Sunday, August 9, 2009

A Forlorn Plea Goes Unanswered

Game 114: Bulls 2, Chiefs 3
Season: 64-50
Wrap, Box, Herald-Sun, Indy Week

My route to the DBAP goes by the Durham County Correctional Center, better known as a the county jail. As we drove by yesterday a poignant scene was taking place on the sidewalk outside that slit-windowed monstrosity. A lady was looking up, shading her eyes with one hand, and forlornly waving with the other. Sad, very sad.

I was reminded of the scene as our hitters trudged to the plate and trudged back to the dugout while we in the stands were, like the lady on the sidewalk, waving our hands, asking for a hit, any kind of hit, just get on base. Elliot Johnson got a single, Chris Richard got two doubles (nice to see Chris hitting), Jon Weber got a double. That’s it. Oh, two walks (Joyce and Albernaz) and Ruggiano reached on an error. That’s six, count ’em, six base runners. The two runs we got were after Joyce’s walk, Ruggiano’s reaching on an error, and the Chief’s pitcher throwing the ball into centerfield in a pickoff attempt, letting them get to second and third. Weber hit a double (what else?) and drove in our only runs.

Davis pitched a decent game, but his wild pitch in the 7th allowed runners to get to second and third and set up a two-run single. In the next inning if Matt Joyce had played the shot into the right field corner just a little better, the batter would have been on second instead of third and the next fly ball would have been just an out instead of the game-winning sac fly.

By the way, Daniel Price in the Herald-Sun gets the the IL standings wrong and doesn’t accurately describe what happened in the 4th inning in his story linked above.

Transactions

I’ve read this article in Wikipedia about being “designated for assignment” a couple of times and, although it is certainly much clearer that than baseball’s balk rule, it doesn’t tell me what’s going to happen here in Durham. So I’ll just make a list of names “DFA’d” the last couple of days. Any, all, or none of these players could end up playing for (or continue playing with) the Bulls.
  • Catcher Michel Hernandez
  • Infielder Joe Dillon
  • RHP John Meloan (fairly sure that in this case he’s gone from the Bulls)
  • LHP R.J. Swindle

2 comments:

  1. A real pitcher's duel last night; good game if you like that kind of thing.

    Dave

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  2. It will be interesting to see how all these transactions sort out. It would be sad to see Michel go elsewhere, but I wouldn't be surprised to see another team pick him up.

    I also wouldn't be surprised to see the Rays keep making waver claims to keep some of these players from the Yankees and/or Red Sox.

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