Swift summation
After the bottom portion of the their bat rack kindled just enough to sustain their viability in the game, some traditional and non-traditional top-four PawSox made the wise choice to restrain their cold bats and passively surpassed the lately unsolvable Louisville Bats, 4-3, at McCoy Stadium Monday night.
Coming on for the ninth inning vying to salvage a 3-2 victory, Louisville reliever Jordan Smith threw 17 balls out of 25 pitches, including 13 of his last 16 tosses with only one out needed to give the Bats each of the first three games of this series.
Pinch-hitter Daniel Nava drew a five-pitch walk with Nate Spears already on second base, Che-Hsuan Lin was hit to load the bases and Jose Iglesias let four unanswered balls go by to force Spears home for the equalizer.
Enter slugger Ryan Lavarnway, who had combined with the likes of Lin and Iglesias for an 0-for-8 evening, let three straight balls, a called strike and then Ball Four drop by. With that, Nava crossed the plate for a cathartic victory after the Bats had seemingly retained a subtle stranglehold all evening.
Louisville drew first blood for the third time in as many bouts as home runs via Daniel Dorn and Chris Valaika in the second and third innings, respectively, sculpting an initial 2-0 lead.
The No. 7-slotted DH Luis Exposito and bottom-feeding Ronald Bermudez combined for the PawSox’ first four hits. Exposito led off the third with a solo shot into the Bats’ bullpen and Bermudez hit a single in back-to-back innings. However, he along with two other runners, including Exposito in the fourth, were stranded to preserve Louisville’s 2-1 edge through four innings.
The Bats raised their upper hand to 3-1 in the fourth courtesy of Dave Sappelt, whose sacrifice fly scored Michael Costanzo. Hector Luna countered with a leadoff blast to pull Pawtucket back within one, 3-2, in the sixth.
Louisville retired each of the next nine PawSox batters before Spears led off the bottom of the ninth with a rolling single to shallow left-center. Spears advanced to scoring position on Exposito’s subsequent sacrifice grounder, but had no other tasks afterward but to savor the gradual gift from Smith.
PawSox pluses
Shortstop Jed Lowrie lasted only three innings in his first rehab game before he was lifted as planned after his second at-bat. But in that sliver of time, he collected his share of key defensive highlights. He initiated a 6-4-3 double-play for the first two outs of the second and collaborated with the catcher Lavarnway to foil Felix Perez’s stealing attempt and end the top of the third.
After threatening twice to catapult the ball out of the yard (flying out both times), Luna belted his 12th homer of the season well out of the park to extend his hitting streak to four games.
Lin barred Louisville first-baseman Daniel Dorn’s bid to augment his team’s lead in the ninth, snagging his fly ball at the right-center fence for the second out of the inning. As it happened, that play had vital implications when the PawSox usurped the game in the bottom half.
Sox stains
What has come over Lars Anderson? In the near-48 hours since his near-trade to Oakland, which came on the heels of a seven-game hitting streak, the cleanup man has gone 0-for-7. In four plate appearances Monday night, he struck out twice and hit a pair of soft grounders to the right side of the infield.
Anderson’s third-inning grounder to Dorn at first base left the bags loaded and spoiled Pawtucket’s opportunity to surmount a 2-1 deficit early. With the score unchanged through the next inning, Lin grounded into a force-out to strand a threesome of prospective RBIs of his own in the bottom of the fourth.
Meanwhile, his passive winning play aside, Lavarnway endured a pair of strikeouts for the ninth time in his last 11 games-played and went hitless for the fifth time in his last 12 outings.
Bats notes
Starting pitcher Edinson Volquez toiled to throw 111 pitches over a span of seven full innings-pitched. Although only 69 of those pitches were for strikes, he managed six strikeouts, confined the PawSox to two runs on five hits and pulled off four 1-2-3 stanzas.
Valaika and Denis Phipps each had multi-hit outings. Phipps lined a leadoff single to left field in both the fourth and the sixth and also doubled in the eighth.
Miscellany
Spears stole his eighth base out of nine attempts on the year after walking in the fourth inning. He is now tied with Nava for third on the team in that department. Ironically, the multifaceted Spears was filling Nava’s usual defensive post in left field on Nava’s night off Monday.
