Good-bye Toledo

Fifth Third Field, Toledo, Ohio

Rained out! Details.

We will not be seeing the Mud Hens or Toledo again this season, except maybe in the playoffs. Come on home, Bulls. Let's get this sorted out Saturday night against Pawtucket.

Durham Bulls Left Bats Behind?

Game 42: Bulls 0, Mud Hens 4
Season: 23-19
Trip: 2-5
Streak: L5
Wrap, Box, Toledo Blade

The key bit of information we need this morning is whether or not the Bulls paid the overnight shipping fees needed to get their bats shipped to them from Durham. Obviously they left them behind (did Blalock take them with him to St Petersburg?).

How bad has it been? How about two shutouts in five days? How about only 6 runs (three of those in the 9th inning) in five days? How about 0 home runs in five days. Zero. None. Nado. Zip. The Bulls hit 51 homers in 46 games, then none for five days.

This cries out for something like the shower room scene in Bull Durham except that 1) these guys are real pros, so not likely to do much good and 2) they’ve all seen the movie — a bunch of times.

Here’s an “insight” for you. Back before the season began we were salivating over the prospect of an outfield of Justin Ruggiano, Desmond Jennings, and Fernando Perez. Be careful what you wish for. Guess who has been in the outfield for the Durham Bulls for the last five games? As near as I can figure, May 16 was the first time that we got all three out there this season — and for the next five games they've been out there. Could this all be my fault? I got my wish and the gods of baseball looked down and said, we’ll show you.

Is there something positive to come out of this? Well, maybe. The bullpen has been getting a break. The last five games have only gone 8 innings for us, so our relievers have caught up on their tweets, etc.

Heath Phillips had, mostly, a good night. So two decent games in a row. Can't help pointing out, however, that he leads the Bulls in giving up home runs, 10, by a bunch. The next worst is a tie at 4 between Aneury Rodriguez and Carlos Hernandez.

I don’t think I’m going to trust the Wall Street Journal for my baseball insights any more. They told me that this guy Scherzer was in trouble this year. He sure picked a heck of at time to figure it out what was wrong (see the Toledo Blade link).

One of These Mornings ...

Game 40: Durham Bulls 3, Toledo Mud Hens 5
Wrap, Box

Game 41: Durham Bulls 2, Toledo Mud Hens 5
Season: 23-18
Trip: 2-4
Streak: L4
Wrap, Box

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

I wasn’t going to post today. I’ve been in a funk ever since I got back home yesterday about two o’clock and discovered that the Bulls had already lost. According to the Toledo Blade, the Mud Hens won because they are better at gettin’ up in the mawnin. Yeah, right.

Grumble, grumble.

Hellickson struggled. Charlie got thrown out of the game.

I wonder how that works. Is there a hierarchy among the coaches? Based on what? Tenure? In that case X. Hernandez takes charge. Age? Dave Myers by a bunch of years. Coin toss?

Four in a row. Could the oddity of having four umpires have anything to do with it?

Breath deep. Game time in a couple of hours. Go Bulls!


Webworld:

• J.P. Howell, a former Bull in 2006-2007 (as a starter) and an important figure in the Tampa Bay Rays bullpen, is out for the year. Doesn’t look like we will see a short term effect in Durham, but it does reduce the Rays flexibility a bit. Some of the speculation is over at DRaysBay.

• Lucky the Wonder Dog is retiring. Ceremony to be held this Saturday. Lucky Jr is apparently in line to take over.

• Neil Solondz has had a couple of interesting interviews recently, including Dan Johnson after a 4-hit game in Columbus and Justin Ruggiano about getting back from his bicep injury.

• Baseball Geek Alert! Interested in the upcoming draft? Really interested in the upcoming draft. Really, really interested in the upcoming draft? Then this is for you.
  

• I’ve often wondered just how much difference velocity makes. Michael Salfino in the Wall Street Journal has some numbers that seem to show that absolute velocity might not matter too much, but velocity change might. That is, Matt Garza and James Shields are throwing harder this year and their ERA is down; others are throwing softer and their ERAs are up. One of his examples is the pitcher we are facing tonight — Max Scherzer.

• Lastly, some traveling tips from the Baseball Wives. Here’s a question for my readers. Is there another profession left where a spouse is by definition a wife?

Let’s Just Move On Down the Road

Game 39: Bulls 1, Clippers 5
Season: 23-16
Trip: 2-2
Streak: L2
Wrap, Box, Columbus Dispatch

What can we say? This is what the field looked like yesterday evening. If the game had been a home game, it would not have been a game. Things were a bit stormy down here while the Bulls were in Columbus.

Not much to say about the game except that we finally scored a run, that Carlos Santana really likes Bulls pitching, and that once again we outhit our opponent and lost. But that’s baseball.

