In flurry of broken bats, and 1-3 putouts South Oakland lost a heart-breaker, 3-2 to Hebrew, Monday night at Spring View Field.
After allowing 2 first inning runs to the Ducks, the Oilers' pitcher settled in and was lights out the rest of the night.
The game winning run came in the top of the seventh courtesy of pinch hitter Soji (sp.) who singled in the winning run with an eyes-closed-dying quail into right field.
The Ducks wasted a fine performance by Nick Homa (1-1) who suffered a complete game loss after allowing one earned run, off of three or four hits. The Oilers' strategy was to reach on an error then take second on a past ball, and advance to third on a swinging third strike in the dirt, and score on a fielders choice, or bloop single.
All things being equal there were a few plays which could have been made that could have preserved a 2-1 victory or perhaps sent the game into extra innings. We didn't kick the ball around too much but there were a couple errors. There were two double plays I could have turned at first, but didn't, one came on a grounder to third with a runner on third. Guthrie threw the batter out at first, and I couldn't get the ball out of my glove in time to throw out the runner at home. The other came late in the game with a runner on first and no outs, the batter hit me a hard ground ball and all I was thinking was "get the lead runner" which I did, but I could have stepped on first base first then thrown the runner out at second. The runner eventually scored. I have to make one of those plays, neither of which are an error but could have changed the game. Regardless, the Ducks haven't hit at all this season, we should win game in which we allow only 3 runs. Our team is averaging 2 runs per game.
Two runs per game.
I'd blame it on poor attendance at pre-game batting practice, but I've hit before every game and I'm 1-8 on the season. I struck out to end the 6th inning of last night's game.
We managed to get runners on first and second with one out in the bottom of the seventh, but the last two Ducks struck out, leaving the winning run on first.
Play of the Game
The play didn't count but it was sweet.
Oilers' catcher Kenji Johjima hit a slow roller to Guthrie at third, Guthrie charged it, barehanded the ball and whipped it over to first where I made a sweet Mike Richter pick on the short hop to get Johjima by a step. The ump called it foul, and Homa struck him out on the next pitch, due in part to the sweet play on the foul ball.
Guthrie also had a two-run double in the first to drive in the Ducks' only runs.
Bullet POints
- Guthrie is our best player right now. He's batting .400, all of his hits have been either doubles or triples. He leads the team in avg., RBI, hits, slugging, basically everything except stolen bases. He and I are tied at 1 for the Bob Faust hit-by-pitch award, which goes to the player who records the most hbp in a season
- Instead of losing games 15-8, we're losing 3-2 and 4-1. I suppose that's better and it's encouraging that we're competing every night, but it shouldn't be our goal to simply "stay in every game"
- We need to have a sense of urgency every at-bat and every pitch.
- If/when our hitting comes around, we will win a lot of games this season.
- Go Penguins
- We wasted a second consecutive solid pitching performance. Nick was killing those guys and we didn't help him.
Bad news for the Phantoms.