PawSox starter Kyle Weiland threw 98 pitches, his second-heaviest bushel in a single start this season. He sandwiched five so-so innings with a 1-2-3 first and seventh, finishing his night with a relatively efficient 13-pitch frame.
Infielder Brent Dlugach, playing second base while Lowrie and Iglesias took his usual shortstop position, struck out for his eighth consecutive outing and the 13th time overall these last eight games.
Michael Bowden, who combined with Tommy Hottovy for one hit in two innings of relief, garnered his third win of the season.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Relief coming for Pena? Rough outings, transactions may mean return to PawSox bullpen
Can Tony Pena, Jr. go home to the bullpen now? It’s possible.
With the parent Boston Red Sox having acquired Erik Bedard from the Seattle Mariners before Sunday’s MLB trading deadline, odds are Andrew Miller will be due back in the PawSox’ clubhouse before long.
Either that, or the potentially impending reactivation of Felix Doubront―whose hamstring had him placed on the 7-day disabled list―could offer another option to fill Pawtucket’s rotation.
Perfect timing. If and when he can find a suitable arrangement, Pawtucket manager Arnie Beyeler might want to consider sending Pena back to the relief brigade, where the veteran pitcher is generally better suited.
Pena’s role in the PawSox’ 7-2 home loss to the Louisville Bats coincided with Miller’s no-decision in a Boston victory at Chicago Sunday afternoon. The ugly upshot at McCoy Stadium dropped Pena to 1-2 on the month and the team to 1-5 in his six July starts.
Pena, who has made 19 relief appearances in 2011, got his first starting nod in a May 22 visit to Toledo and has been a mainstay in the rotation since June 27.
And over his first four starts for the PawSox, Pena charged up a 3-1 record for himself, his only blight being a 3-0 loss to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre during a July 2 doubleheader at McCoy.
Since then, though, Pawtucket is 0-4 when Pena starts. He received three consecutive no-decisions and then took Sunday afternoon’s albatross against Louisville after allowing a season-worst nine hits in a span of five innings. Four of those hits were doubles, all of them playing a direct or indirect part in Pena’s four earned runs.
To be fair, Pena’s four-game winless streak has not been an unadulterated quartet of duds. He was in line for a potential win in two consecutive tangles with the North Division-leading Lehigh Valley IronPigs, having lasted seven innings in both cases.
But in the second of those games last Tuesday, he disassembled in the third after he was nearly spotless through two innings. And this was 10 days after a six-hit, seven-run shellacking in 3.1 innings against Durham and one start before Sunday’s debacle against the Bats.
To start last week’s visit to Coca-Cola Park, Pena benched Delwyn Young and Tagg Bozied on strikes while allowing only one base hit while logging six outs in as many challengers.
But in the third, a hit batsman, back-to-back singles, a sacrifice grounder, a walk, a wild pitch and a two-run single amounted to four IronPigs runs. The complexion of the game thus changed instantaneously as Lehigh Valley usurped a 4-3 lead and ultimately won a seesaw slugfest, 8-7, in 10 innings.
Under ordinary circumstances, Pena’s two sparkling stanzas might have meant keeping the mound warm for Michael Bowden, Jason Rice or Randy Williams to shut the door in the ninth.
Before his June 27 bout with Indianapolis, Pena had pitched a cumulative 39.1 innings, striking out 23 batters and allowing only 14 runs over 18 relief outings.
As a starter this season, Pena has logged 43.1 innings-pitched, thrown 24 Ks and authorized 26 runs. Overall, those differences in data are roughly negligible, but that only suggests that Pena is better suited for slivers rather than slices of action per night.
His lone active return to the bullpen this month happened to be a save situation in Syracuse July 6, when he struck out two men in as many innings to stamp a 2-0 victory. Apart from an identical 2-0 triumph over the hapless Buffalo Bisons three nights later, that is the simplest and smoothest outing Pena has experienced in at least five weeks.
So far, Pena has not quite devolved into a hair-whitening starter. But seeing as he has a day job in the bullpen and that the PawSox may soon have gridlock coming to their rotation in the coming week, it would simply make more sense to revert him back to a reliever.