Instead, let’s go with quirky:

Last night down in the jukebox by the bay in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Rays were playing the Cleveland Indians, the Clippers parent club. The new guy on the Rays team, Hank Blalock (remember Hank) hit a grounder to shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera. Cabrera managed to break his arm on the play. Shortly thereafter, up in Columbus, Clipper second baseman Jason Donald is told that he’s been called up. Not sure what it all means. Odd sort of vibe to the events.

Clipper pitcher Mike Gosling took the occasion of pitching six shutout innings to announce his retirement from baseball. Pretty decent eight year career, mostly in AAA (stats).

Bulls are off to Toledo, which may or may not be recovering from a made-for-TV visit by Crystal Bowersox. Who’s Crystal Bowersox you may ask? All I can say is that if you don’t know, you may be better off for it.

Now about that Mud Hens mascot guys ...

Streak Ends

Game 38: Durham Bulls 0, Columbus Clippers 5
Season: 23-14
Wrap, Box, Columbus Dispatch

I can’t improve on the info in the wrap at the link above, that pretty much says it all. Dan Johnson, playing third base, had a great night at bat. The Bulls hit into five (5!) double plays and end up with the oddity of outhitting the Clippers 10-7 yet losing 0-5.

One bright(ish) light was that Heath Rollins had a decent relief appearance. That’s two in a row.

Yet another oddity was that our pitchers didn’t record a single strikeout.

Columbus and Durham are now tied with the best records in the International League.

Today’s game is at 6:35.

Clipping Clippers

Game 36: Durham Bulls 8, Columbus Clippers 1
Wrap, Box, Columbus Dispatch

Game 37: Durham Bulls 7, Columbus Clippers 3
Season: 23-14
Streak: W4
Wrap, Box, Columbus Dispatch

Jeremy Hellickson was back in form Friday: six innings, eleven strikeouts, no walks. Very pretty. And well backed up (well, sort of) by Joe Bateman and Mike Ekstrom. Joe gave up his first home run in 14 appearances (20+ innings). Ekstrom hasn’t walked a batter yet (3 appearances, 4+ innings).

Lots of doubles (Richard, Jennings, Chavez, Shealy) and a couple of home runs (Shealy, Richard) drove the offense. Hellickson’s pitching and a couple of double plays kept Columbus off the board.

Then Heath Phillips stepped to the mound yesterday (Saturday). Heath had his best game of the year, marred only slightly by a 7th inning when he arguably should not have even been in the game. Probably Charlie was saving his bullpen for another day and assuming that the game was in hand (score 7-0 at the time), but a single, wild pitch, single, home run put three runs on the board very quickly. Still a fine day for Heath.

Other interesting features of the game: Ryan Shealy hit a grand slam, the first grand slam for the Bulls this year. Last year it seemed like we hit one every time we got the bases loaded. Chris Richard most memorably hit two in one game. So it was fun to see our first one of the year. Also good to see Shealy have two good days in a row. Shealy really hasn’t had a very productive year so far, but it’s been somewhat hidden by the stellar performances of Dan Johnson, Hank Blalock, Chris Richard, Angel Chavez, and company. Maybe now that he’s out of the shadow of Blalock he can blossom.

Justin Ruggiano was back in the lineup and had a ground out RBI and a walk. We’re going to need his bat pretty soon now.

So we are 2-0 in Columbus, have a 1:05 game today with (probably) Aneury Rodriguez getting a start. As seems to be usual, we can expect at least of couple of transactions while on the road.

Transaction Speculation

Let’s start with what we know: Blalock is gone. An infielder we’ve never seen, but who has been on our roster since opening day, J. J. Furmaniak has been activated and put on the Montgomery Biscuits roster. Seen as a Bull, that is. Furmaniak was with Lehigh Valley last year.

We usually carry 12 position players. So we’ve got room for two. Down in St. Petersburg things are fairly complex and those considerations will, of course, have an impact on us. [St Petersburg Times] So I’ll just put a few names in play here — catcher John Jaso could come back, infielder Sean Rodriguez might get sent down to give him some more playing time, outfielder Matt Joyce will surely at least visit on a rehab tour if not an assignment. Furmaniak’s physical condition could be really good and so maybe just a short visit to Montgomery before coming to the Bulls. Pat Burrell, in an extraordinary act of penance to Rays fans, donates $6,000,000 to earthquake relief and comes to the Bulls to learn how to play team mascot. (“I’ve been a fan of Wool E. Bull all my life. It’s going to be an honor to study with him this season. I’ve heard that he’s on the DL, so maybe I’ll get an even earlier shot at a performance that I expected.”)

Update: A modest correction or two to today's post. It was noted that at the bottom of today's "wrap", Neil provided us with the name of today's starter and it is, indeed, Aneury Rodriguez. Secondly, a slight difficulty with my enumerative skills was noted in that the Bulls usually carry twelve position players (I got that right) and they have 12 position players. Other than that, I guess I got things right...

Blalock to Rays

Several sources are reporting that Hank Blalock is on his way to join the Tampa Bay Rays.

St Pete Times, Rays Index, and probably others.

Update: A couple of new links -- St Pete Times and DRaysBay.