Sunday, July 15, 2007

Waco Weirdness

The Warpigs traveled to Waco on Friday the 13th to roll ten with the Inmates. Here are some notes from the wacky day...

First of all, both teams walked 50 times! That's a lot. The Inmates turned 15 double plays, and the Pigs turned 11 of their own. Those numbers are also high. The Warpigs were saved by making only 5 errors, and went errorless in 8 of the games. Despite going 4-6, the Inmates outscored and outhit the Pigs; but only because of the 22-2 win they posted in game 5 of the series.

In that game...
  • Clay Hensley went 7 innings in relief giving up 20 hits and 16 runs, all earned.
  • The Warpigs had 6 hits in the game, but THREE were by Brian Schneider, by far the worst hitting card on the team. AND... they were all off Johan Santana, a lefty. As bad as Schneider's card is on the right side, it's even worse on the left.
  • Omar Vizquel, a 1e4 at SS, played half the game as the DH. Stephen Drew started the game at SS, and Vizquel came in at DH to save at bats for Travis Hafner when the score got out of hand. He did, however, take the field at SS in the 9th inning.
  • The Inmates had 22 runs and 25 hits in the game, but no homers. This was our 5th game, and the Inmates had zero homers through 5 games. In fact, there were only 4 Inmate homers in the entire 10 games - the first three were by Ryan Howard; the last one was by Orlando Hudson, but it was a walk-off homer in the 9th inning of game 8. The Pigs had as many homers in game 1 as the Inmates had in all ten and outhomered them 13-4 overall.
The craziness didn't end there. In one game, Francisco Liriano got a save without retiring a batter. In the 9th inning of the second game of a double header, he came in with 2 outs and a runner at first, with the Pigs leading 5-2. The first batter he faced singled. The next one doubled. The lead runner scored, but third base coach Mariano Goddam Duncan sent the trail runner (even though it wasn't even the tying run) and he was nailed at the plate. Game over.

The cuckoo clock did NOT go off at the time, but it should have.

Liriano was graciously awarded a save.

Despite facing a lefty starter in six of the ten games, Albert Pujols went 4/33 for the series. He drove in a mere 3 runs. Two came on a homer in game ONE; the other one came in the 22-2 game before he and several other starters were pulled. Pujols also made 2 of the 5 Pig errors in the series, and both came in the same inning of the same game.

His bad series was countered by Travis Hafner, however. Pronk had 6 homers (he outhomered the whole Inmate team!) and hit over .350. He even stole a base.

Brian Schneider (don't ask me how) went 7/19. He only had 4 hits ON THE YEAR coming into this series (72 games). And again, he faced mostly lefties against the Inmates.

Oh, and with all my ranting about my 2e5 at 2b getting the PC shaft, he made a TWO BASE ERROR with a runner at 2nd and two outs in the 14th inning to lose game 3. Ugh.

I will also add two examples of my own stupidity on this weird day in Waco.
  1. In the 8th inning of the second game of the day, I led 7-5 when the Inmates doubled with a man on and one out. It was 1-10 to score the runner. I KNEW he was going to go - it made sense really because any manager in his right mind would cut the throw and hold the tying run at second. But I kept thinking, "If the next guy singles, I'll kick myself for not at least TRYING to get the out at home." So I threw. He was safe. The next guy hit a sac fly to tie the game. Luckily, the poor managing was redeemed when the Pigs won the game in 10 innings.
  2. The other one was worse, and I couldn't even admit doing this at the time. In the 22-2 game, Ervin Santana had been blasted early, and then Hensley just tossed oil on the fire, so I decided to let him finish the game no matter how bad it got because (I thought) it was the first game of a doubleheader, and I wanted everyone to be fresh for game 2. Unfortunately, the doubleheader was THE NEXT DAY. And since Hensley went 7 innings, he was ineligible to throw IN EITHER GAME OF THE DH, leaving me with a 5 man bullpen for the twin bill. Again, we got lucky and swept the double header with both starters going deep into the games.
A lot of wacky weirdness on this day. Still... we won 6 of the games, Uncle Dan's barbecue was excellent, we got out of town before the storms hit, and we didn't face much traffic on the way back... all in all, a very good day.

The Warpigs are now 51-31. The Inmates are 25-29.

1 comment:

Patrick Shannon said...

A word of advice: when playing the Inmates in Waco, Uncle Dan's is a good place to eat in the middle of your series... but you might want to talk the HEAD INMATE out of the side order of beans. They have a quick turn-around time with him.