With the parent Boston Red Sox having acquired Erik Bedard from the Seattle Mariners before Sunday’s MLB trading deadline, odds are Andrew Miller will be due back in the PawSox’ clubhouse before long.
Either that, or the potentially impending reactivation of Felix Doubront―whose hamstring had him placed on the 7-day disabled list―could offer another option to fill Pawtucket’s rotation.
Perfect timing. If and when he can find a suitable arrangement, Pawtucket manager Arnie Beyeler might want to consider sending Pena back to the relief brigade, where the veteran pitcher is generally better suited.
Pena’s role in the PawSox’ 7-2 home loss to the Louisville Bats coincided with Miller’s no-decision in a Boston victory at Chicago Sunday afternoon. The ugly upshot at McCoy Stadium dropped Pena to 1-2 on the month and the team to 1-5 in his six July starts.
Pena, who has made 19 relief appearances in 2011, got his first starting nod in a May 22 visit to Toledo and has been a mainstay in the rotation since June 27.
And over his first four starts for the PawSox, Pena charged up a 3-1 record for himself, his only blight being a 3-0 loss to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre during a July 2 doubleheader at McCoy.
Since then, though, Pawtucket is 0-4 when Pena starts. He received three consecutive no-decisions and then took Sunday afternoon’s albatross against Louisville after allowing a season-worst nine hits in a span of five innings. Four of those hits were doubles, all of them playing a direct or indirect part in Pena’s four earned runs.
To be fair, Pena’s four-game winless streak has not been an unadulterated quartet of duds. He was in line for a potential win in two consecutive tangles with the North Division-leading Lehigh Valley IronPigs, having lasted seven innings in both cases.
But in the second of those games last Tuesday, he disassembled in the third after he was nearly spotless through two innings. And this was 10 days after a six-hit, seven-run shellacking in 3.1 innings against Durham and one start before Sunday’s debacle against the Bats.
To start last week’s visit to Coca-Cola Park, Pena benched Delwyn Young and Tagg Bozied on strikes while allowing only one base hit while logging six outs in as many challengers.
But in the third, a hit batsman, back-to-back singles, a sacrifice grounder, a walk, a wild pitch and a two-run single amounted to four IronPigs runs. The complexion of the game thus changed instantaneously as Lehigh Valley usurped a 4-3 lead and ultimately won a seesaw slugfest, 8-7, in 10 innings.
Under ordinary circumstances, Pena’s two sparkling stanzas might have meant keeping the mound warm for Michael Bowden, Jason Rice or Randy Williams to shut the door in the ninth.
Before his June 27 bout with Indianapolis, Pena had pitched a cumulative 39.1 innings, striking out 23 batters and allowing only 14 runs over 18 relief outings.
As a starter this season, Pena has logged 43.1 innings-pitched, thrown 24 Ks and authorized 26 runs. Overall, those differences in data are roughly negligible, but that only suggests that Pena is better suited for slivers rather than slices of action per night.
His lone active return to the bullpen this month happened to be a save situation in Syracuse July 6, when he struck out two men in as many innings to stamp a 2-0 victory. Apart from an identical 2-0 triumph over the hapless Buffalo Bisons three nights later, that is the simplest and smoothest outing Pena has experienced in at least five weeks.
So far, Pena has not quite devolved into a hair-whitening starter. But seeing as he has a day job in the bullpen and that the PawSox may soon have gridlock coming to their rotation in the coming week, it would simply make more sense to revert him back to a reliever.
Post-game pop-ups: Bats 7, PawSox 2
Swift summation
On both sides of the ball, the PawSox into overslept Sunday afternoon, cultivating only momentary and negligible highlights while the visiting Louisville Bats smoothly and slowly buried them en route to a 7-2 loss at McCoy Stadium.
Louisville DH Denis Phipps opened the scoring for the second straight day, lining a single to shallow left to score Dave Sappelt from third in the top of the first.
Pawtucket pulled even in the bottom half thanks to an ever-gradual baserunning circle tour by Che-Hsuan Lin. The centerfielder led off with a walk, stole second with Daniel Nava at the dish, advanced to third on a balk with Ryan Lavarnway at bat and scored on Lavarnway’s single.
