out Vinny Rottino swinging on a 3-2 pitch.

 

The day started out at 68°, not ten degrees warmer as was reported by milb.com, but it was getting hotter fast. I have the sunburn to show for it...... But it was not such a hot day for Parra, who turned in the shortest start this season in the rotation......... He started out the 3rd by walking Kennard Jones on seven pitches, but is forced at second by Merrill........ Or it looks that way....... Enrique Cruz flipped the ball near the bag to Callix Crabbe covering the base, but umpire Rob Hansen was working alone on the basepaths due to the absence of his colleague Jason Dunn, who was at the funeral of his grandfather........ Hansen called Jones safe, saying that Crabbe's foot was off the bag. Yet it was Cruz who was charged with the error, even though he made the clean flip to Crabbe........ No matter. McAnulty followed with a clean single to left-center on an 0-2 pitch, scoring Jones to put Mobile ahead, 3-2. Merrill held at second....... Next, Corey Smith, on a 1-1, hit a tailor-made DP grounder to Crabbe, but Crabbe booted the ball trying to pick it up, sending the ball in the direction of the bag for an error, loading the bases.......... The bases are full for Greg Sain when on a 2-and-0 pitch, Parra balked, a textbook case if there ever was one. In the middle of his follow-through, he just stopped with the ball still in his hand, as if time were called, except it wasn't. He may have thought it was, but it was his mistake....... A balk with the bases loaded. You don't see that every day......... Merrill scored making it 4-2...... Parra went full on Sain, then struck him out on an 84 mph change. He would retire the next two hitters to get out of the inning, but Cameron's grounder scored McAnulty to make it 5-2.

 

Mobile was not facing a team in a slump, however....... With one out, Gwynn got things going again with a single to right, nearly caught off the grass by Cameron, but the ball trickled out of his glove........ Next, Gemoll on a 3-2 pitch doubled over the head of McAnulty in left, his 2nd RBI double of the day, scoring Gwynn again, who this time had stolen 2nd on Chick's 2-2 pitch....... With Nelson Cruz at bat, Gemoll stole third, which I don't believe he's ever done, even under Frank Kremblas, but Cruz struck out looking on Chick's 91 mph fastball, and it was up to Tony Zuniga, who was hitting .171 at the time......... Zuniga hit a towering fly ball to left...... Will it go out?....... McAnulty was determined to take this one away, but it would be an inside-the-park home run instead. McAnulty crashed forcefully into the wall and went down in a heap, motionless. Kennard Jones threw the ball in to the infield as Zuniga, who is not built for speed, looking behind him as he chugged around the third base bag, just made it under Carlin's tag. It was 5-5........ Zuniga's inside- the-park home run was the first since Jamie Gann's on July 8 of last year, a week after his debut with the Stars.

 

After a 32-pitch third inning, Manny Parra was out. He had thrown 62 pitches, 38 for strikes (61.2%)...... David Bradley, who would get the win, was successful in quieting down the Bay Bears, giving up three hits in his three innings of work without allowing them to score, lowering his ERA to 1.00 after 4 appearances...... The Stars rallied behind Bradley in the bottom of the 4th, sending nine men to the plate in a five-run inning --- all coming with two out.

 

Callix Crabbe led off the 4th with a walk. Then with two out, Kennard Bibbs pulled a ball deep into the right field corner. Crabbe flew around the bases like Mercury and broke the 5-5 tie. Jason Clements' throw to third to cut down Bibbs is not only late, but way off line, allowing him to score to make it 7-5....... Gwynn and Gemoll finally chased Chick, the Padres' top pitching prospect, from the game with successive singles........ R.D. Spiehs came in from the bullpen. Last year he held the Stars to a 1.84 ERA in 14 appearances, but Jeff Winchester made a loser out of him Monday with his 11th inning RBI single..... Nelson Cruz greeted his 3-2 pitch with a drive deep to left. McAnulty, who recovered from his encounter with the left field wall the last inning, was more shy about chasing the ball this time. It hits off the Computer ER sign on the second tier of boards, and bounces back on the field, scoring Gwynn and Gemoll, making it 9-5....... Zuniga finished the Stars' scoring, driving in his 3rd run with a one-hop hit straightaway to center, scoring Cruz...... Rottino recorded the 3rd of his four inning-ending outs with a fly ball to right........ For the rest of the game, Spiehs and Rusty Tucker retired 11 of the next 13 Stars to come to the plate.

 

The Stars' victory was somewhat overshadowed...... In the top of the 5th, shortly after noon, Greg Sain, on a 2-1 pitch with no one on base, lofted a high pop-up near the first base line. Gemoll was coming down the line and a little more than halfway up the line, not seeing Sain, collided violently into him, sending both players flying off their feet...... Both were down on the ground for several minutes. Sain was the first to get up, about five minutes later, and Gemoll, a couple of minutes later, got up and was escorted off the field, seeming to favor his right leg......... No word was released after the game about the condition of the two players, but both were taken out of the game.

 

Matt DeWitt got two outs on three pitches in the 9th, but wound up having to face the tying run at the plate after giving up back-to-back singles to Cameron and catcher Luke Carlin....... Jason Clement struck out on a 2-2, 91 MPH fastball, making DeWitt the first Stars reliever to pick up his 2nd save.

 

Thursday, this homestand wraps up as either right-hander Jose Oyervidez or right-hander Mike Bumstead takes the hill for Mobile against Glenn Woolard for the Stars, then it's on to Pringles Park....... The Stars will be looking for their 6th straight victory, something they haven't done since 2002, when they closed out their season winning 9 of their last 11.

 

Tony Gwynn, after a 3-for-4 day, is now hitting .471 from the # 2 hole in the lineup....... He's 4-for-24 as a leadoff hitter this year.

[brewmann04]

nice to see Tony Jr hitting the ball in 2a

also Cruz looks like he overmatching 2a Pitching

and Finally Dre Anderson is really hitting the Ball in Brevard

[Mass Haas]

Link while active, text follows:

 

www.dailymail.com/news/Sp...format=prn

 

Disappointed Power manager won't be surprised by more roster changes

Matt Lockhart

Charleston Daily Mail Sportswriter

 

Ramon Aviles has spoken. And from a distance, West Virginia Power players looked over his shoulder when he said it.

 

"We have some guys in extended (spring training) that are swinging the bat pretty good," he said. "(The team) better be looking over their shoulder. In this game you have to do it, because there is always someone behind you that wants to take your spot."

 

Aviles said he was embarrassed following his team's 6-2 loss to Lexington Wednesday that dropped the West Virginia Power to 2-11 on the season.

 

"We have some people who are not doing the job," he said. "This is a new stadium, a new commitment with Milwaukee and a new team here. We are trying to put a winning team on the field for the fans to keep them coming to the ballpark."

 

So, Aviles wouldn't be shocked if the Power made another roster move soon. The club already released Jason Tuttle and sent outfielder Adam Mannon down to extending spring training Monday after just 11 games -- the earliest Aviles said he has seen a roster move in his 22 years of coaching in the minor league.

 

"All I can tell the fans is that I will do everything in my power so that the players give 100 percent on the field," Aviles said. "Today I don't think they gave me 100 percent."

 

That's why this game -- the fifth loss of the young year to Lexington -- was tough for Aviles to swallow in front of 2,480 fans at Appalachian Power Park.

 

"I'm not upset about losing the game," he said. "You are going to lose games and win games. I'm upset about the effort out there."

 

He's upset about the eight runners left on, the crucial walks allowed, the misplayed balls and his team's 14 strikeouts in the 6-2 loss. Every starter -- except first baseman Grant Richardson -- struck out Wednesday.

 

"The guys are taking the fastball and swinging at the breaking pitch," Aviles said. "You have to be ready to hit the fastball. To play in the big leagues, you have to hit a fastball."

 

Power hitters had trouble adjusting to Troy Patton's pitching sequence.

 

The Lexington starting pitcher would follow a 64-mph off-speed pitch with an 86-mph fastball.

 

It's leaving Aviles throwing his hands up.

 

"They have to go across those lines and do it," he said. "We can tell them what to do, but we cannot do it for them."

 

Aviles admits this doesn't look like the team he guided in Arizona during spring training.

 

"When we left spring training, everybody was saying ?With the pitching you got on that team, you are going to win some ballgames,' " Aviles said. "But we're not pitching good and we're not hitting in the clutch."

 

* * *

 

THIS BREWERS' farm club could use Lexington outfielder Hunter Pence. Had he not been patient, he might have been in West Virginia this season.

 

The Milwaukee Brewers selected Pence in the 40th round of the 2002 draft, but he decided to stay in school. Two years later, the Houston Astros took him with its first pick in the draft's second round.

 

He hasn't disappointed. Pence is batting .351, including a double, a home run and two RBI in the series against the Power.

 

Lexington catcher Chris Clark, who knocked in two runs Tuesday, is from Ashland, Ky., near Huntington.

 

West Virginia ends its first homestand of the season today at 7:05 p.m. (6:05 Central) when right-hander Forrest Martin (0-2, 5.19 earned run average) takes the mound against Lexington RHP Jimmy Barthmaier (0-0, 1.10).

 

The promotion for today is Buck Night, which means drinks, hot dogs and reserved bleacher seats are $1.

 

West Virginia Power catcher Nestor Corredor shows that he has survived a collision with Lexington?s Lou Santangelo and held onto the ball during the Power?s 6-2 loss Wednesday afternoon at Appalachian Power Park. Santangelo was called out on the play at home.

Photo: Bob Wojcieszak, Charleston Daily Mail

 

http://www.dailymail.com/images/BALLGAME20421.jpg