But from there, Bats starter Daryl Thompson retired each of his next 11 challengers. Within the same time frame, Pawtucket’s Tony Pena, Jr. charged up a four-inning tab that included nine hits, four doubles, two walks and four runs.
Louisville promptly reclaimed the lead in the second courtesy of Kristopher Negron’s sacrifice fly, which was enough to sent Corky Miller home from third. Two innings later, doubles by Daniel Dorn and Costanzo augmented the upper hand to 3-1. Costanzo advanced to third on a single by Jose Castro and scored ahead of Sappelt’s third single in as many plate-appearances.
The Bats added a fifth run in the sixth inning at the expense of reliever Clevelan Santeliz. In the bottom half, the PawSox posed one of their more outstanding threats when Lars Anderson drew a two-out walk and advanced to second on Hector Luna’s single. Yet both men were stranded when former Sox outfielder Jeremy Hermida robbed Nate Spears at the right field warning track.
Hermida proceeded to expand the gap to 6-1 with a solo home run to left in the seventh.
Lavarnway cut the deficit to 6-2 in the eighth when he doubled to the left field corner, stole third with Luna at the plate, then hustled home when Luna hit an infield single on the next pitch. But with Phipps on third in the top of the ninth, Miller renewed the five-run edge with an infield single to short.
PawSox pluses
Twice in as many innings, Pena let two men reach scoring position with no outs. But both times, Lavarnway played a key role in helping his batterymate confine the damage to one run.
In the first, the catcher collaborated with shortstop Jose Iglesias to catch Phipps stealing for the first out of the game. And in the second inning, when Nava caught Castro’s shallow fly to left and threw to the plate, Lavarnway appealed Costanzo’s would-be scoring tag from third and relayed the ball to Luna to complete an unusual inning-ending double play.
Luna initiated another double play with two Bats on board in the third, catching Hermida’s liner and throwing to Lars Anderson, who tagged Phipps at first.
Sox stains
Coming on in relief of Pena to commence the sixth, Santeliz loaded the bases with nobody out by way of a walk, a fielding error and a hit-batsman. Although that only amounted to one run, second-baseman Nate Spears might have averted that run if not for a Bucknerian gaffe on Costanzo’s grounder that sent Miller from first to third.
In two innings of work, Santeliz threw 20 strikes, 19 balls while authorizing a walk, a hit-batsman, two extra-base hits and two insurance runs.
With Spears and Iglesias on the corners with two outs in the fifth, the lately productive Lin had a chance to kindle a welcome offensive disturbance. Instead, with a 2-1 count in his favor, he stood pat and watched two strikes zip by to end the inning and keep intact what was then a 4-1 deficit.
Designated hitter Luis Exposito joined Nava as the only Pawtucket batters not to reach base on the day. And just when the Sox were thawing out in the eighth, he too stranded men at the corners with a grounder to short.
Bats notes
In 6.2 innings-pitched, Thompson allowed one run on four hits―none of them for extra bases―and struck out seven PawSox.
Sappelt, Phipps, Dorn, Costanzo and Castro all logged multiple hits for Louisville (team total of 17). Sappelt went 4-for-5 with a quartet of singles. While Costanzo doubled twice and singled once.
Miller went hitless in his first four at-bats, but scored two of Louisville’s runs after drawing a walk in the second and the sixth.
Negron was the last Bat to record a hit on the day, singling to load the bases with two outs in the ninth.
Relievers Nick Christiani and Jeremy Horst combined for one earned run on three hits in 2.1 innings of work.
Miscellany
In eight games and 10 days since returning from the disabled list, Iglesias has hit a respectable (12-for-26) but has also struck out at least once (eight times total) in each of the last six games. Both trends continued Sunday afternoon when the shortstop sandwiched a fifth-inning single with a pair of Ks in the second and seventh.
Luna hit 2-for-4, notched his first RBI in five games and ran from first to third on Spears’ second hit of the day, a sharp single to right field in the eighth.
On both sides of the ball, the PawSox into overslept Sunday afternoon, cultivating only momentary and negligible highlights while the visiting Louisville Bats smoothly and slowly buried them en route to a 7-2 loss at McCoy Stadium.
Louisville DH Denis Phipps opened the scoring for the second straight day, lining a single to shallow left to score Dave Sappelt from third in the top of the first.
Pawtucket pulled even in the bottom half thanks to an ever-gradual baserunning circle tour by Che-Hsuan Lin. The centerfielder led off with a walk, stole second with Daniel Nava at the dish, advanced to third on a balk with Ryan Lavarnway at bat and scored on Lavarnway’s single.
But from there, Bats starter Daryl Thompson retired each of his next 11 challengers. Within the same time frame, Pawtucket’s Tony Pena, Jr. charged up a four-inning tab that included nine hits, four doubles, two walks and four runs.
Louisville promptly reclaimed the lead in the second courtesy of Kristopher Negron’s sacrifice fly, which was enough to sent Corky Miller home from third. Two innings later, doubles by Daniel Dorn and Costanzo augmented the upper hand to 3-1. Costanzo advanced to third on a single by Jose Castro and scored ahead of Sappelt’s third single in as many plate-appearances.
The Bats added a fifth run in the sixth inning at the expense of reliever Clevelan Santeliz. In the bottom half, the PawSox posed one of their more outstanding threats when Lars Anderson drew a two-out walk and advanced to second on Hector Luna’s single. Yet both men were stranded when former Sox outfielder Jeremy Hermida robbed Nate Spears at the right field warning track.
Hermida proceeded to expand the gap to 6-1 with a solo home run to left in the seventh.
Lavarnway cut the deficit to 6-2 in the eighth when he doubled to the left field corner, stole third with Luna at the plate, then hustled home when Luna hit an infield single on the next pitch. But with Phipps on third in the top of the ninth, Miller renewed the five-run edge with an infield single to short.
PawSox pluses
Twice in as many innings, Pena let two men reach scoring position with no outs. But both times, Lavarnway played a key role in helping his batterymate confine the damage to one run.
In the first, the catcher collaborated with shortstop Jose Iglesias to catch Phipps stealing for the first out of the game. And in the second inning, when Nava caught Castro’s shallow fly to left and threw to the plate, Lavarnway appealed Costanzo’s would-be scoring tag from third and relayed the ball to Luna to complete an unusual inning-ending double play.
Luna initiated another double play with two Bats on board in the third, catching Hermida’s liner and throwing to Lars Anderson, who tagged Phipps at first.
Sox stains
Coming on in relief of Pena to commence the sixth, Santeliz loaded the bases with nobody out by way of a walk, a fielding error and a hit-batsman. Although that only amounted to one run, second-baseman Nate Spears might have averted that run if not for a Bucknerian gaffe on Costanzo’s grounder that sent Miller from first to third.
In two innings of work, Santeliz threw 20 strikes, 19 balls while authorizing a walk, a hit-batsman, two extra-base hits and two insurance runs.
With Spears and Iglesias on the corners with two outs in the fifth, the lately productive Lin had a chance to kindle a welcome offensive disturbance. Instead, with a 2-1 count in his favor, he stood pat and watched two strikes zip by to end the inning and keep intact what was then a 4-1 deficit.
Designated hitter Luis Exposito joined Nava as the only Pawtucket batters not to reach base on the day. And just when the Sox were thawing out in the eighth, he too stranded men at the corners with a grounder to short.
Bats notes
In 6.2 innings-pitched, Thompson allowed one run on four hits―none of them for extra bases―and struck out seven PawSox.
Sappelt, Phipps, Dorn, Costanzo and Castro all logged multiple hits for Louisville (team total of 17). Sappelt went 4-for-5 with a quartet of singles. While Costanzo doubled twice and singled once.
Miller went hitless in his first four at-bats, but scored two of Louisville’s runs after drawing a walk in the second and the sixth.
Negron was the last Bat to record a hit on the day, singling to load the bases with two outs in the ninth.
Relievers Nick Christiani and Jeremy Horst combined for one earned run on three hits in 2.1 innings of work.
Miscellany
In eight games and 10 days since returning from the disabled list, Iglesias has hit a respectable (12-for-26) but has also struck out at least once (eight times total) in each of the last six games. Both trends continued Sunday afternoon when the shortstop sandwiched a fifth-inning single with a pair of Ks in the second and seventh.
Luna hit 2-for-4, notched his first RBI in five games and ran from first to third on Spears’ second hit of the day, a sharp single to right field in the eighth.
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